We’ve had only a few questions in the brief life of the Initiative, so we don’t know what the most frequent ones will be. Here are a few that seems worth answering on an FAQ page, though that may just be another way of saying that we didn’t make these points clear enough on another page in the website! In general, send all questions, comments, observations, and suggestions to info@champlaincollegepublishing.com, and we’ll struggle to answer them.
Q: Will you only be working with Champlain faculty and students?
A: Not at all. Our first four book clients were Champlain faculty and students, but that’s because we’re starting small and local while we get our act together–sorry, while we establish our infrastructure and modus operandi.
In the near future we’ll be working with two major non-profit organizations who want help producing books, websites, and other publishing products, and we’re open to approaches from anyone with an ambitious, worthwhile project.
Q: Will you be putting sales figures on the website?
A: That’s a very interesting question. The short answer is “maybe.” The longer answer is that your question raises two bigger questions: How will we define success? How will we define failure?
Success: yes, we’ll do our best to help our clients sell billions of books, but our educational mission isn’t based on sales. Each book or publication product we work on will provide a professional writing/editing/designing/marketing/publishing experience for as many as 50 students. That’s an experience they couldn’t get any other way. Two days ago a student artist/designer who’ll be interning with CCPI said to me, “I can’t wait for this semester to start.” If all we achieve is to get a whole bunch of students excited about learning, that’ll be huge.
Failure: oddly, one thing that appeals to me is the possibility of failure. The first coursebook we worked on had a few typos in it. In a sense, that’s a sign of failure, but the sad fact is, every book published has a couple of typos in it. The difference with CCPI is that we can say to the class using that book, “This book has three typos. Extra credit to anyone who finds all three.” Those students read that book in an entirely different and more focused way than they’ve read any textbook in their lives! And then, because we’re using Print On demand technology, we can go back in and fix the file so the very next book published is typo-free.
The whole thing has no end of layers and reiterations of educational opportunities. It’s amazing. And yes, I’d also like to sell lots of copies.
Q: Which printer are you using?
A: We’re still exploring this field. So far, we’ve used Blurb.com, Lulu.com, and Northshire Books in Manchester, Vermont so we can compare prices and services. If and when we decide to settle on one as our go-to press, we’ll update this answer.