I just want to spend a minute explaining the pricing of the books I produced on Blurb. I realize they are not inexpensive.
Blurb allows me to sell books “at cost.” All of you can look up the “at cost” price on the Blurb web pages. I considered doing this with both the Irene Mankovich and the Mankovich/Petrick book. However, after reviewing how Blurb manages this kind of sale, I decided to charge a $5.00 over the cost of the book.
I did this because:
- It is the only way for me to track the sales of the book. Blurb gives me summaries of the orders placed for the book. I do not get to see who ordered the book – I only know of the date and number of books ordered in each transaction.
- By charging $5.00 per book, I feel I have received a little bit of money toward the books I will give away to charitable organizations and to relatives who deserve a copy but who would not buy a $70 book. Granted, this is a judgment on my part, but I feel I have earned this minimal “gifting” right.
So, thanks to the good suggestion of my Uncle Tom, I am donating a copy to the Byzantine Catholic Seminary Library in Pittsburgh, PA and another copy to the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, of Munhall, PA. Anyone else who has suggestions for donations, please let me know.
The goals of my donating the A Mankovich and Petrick Family History include:
- Ensuring that the story of our extraordinary family is retained institutionally. That is, is retained beyond the immediate members of the family so that we have a better chance of this book being useful to scholars 100 years hence.
- Providing useful information to scholars who are interested in the culture, history, motivation, and, perhaps meaning of the small Euro-American diasporas of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
- Recognition of the lives, work, and experience of our ancestors beyond the bounds of our own family.
Please let me know if you have other thoughts on the distribution of the book.
