poor man's poll: would you support a kickstarter for a SKIP book?

Click the thumbs up for this post if you want to get a dozen books for all sorts of people.

Click the thumbs up for this post if you would support such a kickstarter for a buck (or two) to be supporting, but not to get the book.

Click the thumbs up for this post if you would be NOT supporting - nothing about such a kickstarter is your thing.

Click the thumbs up for this post if you might support at a huge level .... to get your name in the book or something like that.

Click the thumbs up for this post if you would support the kickstarter ONLY if there is a fat publicity package that will be part of the kickstarter.  Thus infecting millions of brains with this idea.

Click the thumbs up for this post if you like pie.   Maybe huckleberry pie.  Maybe banana cream pie.  Maybe pizza pie.  

Maybe i need more of an explanation of what this entails.
I imagine having a pep book which shows all of the badges and what you need to do to prove each. Is this essentially what this book would be? a reference for people who do not want to look it up online?

I am trying to understand your goal behind making this into a SKIP book. So i can better answer your thumbs up poor mans poll.

thanks paul

The current thought is that there will be 22 chapters, each listing off the badges, plus 8 more chapters covering stuff like Otis, LIC, FAQ, general structure, getting certified, PEX, etc.

And there might be some in there about PEA.  

Would it have instructions on how to do the badge bits? I imagine a book with instructions on how to make all that beautiful roundwood furniture, build a wofati etc would be very helpful, especially if it had drawings included.

Kate Downham wrote:Would it have instructions on how to do the badge bits? I imagine a book with instructions on how to make all that beautiful roundwood furniture, build a wofati etc would be very helpful, especially if it had drawings included.

I've been wondering if it might be an opportunity for a companion booklet produced by members of the community who already have the badges.

I'm toying with the idea of making a little ebook that would have more detailed instructions on how to do the tasks for the straw textile badge.  So instructions on how to make twine.  a pattern for the knitted/crochet part and some basic instructions on how to knit/crochet.  This wouldn't be the only way to get the badge, but an easy starter guide for people who want more guidance.  I could see teaming up with someone to make this ebook.

Then, if Paul likes, the ebook could be tossed in as a stretch goal for Paul's kickstarter and then available for sale on permies after.  

I think there would be a tiny bit of info on doing the BBs.  But the full "how to" would fill 20 books.

Kate Downham wrote:Would it have instructions on how to do the badge bits? I imagine a book with instructions on how to make all that beautiful roundwood furniture, build a wofati etc would be very helpful, especially if it had drawings included.

What if, instead of including lots of instructions, diagrams, etc. IN the book, there were LINKS to appropriate supportive threads in Permies? Maybe even some of those were premium links?
Thus, many of us could contribute - wiki style??!! - to building a fantastic data repository of all things Permies skilled, but not have a monster book.

Added benefit of more eyeballs on the forums (and / or wiki)....

I think it would be critical to either include full instructions or links to them and examples.  A person would read this book with the idea that there are people out there wanting to pass along land to someone who knows how to manage it as proven by completing there badges. But if a person isn’t already familiar with what to do they could be left lacking the knowledge.

I’d also focus attention on the idea that there are people out there looking for a steward to inherit land to prevent it from becoming more suburbs- where does a person find these people and is there evidence that more than a few anecdotal people are there? That kind of info, so the reader then has the mindset of proving to those land owners that this stranger is worthy of being given the land instead of their children. Also what legal challenges you may face as the children take you to court expecting their parents were conned into changing their will and all that.

I'd be keen to see instructions/diagrams for some things in book/ebook format rather than links. I can imagine full instructions would fill many books. I like R's idea of there being additional ebooks as stretch goals.

I think Conrad Farmer's wiki suggestion would allow fluid expansion of ideas and easy editing to stay current.  Especially important during this time when new and old are dynamically combining to pave way for the future.  Hard copy books can become outdated so fast.   Infect search engines.  With feedback and druthers addressed over time, build a book from the wiki into a timeless version (as much as might be), then print that into hard copy.  Purchase of that hard copy could give access to the most current version on the wiki for future reference.

I would be very careful doing your market research on this one, from what I have seen on the PEP program it is only applicable to people in a very narrow geographical area which really limits the audience for a static book.

Also many other countries (including mine) do not allow such land transfers (legally possible but you will be hit with tax at approximately 48% of market value). So selling it as a means to get land will totally stop sales in those places.

