Mimicking the the Evening Times famous Wee Red Book, the blue version aims to provide ‘all the facts the papers leave out’.
I’m never convinced the issue is really ‘facts’ or lack of them, but we decided to catch up with Stuart Campbell to get some of the background and profile this project.
Bella: What’s the idea behind the publication? What gap are you trying to fill?
WoS: We have a huge amount of traffic on the website now – 330,000 unique users in the last month – but the Wee Blue Book is designed to try to reach people who wouldn’t dream of visiting a politics website, or perhaps even using the internet at all.
It’s aimed at both undecideds and campaigners – for the latter it’s small enough to carry around and refer to, and for the former it’s short enough to read the whole thing in an hour as a sort of one-stop summary of the Yes case, but the chapters are also really short so people can just skip to the aspects they’re most interested in and instantly get a quick breakdown and a heap of links to check out if they want detail.”
Bella: How’s it going?
WoS: Downloads are past 150,000. Critical reception very good indeed – surprisingly little dissent, given that there are always people who think things should be done differently. Quite a few appreciative emails from No people saying it’s at least giving them some food for thought.
What’s the plans for printing? Is it all downloads or are you doing a print run too?
The perfect-bound first “collectors edition” batch of 20,000 should come off the print presses this week. Lots more to come after that, and other people will be doing their own runs too. (Someone’s already asked for a quote for 100,000 copies.)”
Bella: What else has WoS got coming up? Are you coming up for the last few weeks?
WoS: Haven’t finalised any other plans yet, a few possibilities being juggled around. Not sure what we’re doing with the card game yet. Will definitely be up for the vote, don’t know exactly when.”
Reblogged this on Are We Really Better Together? and commented:
The Wee Blue Book should be in the hands of every Undecided and No voter in Scotland. Please share it with your friends, family and strangers in the street.
Wee Blue Book print run fund raiser plan was £25k but its crashed through £44k in just 12 hrs. So money isn’t the problem, or even printing. It’s the distribution. Shipping > 20,000 units , storing, splitting & bundling for shipment to various demand points (nodes) is going to be a challenge.
Surely somewhere amongst the Yes voters there is a haulage company that could bring a few pallets of WBBs back north with them after a run south?
Distribution won’t be a problem, if WOS can raise over £50,000 in 24 hours, double the target asked for, then putting the WBB in the hands, or through the letter boxes, of those that need to read it won’t be a problem.
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Ok folks anyone know what the costs are for different sized print runs & how we go about cofunding & distrubting?
Neeless to say the Rev is on the case and, among many other things, will run another fund raiser as & when needed. http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-wee-blue-book-how-you-can-help/
Typo . .
“What’s the plan . . : should have ‘Bella:’ at left.
Reblogged this on Are We Really Better Together? and commented:
The Wee Blue Book should be in the hands of every Undecided and No voter in Scotland. Please share it with your friends, family and strangers in the street.
Wee Blue Book print run fund raiser plan was £25k but its crashed through £44k in just 12 hrs. So money isn’t the problem, or even printing. It’s the distribution. Shipping > 20,000 units , storing, splitting & bundling for shipment to various demand points (nodes) is going to be a challenge.
Surely somewhere amongst the Yes voters there is a haulage company that could bring a few pallets of WBBs back north with them after a run south?
Distribution won’t be a problem, if WOS can raise over £50,000 in 24 hours, double the target asked for, then putting the WBB in the hands, or through the letter boxes, of those that need to read it won’t be a problem.