@msh210 yeah but at one point he says "complaint of injustice" so I went with that.

@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?

@Emrakul hi

@Emrakul Welcome to Bam, as we affectionately call it.

@msh210 just the one from AAAA about the answer from the linked post, and my response to him.

@yEz Undeleted. cc @msh210

^^^ 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.

Can I evangelise for metric paper sizes?

Ideally we'd format our books so they could be printed on each person's local paper sizes. I don't know how well that works in practice.

@TRiG If you can convince everyone to vote for Lincoln Chafee, maybe you'll get it on metric by default.

I just saw an article that said the feminine version of yeyasher kochacha should be tashiri kocheich

that seems wrong to me

shouldn't it be yeyasher kocheich?

or is my hebrew grammar that rusty?

@Daniel I guess it depends if the koach of a female is female.

@yEz Oh, sorry about that.

@msh210 seemed rather rectifiable.

@yEz Then it would be kochateich, probably 8^P

@TRiG betweenborders.com/wordsmithing/a4-vs-us-letter looks like it has specific tips we can use to internationali---ze---se

@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.

@IsaacMoses I'll remind you before Purim to try and fix that up. :)

And if we need funds for printing stuff, try a crowdfunding service.

@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).

@MonicaCellio Never used any on either side.

But i hear that it works.

For Lulu lulu.com/create/books lets you play with some specifications. I was looking at a saddle stitched paperback.

@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).

What about spiral binding?

@IsaacMoses what binding were you looking at?

@IsaacMoses thanks. Was that with any kind of binding?

@MonicaCellio I don't know how much money you can save over all color if the covers are color. it complicates teh job

They do, the price breaks at Lulu are 120 copies/ 300 copies

@BSteinhurst None. Stapling ads $0.02 each. "Booklet" binding (whatever that means) adds $0.60. Other bindings (coverbind, spiral, comb) add $2-$3.

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?

@MonicaCellio Probably something like 50, with 50 more in reserve in case the first 50 all get taken. (Just tossing numbers out there.)

@IsaacMoses "booklet" might mean saddle-stapled.

@MonicaCellio Around 10. I'm not the only English speaker in town. :)

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 Staples booklets are saddle-stappled. Just checked their website and it is the same.

@MonicaCellio I found the Staples option for "special pages". Adding a colour cover adds $0.35 per book to my cost for 150.

@IsaacMoses so (if I didn't miss anything): $3.37 per copy for 150 copies of a 50-page book, saddle-stapled, with color cover, from Staples.

@MonicaCellio That's over $500!

That's what crowdfunding's for, i guess. :)

@Scimonster yes. I wasn't assuming that one person would either pay for all that or consume 150 copies.

@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 500 copies is closer to what I was thinking of for a total print run (this is in the divide-into-packages-and-mail universe).

@MonicaCellio FWIW, going up to 1000 only drops another $0.10 per.

@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."

(sorry to anyone who actually speaks Yiddish)

:-)

@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.

@MonicaCellio Hiya - seems like I stumbled across some high level negotiations!

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!)

@Davïd hello! Long time no see! Context: meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/a/3577/472

@MonicaCellio I think I guessed - next in a long line of distinguished MY publications!

@MonicaCellio I'll bet that if SE is willing to contribute at all, community effort in publication and distribution would be sufficient match.

@Davïd yes indeed.

@Davïd long-ish and lengthening :)

@IsaacMoses that could be. And before we spend anybody's money I do want to make sure we've actually got that community distribution.

@IsaacMoses That's so neat - I've peeked at some of the past ones.

I was just going to test out a "pre-question", but perhaps this isn't a good moment.

OTOH, this is an "asynchronous enviroment" (I believe it's sometimes called?) and I could always pick up a ping if I just note my interest....

@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 don't think so, and I think it'd likely come up on this search if there was.

@IsaacMoses agreed -- too soon to decide anything, but it doesn't hurt to start the conversation.

@IsaacMoses Ah, good to know. I tried a selection of rashi searches, and wasn't sure if I was just using the wrong search terms.

@Davïd thanks for jumping in with your question.

@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

@IsaacMoses I'll do a little more digging, and if I continue to draw a blank I'll ask on main. Does that sound like a plan?

@Davïd sounds great

@MonicaCellio It's great to see a room getting where something useful is happening! ;)

@Davïd sounds like a good plan to me.

@Davïd :-) Chat rooms on the network vary widely in that regard.

@MonicaCellio Will do, then. It's one of those questions that, once it occurs to you ... you just want to know!

(And any given chat room varies from day to day or week to week.)

@MonicaCellio True, I've seen that in my own neck of the woods, too.

I'll scoot just now, then -- hope the planning goes well!

@Davïd Thanks!

@IsaacMoses You're one of the few to include the h.

@Scimonster unintentional, I'm sure. I probably just wanted to stop typing and hit enter

@Scimonster Why the local maximum in the late 80s?

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.

doofus = dfus = printer ;)

@Scimonster Maybe we'd be able to have a Ki Mitzion Tetze Torah hub, too

@IsaacMoses Huh?

@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.

@IsaacMoses Sounds like it.

@Davïd thanks for stopping by, and please do come back any time! I imagine it's getting late for you -- g'night!