The Buffista Comix Co-op
I've done a lot of thinking about how this can work, and I've come up with a plan. Please let me know if this sounds completely daft or not.
- The Co-op will collectively own a bunch of comic book TPBs, and will mail them around to each other for our mutal enjoyment.
- People who wish to participate can donate TPBs, and/or pledge money.
- If you wish to donate books, please be aware that there is a signifigant chance that you will never see your books again. One must always keep in mind the lesson of the missing original pilot tape.
- No one will be sending money to anyone else. If you pledge money, you will be required to purchase TPBs (even if it is something you personally don't want to read) and mail it to someone else.
- Even if you don't pledge money, there will always be ongoing postage costs.
- Someone (i.e., me) will keep track of what books there are, who has what books at the present time, and queues of who wants to read what. This will be somewhat complicated.
- Once a person has been given a certain period of time to read a book, they will be required to mail the book to the next person in the queue.
- If nobody else wants to read a certain book, the person who currently holds it may keep it indefinitely. Of course, if the original owner wants their book back, they can simply request it, and the person who posesses it will have to return it to them.
- There will have to be some policies and procedures in place to prevent a single person from bogarting all the books. This will be somewhat complicated.
- Initially, I want to do all the work via an email list, and as we gain more experience, we can put this up on a web page and automate it. (I'm not a fan of premature automation).
The biggest change from my previous proposal is that no one will be sending money to me, and instead will buy the books themselves. This has the advantage of spreading postage costs around, and a lot less physical labor for me.
Again, does this sound daft? Do you think that it will actually work in practice? The missing pilot tape is always in the back of my mind here, and I don't want to think that we're repeating the same mistake.
If you all think this is OK, I'll go ahead and create a mailing list for this. I can also discuss details with people at the F2F.