HearTheWritings.com has been a passion of ours for years. That passion for high quality audio books has driven our efforts to create titles as our resources permit… but it is time to ramp it up! If you love quality Baha’i audio books, we need your help!
Manufacturing CD sets of our audio books has been a stumbling block in our production process for some time now. Generating the funds to make it available in CD format comes with large upfront costs which, quite frankly, we have had to find work-arounds for because we are putting our resources into creating definitive and timeless audio book versions of the Sacred writings. So.. we had an idea… Why not allow our community of supporters help us bring these books into reality!
We decided to launch a crowd funding campaign to help us raise the funds needed to manufacture physical copies of our audio books.. We can focus on creating it and you can help us bring it out into the world! Its siple and powerful.. but it requires your participation!
Here is where we are at with our Crowdfunding Goal for the ‘Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh’ audio book..
We have just a few days left to hit our crowdfunding goal, so we need your help! Please share this post with your friends, family and community!
Here is some basic info about what we are doing:
Q: What is Crowdfunding?
A: Crowdfunding is a way that we can empower our family of supporters to contribute to making what they want become reality. By supporting the crowdfunding campaign you are helping raise funds that would otherwise be very difficult for us to come up with. This also acts as a sort of ‘Pre-Order’ of the physical CD sets… As people support the effort they are actually pre-ordering the CD sets at a significant discount from the retail.
Q: Why don’t you just sell downloads?
A: We do… they are available on the website here. But not everyone around the world has access to MP3 players or portable players. CDs are ubiquitous. Every car has a CD player, DVD players can play CDs, most people know how to use CD’s at this point (think “Grandma and Grandpa”) and in many developing countries around the world CD is still the media format of choice. Making the audio CD sets available enables more people to have access to the writings than we could possibly do through downloads alone… but there is a significant cost to producing physical copies.. hence, the crowd funding campaign.
Q: Which audio book title are you trying to manufacture?
A: The first title we are trying to manufacture through the participation of our supporters is ‘Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, Revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas’. This particular title is nearly 8 hours in length and will span 7 CDs! To manufacture a 7 CD set costs a lot of money ($4500) so it seemed the perfect title to get our community involved directly in supporting its creation.
Q: If I support the crowdfunding campaign can I get the download while I wait for the CDs to be manufactured?
A: Yes! There are many different levels at which our friends can contribute and each level comes with its own special gifts. Anyone who contributes $25 or more gets the download for free… contribute at the next level up and you get the CDs as well!
Q: What if you don’t get all the money you need to manufacture.. will you still be able to make the CD sets?
A: Yes we will… we are considering all pre-orders of the CD set as a contribution to the manufacturing fund.. so that will help us reach the goal.. But, if we still fall short of the goal even with all the combined orders and contributions, we will need to look into other forms of funding to make up the difference. We are working on possibilities to still get it out to our community as quickly as possible without compromising quality.
Q: What if you surpass your goal?
A: The surplus money will go into manufacturing our other titles. We are working at creating a library of the finest audio books of the Sacred, Historical and secondary texts of the Faith… so we will be pouring our resources into making those available in physical formats as well.
That’s it! A simple concept, but incredibly powerful at enabling our community to participate and help bring ideas to reality by supporting with their contributions. Do you want to be a part of helping bring the writings to life? Click here to contribute…
