A NEW SPA?

Having taken a step back from the SPA as it WAS, I have been looking at the life-long goal of starting a real Self Publisher Hall of Fame. I remembered that we had set up a Facebook Causes spot for the HOF a while back, so I looked it over. I posed an announcement to all the people who had previously signed up to follow the cause. It had a thing that it e-mails the announcement to everyone, and has a click-back link so people could show they read the announcement. Guess how many did that. No really guess.

No one. Not one single click. Now. This tells me a few things. One - the SPHOF Foundation is dead. No one cares about it as-is. Two- the Causes system is annoying and no one clicks those links. I know I ignore a lot of them from other causes people send me. So anyway - previously I had been pretty solid on the SPA and the SPHOF being and remaining separate things. But as things have started to settle, I can see that the SPA of the past - the "loose gathering" aspect - just wasn't working. Ideas would be brought up, be good, have a person assigned to run the project, then something would come up for that person, and the project would fall back onto me.

So people have said a number of times to me lately things like, they are sad to see the SPA on hiatus, cause of all the great things that I did for small press. And I keep trying to get across, the SPA was never intended to be ONE PERSON, and if it is to have new life, ever, it is not going to be because of ME ALONE.

Here's what I want to see for 2012. I want to see a re-worked SPA charter. I'll probably start working on it and post a draft, and then ASK FOR PEOPLE to rip it apart and suggest changes. I want to see the SPA focused on SP! Magazine and the Hall of Fame, to start. I plan to rip ALL the pages about the SPA out of the Dimestore site, and ALL of the pages about creators and publishers out of the Distro site, and re-work them into the SP! Mag website. I want to see the SPA re-start the TREASURY that fell by the wayside many years ago. I want the SPA to have a TREASURER that ISN'T ME. Not because I cant keep track of and report on $$, but because to be a real organization, we need to have more people involved with actually RUNNING it. I want to see the SPA raise the funds, and apply for and go after official Tax Exempt status. This will allow us to begin building real things that can last long beyond any of us that start this up, will live to see. Conventions. Scholarships. The Hall of Fame itself as a physical place people can come visit, and see the things we have collected for history's sake.

Membership needs to MEAN SOMETHING. Previously we stated that just being a member of the forum/website meant you are an SPA member. I think that we need to abandon that thought. Being here isn't enough. We need to have a system of yearly dues for membership, that includes Creator, Publisher, and Supporter memberships, and that gives real benefits to those that support the SPA.

And I think, the best way to introduce the NEW SPA to the world in 2012, as we get it situated, is going to be by bringing back an idea from a number of years ago, that became a bit mired in the "loosely knit" aspect of how things were...and then fell victim to being handed over to me when the person that suggested it, started up something else. SPA CARDS. As in trading cards with pictures of creators on them, with Bio and contact info, etc. I have always LOVED the basic idea of this. Basically, members of the SPA can get a card made that shows they support the SPA, while it also can be used as a collectable. They can get as many or as little as they want, and give them away or sell them as they want. ONLY THEY are the outlet for the card, which they order at-cost from the SPA so that we can keep an official record of who has cards made and how many were made, etc. We keep a gallery going of the cards made so people can see, and link to the people so they can get the cards they want. New set each year, in like this time of year each year, we cut off making new cards and offer FULL SETS, I'm thinking the full set cards would have a different issue-number on them than the individually available cards, to keep those cards from individuals just as collectable as the full sets. Don't know how popular the full sets may be, I guess that's to be seen. We'll do the full sets so that any profit from them, goes back into the official SPA Treasury.

So those are my ideas. None of it can happen WITHOUT YOU. Without people getting involved and interested in there being a Self Publisher Hall of fame. We'll see what happens. I'm going to work up an example card to show, for the next Kick Start.

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