God Will Supply!!

Anyone that knows me knows that I do like hanging out at Dunkin Donuts for coffee.   Yesterday as I was drinking my coffee I just couldn't help but hand out a couple of copies of the book.   One went to a dad with his son spending time together and one to an old friend who just happened to stop in.    In my head I thought I'd better be careful about giving them away, it could get out of hand.   On the way home stopped by another friend and they ended up wanting a copy of the book for their family and they insisted I take $50 for it!!    So now instead of being down $20 I was up $20!!    Only God!!.  

Big Smile

Finally got a chance to catch up with Leah and give her a copy of the book.   Shared with here how much everyone is loving the book, especially her illustrations!!    Big smile:-))

Ordered 120 copies from office depot @ $4.00 per book.   Big step.  Now I have a car full of "Carty".   Several businesses are thinking about letting me put the book in their stores, which would be huge.  

With all the books I have to ship out to friends and family we are closing in on 80 books for clean water.   Most of these I printed here at home.   Cost on those was around $4 with most of that involving the comb binder.   Now that I bought my own comb binder we can lower that to $2.50.  

Making More Copies

Off to make/get some more copies.  Ran of 10 last night and 10 tonight on the mighty Kodak and have Office Depot making 20 glossy as well.   Hopefully Muff be able to bind a few for me.  I'll be back at the Methodist church this Easter weekend and then I'm on the road.   Several other churches have expressed some interest in having me come and present Carty and Clean Water to their congregations.

WOW

Totally awesome morning!!   Truly amazed at how God takes the things we do, often not OUR FIRST CHOICE, and weaves them together with what others do and shazzammmm.....things that are beautiful, creative, and helpful are brought about.   The Pastor of Crown Point Methodist let me share for a few minutes about Clean Water and the Children's book "Rescue Carty" and I ended up SOLD OUT!!   The generosity of the people there was truly wonderful.  Who would have thought!!     I tell a story in the parking lot of Pottery Barn + Lynn's constant encouragement + Leah's illustrations + Andrea's and Michelle's editing and people in impoverished areas end up getting some help with their clean water needs!!!    Thanks be to God for bringing this all about.  As of today we have given out 60 copies bringing our total for World Vision to @ $400.   Now to get some more copies printed - Look out Kodak printer!

Almost There

The people at Office Depot have been very helpful and yesterday they made me @ 20 copies for nothing!!   They showed me a book they could make and it turned out pretty nice.  Will have to see what the price is.   Thanks to friends and family we have received donations for 30 books:-))   With $7.00 from each book we now have raised $210.00 for clean water!!

Wow! That was odd!

Off to coffee this morning with Lynn and at Dunkin Donuts found three people (one wanted 2 copies) interested in having a copy of Carty!     One of our long time "Dunkin friends" wanted me to sign it!    That was odd.   Me, sign a book!!   You've got to be kidding.   But there I was wondering what to write.   Fortunately Lynn suggested, "to our great Dunkin Donut friend".   I was off the hook!!   Pphew:-))   So with $7.00 from each book going for clean water we have 4 X $7.00 = $ 28.00.    Praise God for a good start!  

Kodak Printer Round 2

Well we've printed about 30 copies on my printer and all seems to be going  well.  Finally ran out of color ink but at $15.00 a cartridge that isn't bad.    Talked with World Vision about the use of their name.   Very interesting conversation but turns out that I can say that I'm a strong supporter of World Vision and that any profits are going to be used to help bring clean water to impoverished areas of the world.   Finally got a quote from a local printer and it comes down to about $5.20 per book.   Not bad.  Much better than Lulu but still quite a bit more than doing it myself.  Hmmmmmm.......   What to do???     If I go with the $5.20 price I need to order 500 and hope I sell them all.   I'd be done with the printing part but would have to step up the promotional aspect.  If I print them myself 1 hour of every night is given over to printing and cutting but then more money goes to clean water and I only have to print what I think I'll need.  Hmmmmmmmmm....   Must Pray!!  

Me and My Printer

I've been looking at different printing options and finding a low cost printer is turning out to be something of a challenge.   Still waiting on Miss Print for a quote but as of right now it looks like $8.00 a book is my best price.  So thought I'd print a copy out on my little Kodak printer here at the house and the first one took about 20 min since I had to work out the pages.  Turns out two sided printing can make your head spin if you are not paying attention.  But after the first one the next two were done in about 10 min.  Not bad.  Checked my ink cartridge to see if I hand any ink left and to my amazement I used only about 15% of the ink!!  So lets see one $25 color cartridge makes about 18 copies of my book.   Which comes down to about $1.50 per book.  Add in the card stock paper at $12 per 500 sheets, some spiral binders, laminating of the first and last page and maybe we can get the price down to less than $5.00 per book.   Course we probably will burn out our little printer!!   But at $70 I could throw one or two of them into the project and still come out cheaper.   Hmmmmm....will have to see where this leads.   

Finding a Publisher

Well we are now in the process of finding someone to publish Resuce Carty.  We are checking out a local printer to see what it would cost to put together 100 spiral bound copies.   He thinks he could have them in 3 or 4 days which would make them available before Easter.   We have also touched base with Lulu but it seems that it would run around $9.00 per book which really puts it out of range for raising money.   Contacted another internet publisher called DC Publishing to get a quote from them.   Hopefully it will be closer to the $6 goal, leaving us $4.00 per book for the clean water project.   Thanks for your prayers.