"It started to feel more real as I read these, and I felt so much better,
somehow more healthy, reading these first-hand accounts,
than I felt watching the news on TV."

                                 -steev

Everything2 Remembers September 11, 2001

The book is now available for $10.


I propose a project for us. I would like to see the daylogs of September 11, 2001 compiled into a book and have it published, with all royalties being paid to the E2 donation box. I suspect that there are noders with legal skills, publishing experience, publicizing skills, print-buying experience, and other stuff that will be required but of which I'm not currently aware. This is an opportunity to donate using your mind and your skills. Let's work together and see if we can create a workable model for future E2 fundraisers.

Tasks:
  1. Determine what entity will publish the book. If coming up with this idea necessitates it, I hereby grant permission to the Everything Development Company to take this role. If it seems more appropriate to you to set up some other entity, send an email to my account at yahoo - my username is the same there. For the time being, I will assume that EDC will find out about this idea and either accept this role or else inform me that we should get some other entity to do it. I believe there may be some legal ramifications of publishing a book.
  2. Find a mechanism for us to use in coming to a consensus on various choices such as the title of the book and the image on the cover.
  3. Obtain releases from the noders that contributed to the three nodes (I, II, III) for that daylog.
  4. Choose the cover art.
  5. Choose the title.
  6. Choose the format of the writeups.
  7. Find a company that will print the book for us.
  8. Collect orders for the book to get an idea how many copies to print.
  9. Advertise the book.
If we do all those things, I think people interested in making money will take care of the rest. There will be lots of problems to solve, and I'm sure that each one already has a solution locked inside the head of a noder who doesn't know about it yet.

I will be attempting to manage this project, but I've never really managed a project before, so anyone who can help, check this node from time to time. Since I have a full time job and three small children, I will likely be pretty slow, but I will do my best to move us along. I will continually be maintaining this list of things I expect to see and respond to in the near future:
  • Naysayers who have had experiences with community projects gone awry will give me reasons why this idea will never fly. Hopefully, these reasons will be detailed enough to provide some insight into how to avoid letting this project die.
  • One or more lawyers will send me email about legal costs and how they can help defray them.
  • The reputation of this writeup will increase to justify further effort on my part.
  • Someone from EDC will email me on how they feel about this idea and about taking the role of publisher.
  • Noders with print-buying experience will msg or email me.
  • Noders with a 9/11 daylog will msg me about how willing they are to give permission to use their work.
My idea for finding cover art, a title, a good format for the writeups, and anything else we should agree on about the book is this: I'll create a nodeshell for each item, and a noder with a proposal can add a writeup. The 5 writeups in each full node that have the highest reputation on some specific date will be candidates. We'll then use Condorcet Versus Approval Voting to choose the winning candidate for each choice. I'll create a ballot template that voting noders will be able to fill in and add to their homenode. I think I'll be able to write a program that will visit those nodes and calculate the result. Anyone else willing to write such a program could provide independent verification. I'll add a list of noders interested in voting to this writeup, so just /msg me or send an email if you don't see yourself on the list.

Whatever mechanism is used to collect orders for the book to establish the size of the initial printing run should require those orders to be backed up by a deposit, say $5/book.

I imagine that this will be a hardcover book.

Since there will likely be monetary costs to this project, but costs that will easily be recovered, I propose that the entity that publishes the book set up a "donation box," with a promise (or something more binding if it would help) to pay donators back with some interest when the required sum has been collected as after-taxes profit (lawyers? accountants?).

Update
Jet-Poop says:
I think E2 books have been considered before, in the site's long-distant past. I can't remember who was trying to put it together, but the main stumbling blocks were:
  • getting permission to republish their writeups
  • finding book publishers who were even a little interested in website stuff
  • finding publishers who were interested in material that had already been published.
Catchpole also mentioned the permissions as a problem, and Posmella noted that some writeups occurred before the attack. No one mentioned Hermetic, at least not with words. His story is already here, and it's a hard one to learn, but it is, to me, the opposite of worthless and the opposite of something to be hidden. Talk amongst yourselves, downvote if you must, but please help the other half of us understand.

Ouroboros asked what I was thinking for the size and number of pages in the book, one writeup per page or what...
I was thinking of an 8 x 10 hardcover book with each writeup starting on its own page. If many very good images are proposed for the cover art, some of them could be used inside. I imagined a price around $40 or $50, but I have never studied the book market, so if someone who has feels that a book like this would do much better in a different price range, please speak up.

Update on Aug. 8, 2003
Noung suggested that September 11, 2002 daylogs be included. This is an interesting idea, especially since there are number of 9/11/01 dayloggers who have been away from E2 for so long that it will likely be impossible to get in touch with them. If there just don't seem to be enough contributions to fill out a memorial book, this might be a good solution. I haven't read them yet, but Noung mentioned that some are a bit shameful.

Walter suggested a paperback for around $10. This made me realize that I should probably go to a bookstore and look around for models of this "book as memorial" idea. If anyone has purchased such a book (about 9/11 or anything other great suffering), or went to a bookstore and was tempted to buy one, please let me know what style and price range it had.

Enwhysea suggested that E2 be scanned for other writeups relevant to 9/11, and perhaps a really moving one by hermetic.
Daylogger Matrix
                                Agreed to           
Noder               Contacted   Release   Acting as 
6Venus6             N                               
AaaPha              Yes         Yes*                 
Alias_Mother_Jonez  Yes         Yes                 
apegirl25           N                               
Aratir              N                               
Ariston             N                               
aznin               N                               
BtS                 N                               
captainno           N                               
Cassidy             N                               
ccunning            N                               
Davidian            Yes         with real name  
Devon_Hart          Yes         Yes                
drenny              N                               
DrSeudo             Yes         Yes                 
drummergrrl         N                               
editor_b            Yes         Yes
enwhysea            Yes         Yes          
evilrooster         N                               
Falsch_Freiheit     N                               
generosity          Yes         Yes                               
goneaway            N                               
graceness           Yes         Undecided            
guinea pig          N                               
JediBix783          Yes         Yes                 
jerm                N                               
Jet-Poop            Yes         Yes                 
jm229               N                               
johnnyx             Yes         Yes                 
k_hokanson          Yes         Yes                 
kaytay              Yes         Yes                 
Kit_Lo              N                               
Lady_Midnight       Yes         Yes       Editor*          
LordNathan          N                               
mblase              Yes         Yes                 
melknia             Yes         Yes                 
Miles_Dirac         N                               
mkb                 Yes         Yes                 
NightShadow         Yes         Yes*
Nordicfrost         N                               
NothingLasts4ever   Yes         Yes*          
Oolong              N                               
PopeFelix           Yes         Yes                 
Prophet4            Yes         Yes                 
Pseudo_Intellectual Yes                             
rischi              Yes         Yes                               
Sasuke              N                               
SEF                 Yes         Yes                 
sgs                 N                               
Shanoyu             N                               
steev               Yes         Yes                 
Stromgald39         N                               
swankivy            Yes         Yes       Editor    
thax                N                               
The_Custodian       Yes         Yes                
The_Hegemon         N                               
The_Prophet         Yes         Yes                
Thuper Ranger       Yes         Yes               
Tiefling            Yes         Yes                 
uberman             N                               
Void_Ptr            N                               
Walter              Yes         Yes                 
WeamsCarnival       N                               
wertperch           Yes         Yes                    
willpo              Yes         Yes                               
XCthulhu            N                               
xmatt               Yes         Yes                 
Yablo               N                               
yam                 N                               
yerricde            N                               
Zzzzzzippp          N                               

*On condition of receiving a free copy.


Last update: November 14, 2005

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