FAVL Volunteer Stephanie Wessels and I had a wonderful meeting on Friday at the friendly office of FastPencil! FastPencil, founded by a SCU alum, is a web based publishing platform that allows you to use the "immediacy of the web, and the permanency of print." Essentially, you can create books with their great online tools and then publish when and however you'd like. At our meeting we explored how we can work together to publish our Reading West Africa books.
A group of students and I have been diligently transferring our picture books to FastPencil, in hopes to start printing in the near future. Each book will be about $5.00 to publish, which is much cheaper than our current books, and the online tools provided are free. Since the service is online, anyone involved can collaborate on a project and space is unlimited which is perfect with our plethora of photos and books.
For a writer, FastPencil is quite a tool... you can write a book, design the layout (or use one of their many templates), and collaborate with other writers, editors, designers, and the like. When your book is complete, you can either publish as an eBook, hardcover, or go direct to online channels like Barnes & Nobel. FastPencil even has their own marketplace. I am quite a fan and excited to see where this goes, especially with regards to making books for African village libraries!
Below is a picture of some Reading West Africa books (top shelf) in the Karaba Library in Burkina Faso.
A group of students and I have been diligently transferring our picture books to FastPencil, in hopes to start printing in the near future. Each book will be about $5.00 to publish, which is much cheaper than our current books, and the online tools provided are free. Since the service is online, anyone involved can collaborate on a project and space is unlimited which is perfect with our plethora of photos and books.
For a writer, FastPencil is quite a tool... you can write a book, design the layout (or use one of their many templates), and collaborate with other writers, editors, designers, and the like. When your book is complete, you can either publish as an eBook, hardcover, or go direct to online channels like Barnes & Nobel. FastPencil even has their own marketplace. I am quite a fan and excited to see where this goes, especially with regards to making books for African village libraries!
Below is a picture of some Reading West Africa books (top shelf) in the Karaba Library in Burkina Faso.
photo: Karaba Library, courtesy of Erica Ernst
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