I just finished writing GET YOUR GREEK ON! about three weeks ago.
After discussing the particulars with my copy editor and graphic designer, we're now ready to move the book into production.
(And before we start, please allow me offer my apologies for my totally lame video! LOL!)
GET
YOUR GREEK ON! is a short textbook designed to introduce students,
travelers, and adventurers to some of the basic principles of modern
Greek. Specifically, it’s intended to get you talking to your new Greek
colleagues, neighbors, and friends as soon as you arrive in Greece.
GET
YOUR GREEK ON! is also meant to be fun. We all learned our first
language when we were kids. That’s a fact worth keeping in mind. In one
sense, learning another language asks that you become a little kid
again, that you do things little kids do all the time: that you enjoy
yourself without fear, that you make mistakes without worry, and that
you play. I wrote GET YOUR GREEK ON! to help you learn how to play with
your Greek.
The initial motivation for writing GET YOUR GREEK ON!
came from my students at Concordia College - specifically, the Theran
Class of 2011, a crew of 15 adventurous lunatics. The basic idea was to
provide these guys with a quick-and-dirty introduction to Greek that
would allow them to get around, to meet people, and to more fully enjoy
their time during their month-long term at Concordia’s Summer School in
Santorini. Further inspiration was provided by students participating in
the Greek Foreign Study Program offered by the Department of Classics
at Dartmouth College, by students in the Program in Greece offered by
the Department of Classical Studies at Lake Forest College, and by
students living and studying at Arcadia University’s Center for Balkan
and Mediterranean Studies in Athens. My time at the American School of
Classical Studies and the University of Athens also played a role in
helping me figure out which approaches to basic Greek seemed to work,
and which did not. In sum, I knew that there was a niche market for this
kind of thing, and I wanted GET YOUR GREEK ON! to fill that niche.
When
I ran this project by my pals at the academic presses, everyone was
enthusiastic. They saw the market just as I did. The problem? I couldn't
get the book made and sold to students for less than $25.00 per printed
copy. That's just too much, my friends! I want to put a printed copy of
GET YOUR GREEK ON! into the hands of students, travelers, and
adventurers for under ten bucks. As it turned out, publishing the book
with my own team of pros was the only way to hit that price point. (This
also got me thinking about other textbooks, academic projects, and
scholarly work that invariably cost students and readers far more than I
think is fair, but that's a discussion for another time. Perhaps this
is the start of something bigger?)
So that's my project: I need
to raise about two grand for copy editing and producing GET YOUR GREEK
ON! Just over $2K will let me get this done. If we raise more than that,
we'll use the money to help develop a Greek template for publishing GET
YOUR GREEK ON! on Kindle, further reducing the cost of the book for
students -- there is, at present, a major problem with non-Latin-based
fonts on Kindle; we can fix it with enough support.
Thanks for reading! And thanks for helping me to help YOU to GET *YOUR* GREEK ON!
