The prom can be expensive. From dresses and tuxedo rentals to limousines and flowers, high school seniors could spend some serious cash.
A group of freshman from Los Gatos High School in California is saving up for it now. They are doing it by collaborating on an e-book.
More than 120 freshman English honor students put together a poetry anthology, [easyazon-link asin=”B00K60NEF2″ locale=”us”]Windows to the Teenage Soul[/easyazon-link]. It is being distributed through Smashwords and is featured on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Apple’s iBook store, Kobo and more.
“Unlike the self-publishing of the past, when an author would pay to have an unsuccessful book printed, ebook self-publishing offers a new way for authors to get their books out to a worldwide audience that is thirsty for content,” said Los Gatos Town librarian Henry Bankhead in a release.
Students were part of five different teams to get the e-book published. They worked on editing, layout and design, art and photography, marketing and publicity, and event planning.
The book released on May 6 for $2.99 and debuted at #1 in the iBook list of top-paid poetry books. It currently sits at #11 in Amazon’s list for e-book of American Poetry, sitting on the same list as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe.
“It is my goal every year to help my students discover the joy, beauty, and expressiveness of poetry,” said English teacher Tonya McQuade. “Now, for the first time, they get to share that with a bigger audience.”
I found the quote attributed to the town librarian a bit disquieting. Why allude to the vanity press as the natural outlet for “unsuccessful books” in the same sentence (or at all) where this new outlet of self publishing is lauded as a gateway to an “audience thirsty for content?”