I like the idea. If you have the badges defined well, parents could use this to help there kids get skills. I have a cousin leading to wield and I think a SKIP book would help him out. To me having a book would help me alot.

from all the comments, the overall theme seems to be that this book would be useful and desired, especially if there was clear information about how to attain all the badges with links to further reading

along with information about how to apply this information towards actually applying it in the real world

Jennifer slapped me in the face yesterday with some cold, hard, cruel math ....  

For a kickstarter, all of the funds must be spent by december 31.  So all of the books must be shipped by december 31.  All of them.  

Skipping a huge amount of mathy details ....    The kickstarter MUST start no later than September 1.  

Therefore, PEP and PEA must be 100% defined by August 1.  That gives us June and July to finish defining PEP and PEA.  

I know that I am meeting twice a week to work on PEP with Mike, Ashley and Ash.  And Jen is helping me get the rewards from the last kickstarter done (the hugelkultur book and the fallacy book).

I think that if six people popped in right now and helped us for these two months at 20 hours per week, I think we could get the book out this year.   Otherwise it has to wait until January.  

Yes, this would be six volunteers.   A lot of work.   Zero pay.   And just a warm feeling that you contributed to something.   And we can praise you in the acknowledgments!  And maybe send you some books and other goodies?  

If you wanna give up two months of your life in this way, please reply to this thread.

i possibly would help — what kind of work would it entail exactly?

feel free to email or text/call as well if that's preferred

spiritloveroot@gmail.com
917-595-9005

Bump (fishing for more votes)

Happy to help

Could book kickstarters include an option for ebooks? For those who live outside the US, paper books work out to cost more for shipping than for the book.

I like the idea of rather than making it a huge "how-to" encyclopedia, providing a small amount of information on what is needed, and linking to a "how-to" wiki for the practical details, supplemented with Raven's idea of additional instruction ebooks. A nice way to have more passive income flow through to group members with specific skillsets.  Ebooks allow for quick updates and lots of hyperlinks. Draft to Digital https://www.draft2digital.com/ is a useful distributor to easily get ebooks into libraries and for sale on a range of retail platforms.

Also, setting aside the SKiP issue which is problematic in countries with big taxes on gifts or inheritances over a certain value (much of Europe), this could be marketed as a mastery project, for personal satisfaction as much as for personal gain.

here is what we did for our last book https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/better-world-book

Jane Mulberry wrote:... this could be marketed as a mastery project, for personal satisfaction as much as for personal gain.

Personally this makes much more sense to me than promoting it as a way to inherit property from some imagined person.  I feel like for many the inheriting thing just sounds like a scam of some sort (even if you really do know people who are looking for worthy folks to pass their property onto).  The presented goal for doing this feels unreal if not unethical to the land owners traditional heirs and thus will put a lot of people off.  On the other hand learning all these skills to better yourself, increase your practical knowledge, and be better able to manage your own home ( or future homestead) feels like a more broadly acceptable goal for most, and more attainable.  The whole bit about earning "merit badges" is genius as a way to help motivate us to take part and progress.  It's a series of little rewards spreading warm fuzzies to propel us along.

In terms of the book I feel like for it to have interest or worth to a wider audience it needs something more than just lists of the BB's and requirements.  Some example instructional material would be good though I realize covering how to do everything is a huge unwieldy book.  Some inspirational sharing of what others have already done would be good too to help people envision what can happen and inspire them to do the same.

The greenhouse build is still going.  

We thought the movie would be done in early march, so we could start the SKIP kickstarter in early march.  Kinda start the new thing only after the old thing is all done.

We're a little light on boots in the bootcamp right now.   And we have about a dozen people working on SKIP.  

The greenhouse kickstarter was an experiment.  I'm not sure I wanna do this style of experimental kickstarter again.  Previous kickstarters had a LOT of the work already done before we did the kickstarter for it.   The better world book kickstarter had the book about 95% done before we started the kickstarter - and we got the book to people just a few months later.  But when you do a bunch of experiments, things can run longer than expected.  

So that's the question on the table at the moment:  should we consider starting a new kickstarter when we have not completed the last kickstarter?  

Click on the thumbs up for this post if you think it is fine to start a new kickstarter even though the last kickstarter has not yet been fulfilled.

