[bksvol-discuss] Re: Jim gets off his duff and speaks
- From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:11:57 -0400
Hey Jim, on the aspect of beefing up Education revenue, are there particular
classes of kiddy books that are most demanded. I love children's
literature, and love a great excuse to explore the stuff again.
Smile.
Shelley L. Rhodes and Judson, guiding golden
juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Advisory Council
www.guidedogs.com
The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to
stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.
-- Vance Havner
----- Original Message -----
From: <Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 9:25 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Jim gets off his duff and speaks
Jim Fruchterman of Bookshare.org here. I've been reading the discussion
about the stripper with some interest. There are a lot of issues, and
I'd like to address them in order. First, the overview.
Bookshare.org wants to provide quality books that address the needs of
all of our users, at a low cost. We want to get more books, highly
accurate books and better marked up books. And, we have to do it on a
shoestring, as someone pointed out. I spend most of my time raising
money, in large part to plug the deficit that Bookshare.org runs. Our
key priority is to keep the system running and grow the number of users,
so that we can get Bookshare.org to break even. After that, as we make
more money, we plow it back into Bookshare.org for more services, more
books and more engineering improvements.
Right now, we're not flush, but we have enough funding to operate and
for a modest amount of engineering to meet user needs and grant
objectives. We're going to target raising money for collection
development and quality improvements around technology. Collection
development money will fund a replacement for Marissa, as well as more
books. Of course, if we had twice as many subscribers, that would do
wonders funding these things. That's why we hired Janice Carter and
Susie Mackinnon: Janice can run a business better than I can, and Susie
is working hard to bring the education revenue in (which is our best bet
for increased revenue). I think we are in a great spot for growth right
now.
Janice often mentions how amazed she is with how far Bookshare.org has
come on so little funding. I think it's a combination of a great
user/volunteer community with a small but scrappy team, together
dedicated to creating the digital library of the future.
So, we want to do more and do better. And, constructive criticism is a
good thing. So, in my next post, let me try to sum up what I think the
page number thing is all about, to inform both our engineering and fund
raising goals.
Jim Fruchterman, Bookshare.org founder
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