In one of the threads Dan Bassill mentioned the idea of intermediaries. That's a big subject, and I have a little idea about that for this brainstorming. Before I go into that, I'll mention that looking at what Dan Bassill has done is worthwhile and inspiring. His work show how much a person can do steadily moving towards their goals. Life takes time, thank goodness!

Here in the USA and many other parts of the world there are many ways to buy books. One popular online bookseller is Amazon.com. There is also an interesting new kind of publishing called print on demand. Basically what these publishers allow is for a person to upload files for a book to a site which will list the book and print books as they are ordered.

Lulu is one print on demand publisher. It's possible at Lulu to list a book with no costs up front. That's a good idea for certain kinds of books. But it's much better if a person wants to sell many books to make the book so that it can be sold by online booksellers like Amazon and also be sold by bookstores people walk into. In order to do this there are certain rules about a book, and following those rules adds about $150 of costs paid to Lulu before any book is printed. MyPublisher.com is another print on demand publisher. Two nieces made a book this Christmas and it is so lovely. There are other publishers too.

So it's possible to make a book and sell it today much easier than it has ever been in the past. If many people buy books then the income can be significant. And it's possible to imagine a book or books sold primarily to Americans and Europeans but made by Ugandans to help with the costs in running this project.

The questions then are: What kind of book to sell? Who will write the book? Who will get the book ready for publication? Who will make sure the profits from the book go to your project?

As you see from my Cracker Jack Books idea, I like the idea of sets. Many people like playing card games. As a child there were card games like one called Authors. In that game pictures of famous authors were on cards along with the titles of some of their books and maybe even a little information about them. The game was simple, the object to collect the most sets of 3 of the various authors in the deck. There is also a famous set of cards called Tarot.

Tarot cards can be used to play cards games, but they are also used for divination--a kind of fortune telling. I find this part quite interesting because the cards are ways of telling stories about ourselves. Part of the art of fortune telling is simply telling others something that's generally true about people. The person being told their fortune will be quite impressed with the fortune teller, when really there is little reason to be impressed ;-)

An American Indian named Jamie Sams. Sams wrote acouple of books that were based on card sets used a little like tarot cards. I've always been impressed with these cards because they are a way to share American Indian stories with other Americans.

So I wonder whether a card set and accompanying book could be a way of sharing Ugandan culture and stories with a wider audience. I believe this sort of book would sell lots of copies.

The problem with writing a book is it's a lot of work. So the way I think would be great is to get lots of somebody-elses to write the book and provide the art. This sounds hard to believe, but there is Wikipedia a huge encyclopedia written by lots of people. So a blog and/or a wiki might be a way for Ugandans to share Ugandan stories and folklore together and with others, and provide the text for the book.

I haven't said anything about who will get the book together to print. I have some more ideas about this, but for now I'm jsut throwing out ideas in general. Feel free to add your ideas or to ask any questions about my ideas.