Click on the thumbs up for this post if you think we should not start a new kickstarter until the previous kickstarter has been fulfilled.

Wouldn’t then be such a big huge book that it might never be made? Just wondering.

(Meant to be in response to post suggesting that the book include all instructions for meeting all goals.  I took this to mean “how to do” each skill rather than detail on the expected product of performing each skill. Clearly still learning how to use the Quote function )

My rough thoughts about rewards ....

$1 THANKS
  rmh draft ebook
  thorns draft? (4 gift codes)
  a big podcast gob
  microdoc about round wood timber framing - the berm shed (4 gift codes)
  cool public thanks

$5 CANDY
  full movie “Rocket Ovens”
  eBook "Building a Better World in Your Backyard" (gift code)
  9 PDC evening presentations (about 20 hours) (one gift code)
  full movie “Hugelkultur” from the World Domination Gardening 3-DVD set
  Access to the Secret Inner Circle Forum
  + everything in THANKS

$10 The eBook!
The lowest priced reward that includes the book! One for you and one for a friend!
  two ebooks
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$15 (+5 in shipping) physical book
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$25 (+5 in shipping) 2 physical books
  2 Physical Books, or 6 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$45 (+10 in shipping) 6 physical books
  6 Physical Books, or 18 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  “give away committee” option
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$65 (+10 in shipping) 6 physical books plus glory!
  6 Physical Books, or 18 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  “give away committee” option
  plus name in the book
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$100 CARE-PACKAGE (+15 in shipping)
  6 Physical Books, or 18 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  “give away committee” option
  plus name in book (top of the list, plus bigger font!)
  plus one copy is signed
  plus 4 physical copies of “Building a Better World in Your Backyard”
  plus 2 decks of cards
  permaculture bootcamp fee is covered
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$300 goofballs (limit of 20) (+15 in shipping)
  A special page just for a few “goofballs keen on world domination”
  + everything in CARE-PACKAGE
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$1000 your stuff is added to the book (+15 in shipping)
  300 characters as a sidebar anywhere in the book or 600 characters about your thoughts of SKIP stuff, as a whole, in an appendix.
  + everything in CARE-PACKAGE
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS


---

The “give away committee” thing is the idea that a person could back for six physical books and arrange for some of those to go to “the give away committee” - and find a good home for the books.  Possibly high school libraries, or maybe youth counsellors or ....  well I think it would be good to get a thread going to discuss all the possibilities.



Any other ideas?

paul wheaton wrote:My rough thoughts about rewards ....

$1 THANKS
  rmh draft ebook
  thorns draft? (4 gift codes)
  a big podcast gob
  microdoc about round wood timber framing - the berm shed (4 gift codes)
  cool public thanks

$5 CANDY
  full movie “Rocket Ovens”
  eBook "Building a Better World in Your Backyard" (gift code)
  9 PDC evening presentations (about 20 hours) (one gift code)
  full movie “Hugelkultur” from the World Domination Gardening 3-DVD set
  Access to the Secret Inner Circle Forum
  + everything in THANKS

$10 The eBook!
The lowest priced reward that includes the book! One for you and one for a friend!
  two ebooks
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$15 (+5 in shipping) physical book
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$25 (+5 in shipping) 2 physical books
  2 Physical Books, or 6 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$45 (+10 in shipping) 6 physical books
  6 Physical Books, or 18 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  “give away committee” option
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$65 (+10 in shipping) 6 physical books plus glory!
  6 Physical Books, or 18 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  “give away committee” option
  plus name in the book
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$100 CARE-PACKAGE (+15 in shipping)
  6 Physical Books, or 18 eBook Gift Codes, or a mix of each!
  “give away committee” option
  plus name in book (top of the list, plus bigger font!)
  plus one copy is signed
  plus 4 physical copies of “Building a Better World in Your Backyard”
  plus 2 decks of cards
  permaculture bootcamp fee is covered
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$300 goofballs (limit of 20) (+15 in shipping)
  A special page just for a few “goofballs keen on world domination”
  + everything in CARE-PACKAGE
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS

$1000 your stuff is added to the book (+15 in shipping)
  300 characters as a sidebar anywhere in the book or 600 characters about your thoughts of SKIP stuff, as a whole, in an appendix.
  + everything in CARE-PACKAGE
  + everything in CANDY
  + everything in THANKS


---

The “give away committee” thing is the idea that a person could back for six physical books and arrange for some of those to go to “the give away committee” - and find a good home for the books.  Possibly high school libraries, or maybe youth counsellors or ....  well I think it would be good to get a thread going to discuss all the possibilities.



