From Possibilities to Reality: Save Your Small Town with these Uniquely Do-able Ideas, Projects, and Success Stories
A motivating Workbook for small towns to get into action right away with success stories from other communities, ideas for your town and a guide for each session to get you started.
Book Cover
The book cover is being designed by artist/illustrator Mars Manderico. Meanwhile, here's a fun placeholder!
Beta Readers have started
The first draft of the book has been written and the fun part has started! The response to the call out for beta readers was bigger than I imagined. So we have two rounds!
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What's going on with the book?
Crowd Sourcing
I want a professionally prepared book that every rural community can use in their work. It takes cash flow! I have taken a Crowd Sourcing Course from Crowdfund Better. They've been great to work with, and we've had a relationship over the years. They know their stuff!
I have decided to use The Local Crowd for a few reasons. They are THE rural crowdfunding experts and were recommended by Jen Risley at AMIBA. Jen is another great rural connection doing great things for small businesses.
The plan is to roll out the crowdsourcing in June! Stay tuned.
Editing stage
May 4 ... The beta readers are done. Now it's going through a line-by-line editing by Mary Redmond. Kim Lozano will be helping with proofreading edits—standardizing section headings, bullet lists, parallel construction stuff, comma joys, and woes, etc.
More than a notion
I'm working with Mars Manderico to prep the book for publication. The list below is a recap of one of our conversations. I share it so you can get just a taste of what is involved in preparing for publication.
- Printer questions + notes
- Size of pages will be 8.5 x 11
- Total pages = 132 pages (including cover). I subtracted the 9 table of contents pages. [ Total estimated body = 128 pages; cover = 4 pages (OFC, IFC, OBC, IBC) ] I'm now at 150 pages!
- Spine thickness will be determined by the printer after the number of pages is confirmed. (TBD)
- Bleed, trim and safe zone specifications?
- What format will the printer require for delivery?
- Press check or proofing process w/ printer?
- Cover concept options - Below are the pages that will be built for the concepts
- outside back cover (OBC) -- will need content: probably contact info, logo, any closing statements, and ISBN code
- inside front cover (IFC) -- will need the condensed table of contents here to put here
- and inside back cover (IBC) -- will need bio info/content here
- spine (if it's thick enough) -- will be FPO until we find out the thickness
- The templates included:
- title pages (8)
- basic pages (50)
- pages with images (59)
- pages with charts (1) -- although this is only one page the chart look will need to be created, so I'm adding it here.
- FAQ / intro pages (8) -- the number of pages may be reduced (taking out large pict and blank pages)
- FYI: table of content page -- this has now moved to IFC and will be part of the concepts
Other Miscellaneous items:
- Highlight text call-outs -- this is included in the basic page layout
- Footer url text will only be on the notes pages and will be taken out everywhere else
- Photo credit will be placed along side or bottom of small photos; if large enough in layout then it can be placed inside the photo
- When work is approved:
- New handwriting font will be chosen to replace the one shown in concept for title pages and body pages
- Cover concepts can begin
- Proofing -- will be done by outsource
- Edits -- suggested and agreed on 2 rounds at most
- There are 72 images to handle, prepare, and convert for print
- Due date goal: in June