Re: [Callers] Book or web site?

Chris wrote: To really answer that question, you have to figure out what your goals are. Make your dances accessible? Build your reputation and get more gigs? Have a book to put on your shelf to show that you haven't been wasting your time? Share your philosophy and musings on contra-dance related issues? So we can't truly answer "better", for you, without knowing "better for what." So I'll answer for me: If it were me, I would go with website - easy to find with search engine, easy to correct, easy to expand. I think this is the best way both to put the dances into the hands of people who will use them, and (therefore) get your name mentioned in places you haven't physically been yourself, increasing your name-recognition value and doing good for your calling career, while also providing a service to callers who use your dances. If I felt I had to have a book, I'd go with a Print On Demand book. (more below). There's definite value in the kind of book that has a collection of essays, perhaps illustrated by dance descriptions, so it's reasonable that Erik Hoffman's books, Larry Jennings' books, Tony Parkes' book should be books - you want to sit down and read 'em. But I don't think the collection-of-dances-with-a-paragraph-or-two-of-comment book gets any major value from being a book rather than a website. There's no very effective distribution mechanism for books of dances. CDSS will carry your book, but they take a markup on your list price, so the books become unreasonably expensive. (Over in the English dance section, there are ten-page books for $10.25 plus shipping.) CDSS is a wonderful organization, but they have to pay rent and salaries, etc, so small print-run books that are already expensive because there's no chance of economies of scale get whacked again with significant cost increases, and you get things where people who want to buy your book need to swallow hard. So if you want to do traditional publishing, you do a whole book, you print a bunch of copies, and then you keep them in boxes in your garage, run a mail-order business (that gets very, very little action, but every so often people send you a check), and carry boxes of books around to your gigs. (Self-publishing makes sense for people who can expect to sell many copies of a book at seminars or lectures that they run. They have a distribution mechanism pretty much in place, and not too much fear of getting stuck with unsold copies. But I don't think that describes any contra dance caller.) If you want to spend your free time and money on going to dances, calling gigs, writing new dances, etc, then running a sales and distribution business for your book is a waste of time. If you've determined that it ought to be a book, then print on demand (through a service like lulu.com, about which I've heard good things but have no direct experience) solves the inventory and distribution problems, and is in some ways *more* permanent than printing 500 copies of the book to start with, since it remains "in print" forever - you can't sell out, and aren't faced with questions of whether or not to go back to press. HTH! -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================