Lulu, Corporate Sponsors, and Things

I heard from Lulu again today, and I just have to take a moment to say...



They're being so wonderful to us, and so supportive of this project. What VIP treatment!

We will have an ISBN in a couple of days. They're waiving *all* up-front costs, including the ISBN registration, and are offering help with anything we need, from formatting to storefront design. They're going to help me set up a private ordering link for review copies at the base rate. They're even offering to approach a corporate sponsor for us.

On that note:

I know I've been hazy on the idea of corporate sponsorships. I was trying to figure out exactly what we need and what we could offer, and how to accept donations.

We're so tight on space and so time-crunched that I'm afraid to offer space in the book itself, but I will gladly list sponsors (and their links, if available) on the SOS website and once in the Absolute Write Newsletter (which goes out to 75,000 writers a week).

We can use sponsorship money toward publicity/advertising costs-- such as buying and mailing review copies and press releases. This would ease the burden from writers who want to send copies to their local media but can't afford to, and would enable us to mail plenty of copies to national and international media.

So! If you know of a company that might help us out, donations to this cause can be made by PayPal to storiesofstrength @jennaglatzer.com (delete space... it's there to confuse spambots). Checks can also be sent to my PO Box, but the company would have to be comfortable with writing a check to my name-- I don't have a bank account for Stories of Strength, and my partner is the one in charge of the Absolute Write bank account (I don't want to mix the two because AW is not a nonprofit). My mailing address is:

Jenna Glatzer
PO Box 621
Islip, NY 11751

I will gladly keep a running tally of donations and how we're using them, and sponsors can be anonymous if they prefer (please note this).

More soon!

Hi! Wait, I should clarify:

We're not looking for big bucks here. We don't need it, and I wouldn't know what to do with it. Honestly, I'd much rather that corporations just buy copies of the book to give to their employees or donate to libraries or community centers or something, rather than making big donations to sponsor SoS.

Figure that it costs about $2 to mail a book by media mail, and $15.95 per book if we pay full price (which we don't have to). A typical publisher mails out about 200 review copies to media outlets. That would be a total of $3590-- or $2590 if we get the discount I expect for reviewers.

Now, deduct from that the cost of what the authors are willing and planning to contribute-- if each author involved buys ONE copy to send to a media outlet, more than half of that cost is gone-- so we're down to about $1295 as our "dream budget."

An anonymous donor has already offered $250 toward review copies, so take it down to $1000 (rounding off), and I know Mike has a company willing and ready to contribute, too.

Okay, given that figure: That's the maximum I want to raise in sponsorships directly to the project. Anything beyond that should either (a) go toward buying copies of the book, which they can use or donate however they like, or (b) be donated directly to the charity of their choice.

Taking out ads in newspapers/magazines, while fun, is usually not an effective way to sell books. The exception is in trade magazines (publishers often take out ads for their "big" books in the book trade magazines), but even that would feel kind of irresponsible to me. I might try to get one of the mags to donate an ad to us. (Hey, you never know. They might just say yes!) Some of Amazon's promotions (buy x, get y, or solo mailings to people who've bought similar books) can be effective, but probably too costly.

So, please don't worry about going about town and drumming up money. If your company, your spouse's company, etc. happens to be the charitable sort and wants to donate $50, that would be great. But please don't feel pressured. We're already off to a good start!

Thanks!

By the way, I love the bizarreness of all this-- the fact that I actually come in here and say, "Stop working so hard" and "slow down" and stuff. This never happens in the other areas of life. This is such an awesome and enthusiastic group! We're gonna rock the publishing world.

What's delaying the process right now is the Red Cross. I'm running into serious red tape, and until that's cleared, I can't finalize anything. We need to have a signed contract with them if we're going to use their name on the cover, in the press release, etc. Among other things, they want to read the book in print before offering us an agreement.

I know that now that I've said that, a lot of people are going to be busting at the seams to offer advice and alternative suggestions, but just trust that I'm working on this from all angles right now. I talked to the Red Cross twice today, and e-mailed four other top-rated charities to ask about their procedures as back-up in case this process keeps dragging on.

Lulu will do their best to help us speed up the procedure of getting listed in the databases for bookstores and online stores as soon as we're ready.

Thank you so much!

Yeah-- I expressed the same thing to the Red Cross person I spoke to yesterday-- how are we supposed to send her the book in print? It doesn't make logical sense. If it's printed, it needs to be final (that is, with the RC on the cover... or not). I was in a bit of a stupor when she was explaining all this to me yesterday and hadn't thought of how to get around it, but right afterwards, I realized, "Wait. I could send her the PDF or Word file, or I could print it on my computer and mail it to her." So I asked her that by e-mail. She sent a read receipt but hasn't answered yet.

I half-understood why this is all necessary. Basically, they need to check to make sure there's no bad language, no very controversial stuff, and that the quality doesn't stink. Then they'd want to negotiate a contract with us that tells exactly what wording we're allowed to use, such as giving an exact dollar figure on the cover that shows how much is donated per book-- which is again impossible because it differs based on where the book is bought.

I contacted Habitat for Humanity, AmeriCares, Salvation Army, and Operation USA, all listed as 4-star charities with Charity Navigator, and all specifically working on hurricane relief. None have responded yet.

I already know that Feed the Children would give us zero red tape and wants our donations badly-- I'm writing a book with a friend of the founder, and she told me how much they're doing for disaster relief and how much more they want to do, but people don't think of them to donate for this kind of work-- but it's a Christian charity and I know that might not fly well with all our contributors. (Salvation Army is also a Christian charity, but it's well-established that they're on the front-lines of disaster relief, so I'm not sure if that overrides the religious part in people's minds.) So that remains a possibility, but I suspect that a few contributors would want to pull their pieces from the anthology if we switch charities. That's not disastrous, just time-consuming to have to write back and forth with all 118 writers to get permission, then re-organize the book based on what gets pulled.

I'm trying hard to walk the line between patience and decisiveness... I'm getting a fast education in the world of nonprofits and why they need all this red tape (the woman on the phone with me yesterday did explain that they're constantly monitored by "big brother"-type groups who scrutinize every project like this that they approve). They let me know up-front that it's not that they distrust me in the least about actually sending them the money... they know we're totally on the up-and-up... but they need to make sure that no one can ever complain about any of the language in the book or marketing materials.

I'll let you know as I make progress. I'll check into Unicef, too. (I don't think they were listed as a charity working on hurricane relief, though.)

Sorry about the delay. I just had no idea that I needed permission in the first place. I figured that as long as we're telling the truth, how could it be a problem?

One way or another, though, we'll get there. And wait till you see... the book just keeps getting better and better.