Concord Free Press: Free Their Books and Their Minds Will Follow

Free press, priceless words, or what Paul Revere has to do with the future of grassroots publishing.

We’ve previously explored tomorrow’s merchants of culture, the literati’s meditations on the future of the written word and, most recently, 7 platforms changing the future of publishing. Today, we turn to the delightful and unusual approach to publishing of the Concord Free Press, whose experiment to “free the books” dares us to interact with books more like we do with stories — as social artifacts given freely, widely shared, and fluidly circulated.

Wielding original fiction by the likes of Scott Phillips, Gregory Maguire, and Wesley Brown, the unorthodox Massachusetts-based project, operating under the motto “free their books and their minds will follow,” is rethinking the goals of publishing as it pushes us to imagine how we can harness the power of stories for purposes beyond the commodification of culture. Founded by writer Stona Fitch, Concord Free Press publishes limited quantities of its first-edition paperbacks and gives them away for free.

CFP’s latest paperback, ­Rut by Scott Phillips, sports a bold cover design and “$0.00″ price tag. (We also couldn’t help but swoon over CFP’s ever-clever logo that silhouettes a reading-and-riding Paul Revere.)

By taking a copy, you agree to give away money to a local charity, someone who needs it, or a stranger on the street. Where the money goes and how much you give –that’s your call. When you’re done, pass this novel on to someone else (for free, of course), so they can give. It adds up.”

In this short code of conduct, the CFP lays out some admirable new goals behind monetizing the written word. It pushes us to engage with our social responsibility and re-circulate our stories to create connected communities, a fine addition to our running list of collaborative consumption tools that empower us to have more by owning less.

And it pays — CFP’s books generate between $45,000 and $50,000 per title in donations, and those are just the donations that people actually report.

To generate more support for its authors and free books, the same folks behind CFP recently launched the Concord EPress, where fans can catch up on electronic versions of any of the “given-out” titles they missed in paperback. Digital editions of previously printed titles are available as a Kindle downloads, with the proceeds of each $7.77 ebook being split two ways between the author and CFP’s free paperback program.

If you’re as blown away by CFP’s mission as we are, you can support the project with a tax-deductible donation.

Cindy Chiang is a thinker, tinkerer and strategist curious about how design and technology can engage with human emotions, cognition and creativity to change the world. When she’s not in wonder or wanderlust, she’s working on growing her creative toolbox. She currently works in Philadelphia and lives on trains, planes and BoltBuses.

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Dear Me: Letters by Luminaries to Their 16-Year-Old Selves

What the renouncement of dieting has to do with love and buying shares in Google.

Some moons ago, I came across this installment in The Rumpus’ wonderful Dear Sugar advice column, which proceeded to dash right past my unforgiving cheesiness radar and settle into that Really Excellent Read place. In it, Sugar shares 40-something wisdom with her 20-something self, reaching for those hard-learned truths with remarkable humor, vulnerability and grace. The piece reminded me of Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self — an absolutely fantastic older anthology of retrospective letters by luminaries spanning just about the entire cultural spectrum, from Oscar and Pulitzer winners to doctors to comedians to musicians and more, envisioned and compiled by Joseph Galliano. The roster of contributors includes icons like Yoko Ono, Stephen Fry, Debbie Harry and many more, with proceeds from the book benefiting the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Elton John

Dear Debbie, Moon, Debeel, or Deb,

Just because you have a lot of different names, and maybe feel like there’s a lot of different yours, don’t be confused. Give yourself some time and all the ideas and possibilities that these names conjure up for you will become clear to you. The pieces of the puzzle will reveal themselves and all you have to do is keep finding out what makes you feel happiest and this oftentimes will be the easiest thing for you to do. This is remarkable in itself. That the most obvious is often the best choice and can lead to something wonderful and satisfying.”

~ Debbie Harry

Alan Carr

Actually, buy shares in Google. That should sort just about everything out.” ~ Danny Wallace

Emma Thompson

When he says he doesn’t love you, believe him. He doesn’t.” ~ Emma Thompson

Annie Lennox

Sandra Bernhard

Stephen King

Equal parts poignant and entertaining, Dear Me is an endearing reminder of how much we’ve grown and, perhaps far more importantly, that the only way we grow, the only way we get things right, is by getting them horribly, horribly wrong first — and that’s quite okay.

Thanks to the lovely Letters of Note for the reminder

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A World Without Moms

What going to school without underwear has to do with ruling the world.

A few months ago, our friends from Acumen Fund launched the Search for the Obvious initiative — a quest to find everyday objects and ideas that dramatically improve quality of life. In its latest iteration, SFTO challenged people to imagine a world without moms in an effort to raise awareness about the 7 million women who are injured and 350,000 women who die from complications due to childbirth every year — yet of the world’s 1,000 childbirth deaths per day, 800 are preventable by providing simple, basic maternal health care.

The challenge received dozens of submissions from all over the world across a variety of categories, from video to tweet to guerrilla. This poignant entry by the Jubilee Project, reminiscent of the beautiful Fifty People One Question, won the video category with its candid, deeply human journey into the richness and multiplicity of mothers’ impact on who we are and how we go through the world.

This video was inspired by our desire to help moms around the world because of the love and care we received from our own moms. We wanted to capture a genuine and raw spectrum of voices that spoke to just how much moms mean to all of us.”

See the other category winners and find out about ways to help save moms around the world on the official challenge page. For more on Acumen Fund’s work for maternity hospitals, don’t miss this excellent ABC News interview with founder Jacqueline Novogratz, whose TED talk on the life of immersion remains an all-time favorite.

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