My daughters' elementary school offers what they call "enrichment clusters," which are basically elective courses. They run the gamut from scrapbooking, to putting on a show, to art, to cooking with books, to writing the school newsletter. These courses meet twice a week and are usually switched up each quarter. The school is a magnet, but is a public school, and the administration is always looking for people with special skills that can be incorporated into an enrichment cluster to teach an elective.

I proposed the idea of an elective where the students would write, either individual stories for an anthology, or let them contribute to one longer fiction piece. The students could also do the illustrations. I would ask them to commit to all four quarters, so we would have time to write, edit, raise funds, and then submit the project to be published through one of the self-publishing publishers.

Not having self-published before, I am trying to anticipate the pitfalls ahead of time. We would not be listing the book for sale on Amazon or any of the other sites, because it could present legal problems down the road for splitting the royalties, as well as tax consequences if we actually made any money. My idea is to raise the money necessary through fund raising and pre-sales to buy a package just for the number of books already paid for.

I'm sure not all self-publishing companies are created equal, and would welcome any input or advice regarding potential problems that could arise with the publishing perspective.

Holli Castillo
Gumbo Justice
www.hollicastillo.com