Any other ideas?

Very generous!

As for me Paul, you’ve got my support for any Kickstarter you do. With these interesting times and growing my local community, I strongly encourage all the new freedom minded folks I meet to support you and permies. More and more are interested too! :)

I'm definitely interested in getting at least one book. If there was a guarantee for a more robust section for the PEA skills in the book, I would absolutely be interested in getting 12 or more. I have many friends who live in apartments and would love to have ways to do more permaculture based skills there.

The PEA section will be a fair chunk of the book.   D. Logan has come up with some very brilliant ideas in that space.  

While PEP will show all of the badges (sand, straw, wood and iron), PEA, in the book, will probably be showing just the sand badges.  BUT!  The sand badges for PEA are bigger than PEP.  And it is amazing what we have come up with for PEA.

Excellent, I'm excited to see what you all come up with and I will definitely be chipping in for several book purchases as soon as the Kickstarter goes up.

paul wheaton wrote:Click on the thumbs up for this post if you think it is fine to start a new kickstarter even though the last kickstarter has not yet been fulfilled.

As someone who backed that previous kickstarter, and getting to travel out there to see, first hand, what is really involved in such a project, I am okay with backing a new kickstarter while I haven't gotten "everything" I 'kicked' for with the greenhouse =)  

I would likely jump in at $100 on the new one.  I think we did $150 on the greenhouse.  Especially if that could get me and Eli invited out for a week or two again?  =D  

At one point, there was a type of "programmed" book. It was a way to teach yourself skills. I have seen them for learning programming languages and being an auto mechanic. The idea is that you provide the information in such a way that the person reading it as a structure to get the info. needed, with accompanying data. That might work? The PEP badges, etc. are by their nature modular, right?

What I'm thinking of was sort of the precursor to the Choose Your Own Adventure Books or a flowchart.

Intro
Overall data gather: Questionare. Fits with Pauls Permie's levels a bit. How much is someone willing to change? Do they have space to store tools, grow food, etc. Do they have the tools? Raw materials? etc.

The Questionare points folks to the appropriate chapters. The chapters provide a detailed "map" through possible ways to use whatever materials are being talked about

So, cloth --> rags, say.

Data Gather

[1] Do you have old clothes or sheets or blankets which could be used for other purposes? Y/N If Y go to [ 2 ] If N go to [ ]
[2] Do you have space to store the old sheets/fabric if you can't use it now? Y/N If Y go to [ storage ] If N go to [ one-time use]
[3] Do you currently use a sponge to wash dishes? Y/N If Y go to [ questionaire question re what someone is willing to change ] If N go to [process below ]
[4] Can the materials be cleaned in very hot water without the dye bleeding? Y/N If Y go to [process below] If N go to [one-time use]
[5] Do you have a way to make the cloth into smaller pieces? Y/N If Y go to [sizing rags, making soap pockets, making tablecloths, placemats, or napkins from old sheets] If N go to [how to tear fabrics]
-----

Process

[6] If you have wool garmets or old blankets, you may want to felt them first. See [felting ]
[7] If you have cotton or cotton/poly fabric pieces, cut or tear them into appropriate pieces. See [making tablecloths, placemats, or napkins from old sheets]
[8] Replacements: The next time your papertowels run out, consider making unpapertowels. See [making and using unpapertowels.]
[9] Substitutions: The next time your dish sponge disintegrates, consider using a clean rag to wash dishes instead. See [making and using dishrags]
[10] If an old sheet is bigger than needed for another bed in your home, can you cut it down to become a sheet for the second bed? See [cutting down a sheet]
11] If the old sheet is bigger than your dining table, can you cut it down to become a tablecloth [make a tablecloth], placemats [make placemats], or cloth napkins? [napkins]

Etc.

There are like 4 or 5 parts of the process of changing, right? Recognition of where you are. Consideration of a possibly different path. (The first 2 are data gathering.) Discovering how to go down that different path. (Argument, what the pros/cons are if the change is made.} Trying it out. Modifying the new path to suit yourself. (Making the change, first and later steps.)