@msh210 I don't suppose you have very much discretion in which comments to move to chat, but when this was done, I think there were some comments that could have been left on the page that were relevant.
@yEz They all get moved to chat and deleted from the post, but I can undelete any that are appropriate. I undeleted one. I didn't think the rest needed to be there. Is there any in particular you think does?
I wonder if there's a cost-effective and effective way to print out lots of them and get them in the hands of people willing to put them out at their synagogues, or perhaps a way to get such an effort underwritten by SE. — Isaac Moses19 hours ago
^^^ Great idea. @IsaacMoses and anybody else who's listening -- if we had to come up with a wild estimate of funding for such a project, what would you say? The variables are size of publication and number of copies; for the latter, we'd need some idea of how many Yodeyans would be able & willing to distribute in their local communities.
@MonicaCellio The Pesach book was our largest so far, and it was 46 pages long. So, for conservative estimates' sake, I think we can assume a 50-page document, presumably printed double-sided on 25 sheets, if that makes a difference.
@Scimonster The letter-sized ones probably generally are fine. I messed with the format to make the booklet-sized ones for Purim, and didn't take internationalisation into account when I did that.
@MonicaCellio Unless we have an extravagantly generous backer, it's probably best to assume B&W rather than colour.
@MonicaCellio I checked Lulu.com and Smartpress.com for printing the Hagada. The cost seems to be on the order of a $3-4 per copy when printing 150 copies. I also checked FedEx/Kinkos printing and they are most along the line of $6 per copy with no obvious volume discount.
@BSteinhurst thanks. I was just looking at Lulu but there didn't seem to be a way to get a price just from their web site (looks like they want to send email and I'd rather not just yet).
@IsaacMoses yes, I think we'd have to settle for color cover but B&W inside.
@IsaacMoses 50 pages seems like a reasonable estimate for a HHD book.
@Scimonster oh that's an interesting idea. I've never actually used one of those on the requesting end, only the buying end (Kickstarter).
@BSteinhurst For 50 pages, double-sided, all B&W, Staples says $4.55 each for 1, $3.12 each for 100, $2.42 each for 150. Not sure where the cutoffs are.
@BSteinhurst do Lulu/Smartpress/et al do volume discounts? Given that we'd want distributed shipments, i.e. we want multiple users to end up with stacks of copies, we have to decide on larger production run + breaking it up and shipping versus smaller production runs (one per user).
How many users do we think we have who would be in a position to distribute a stack of copies locally? How big do we think optimal stacks would be? Even if your congregation is large, you probably don't want to put a stack of 500 there... do you want 50? 100? 10?
For what it is worth USPS media mail rate for a two pound package is $3.22 if a reasonable volume discount is available it would cover the price to have someone reship bundles to individuals to distribute locally.
@MonicaCellio My experience with MY projects is that it is difficult to get large numbers of Yodeyans to go out and do something. I would be surprised if the number we could get to distribute copies is much larger than the number who volunteer to help with various stages of the publication itself, so probably no more than 10.
@MonicaCellio Well, putting those options in comes to $3.37 each. For 500 copies, it's $2.48 each.
So, supposing we can move 500 copies, if we toss in some shipping costs to and from a hub and some uncertainty, we can estimate a project cost of around $1500.
@IsaacMoses yeah, economies of scale are weird sometimes. :-) I was playing with pricing at Office Depot and noticed that 500 vs 1000 wasn't that major. If we're doing to go this route it's worth adding $100 and doubling the print run.
If we do that, we should assume we'll have leftovers for next year and the year after. Our content is timeless so that's fine; it's just a matter of storage.
@Scimonster "Chai for Hagbahah and Gelila. Chai for Hagb- Tzvei mult chai for Hagbahah and Gelila. Tz- A hundred for Hagbahah and Gelila ... A hundred for Hagbahah and Gelila di erste mul. A hundred for Hagbahah and Gelila di tzveite mul. A hundred for Hagbahah and Gelila - sold to the gentleman with the plaid kippa."
@MonicaCellio The total for 500 and 1000 was only $100 different? If so, OD and Staples have very different pricing structures. If we do this for real, we should take a closer look at a few options.
@IsaacMoses oh, no I see I misread your earlier comment. Their difference was smaller than I expected but not as low as $100; I thought you were saying that about Staples. Never mind then.
Yes, we should definitely shop around if we're really doing this. I just wanted to get some input on a SWAG -- get some numbers to have a funding discussion around.
So, assume we were going to print 500 copies (to be distributed from a central hub) for about $1500. Do we have people within our community who might be willing to contribute to funding that? Do we think we could raise half the funds internally and ask SE for a match? (Note: I don't know if SE would contribute anything at all! I'm just thinking out loud here!)
@MonicaCellio If we settle on the HH book idea (probably worth giving a few more days for voting to see if we can get the sense of a community larger than 6-9), we can then do a Meta post asking for nonbinding intents to help distribute. We've made enough publications for people to be able to visualize what we're talking about before it exists.
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@Davïd Please go ahead. This chat format is good for asynch
@IsaacMoses Thanks - will do - here it is: I was digging around trying to find out what I could about the copy of the Tanach that Rashi used ... and drew a blank. Is there a Q&A about that on MY?
@Davïd I think there may be a question here or there that ask about the version of the text Rashi had for a specific word here or there, but probably nothing comprehensive
BTW, it's probably impractical for you to include me in your counting of distributors, unless you have someone who can bring books from the "central hub". And the local doofus has pretty good prices.
@Scimonster use of the word "async," according to your graph, peaked first in ~1987, then dropped in the early 90s, then peaked again in ~2001. PC and web booms, repsectively, I guess.