What does it take to publish a book?

by Jody Sokolower

RSEditors_Jan2012_146We’re in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to publish Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality. Our goal is $20,000 and we still have about $6,000 to go.

Early in the campaign, someone wrote to ask us why we need so much money just to publish a book. We thought you might be interested in where that $20,000 will go.

The overwhelming majority of the work on Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality is volunteer. I am paid staff at Rethinking Schools, but the other four amazing members of our editorial committee—Kim Cosier, Rachel Harper, Jeff Sapp, and Melissa Bollow Tempel—are volunteering their time, wisdom, and energy. None of the more than 50 teachers, parents, students, and teacher educators with articles in the book are being paid. They have written, revised, and revised again out of a commitment to social justice education and to bringing these issues into classrooms everywhere.

So where is all that money going? We have a wonderful art director, Sabiha Basrai, at Design Action in Oakland. She is committed to creating the most beautiful book possible for the least amount of money, but she still needs to be paid. We also have to pay for aspects of production that you may not have thought about—I’ve been an editor for a long time, but I didn’t realize we were going to need money for indexing until a few months ago! Here’s our production budget, which doesn’t even include expenses involved with marketing the book, paying for inventory, etc.

$8,000:  Production editor

$6,800:  Design and layout

$3,500:  Artwork and photos

$1,500:  Indexing

$1,000:  Proofreading

$7,000: Initial print run (3,000 copies of the book)

$500:  Misc

Total:  $28,300

Of course, the real value of Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality can’t be put into dollars and cents. It’s the thought-provoking and inspiring work of everyone who has contributed an article, editorial time, or artwork to this extraordinary book.

As we near the last days of the campaign, we appreciate anything you can do to help us spread the word and make our goal.

Thanks for your support.