Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four: Oregon and Washington Libraries, a special edition prepared as part of my speaking engagements at this April’s joint annual conference, is now available.
The 6×9 PDF ebook version, linked to above, is free. That’s $0.00, including $0.00 shipping & handling (always true for Lulu ebooks). No DRM–and it carries a Creative Commons BY license, meaning you’re free to pass it along, derive other material from it, even sell it, as long as you include the attribution that I wrote it.
Printing It Out
If you’d like to have a printed book(let), assuming that you have a duplexing color printer (laser or inkjet), here’s what to do:
- Download the PDF
- In Adobe Reader, click on Print (either the icon or in the File menu).
- In “Page Sizing & Handling,” click on Booklet.
- Print it. It will require 19 sheets of paper. Since the original page size is 6×9, the resulting pages (each half of an 8.5×11″ page) will be roughly 92% of original size–still plenty large enough for easy reading.
- Fold the book(let) in half. There you have it: a nice little book with its own bright cover.
- If you have access to a stapler with a 5.5″ throat (or longer), which your library may very well have, you can center-staple it to make it more useful as a book.
- Or, if you’re feeling flush and want a more permanent version, you can buy a hardcover printed copy–see below. I offer these instructions because any printed color book from Lulu is expensive (even though only some pages have color, and very little of it except the cover page, all pages have to be printed in color, at $0.20/page instead of $0.02/page. I figure that, if your color printer costs $0.03/page for all black ink and, say, $0.12 for color pages with 5% coverage, and the paper you use costs $5/ream, you’ll spend less than $4 to print it yourself).
The Audience
The primary audience is public librarians and library consultants in Oregon and Washington and also library schools in those states or elsewhere. Think of this freebie as part of your conference registration, although you’re also welcome to it if you’re unable to attend the conference (or my session on the book).
The second audience is public librarians or library agencies in other states or regions who might want to commission a similar project. This is one example of what I could do for you.
The Hardback Book
If you want a permanent version of the book, there’s a hardback (casewrap) version for $34.99. I get about $5 of that. If you buy a copy and would like me to sign it at the conference, I would (of course) be utterly delighted. (Heck, I’d sign “saddle-stitched” printouts as well.)
Why a hardback version? Because a paperback version would still cost at least $19 or more, even if I didn’t take a piece of it. I figure that, if you’re willing to spend five times as much as it costs to print your own copy, you might as well get a sturdy version. The casewrap has one little value-added feature: The color mosaic strips on the cover wrap all the way around the cover. The cover looks something like the image below, although I cleaned up the bottom strip somewhat before finally uploading the book.
