On Completing Phase 1 of a 35-Year Project. Next Comes Phase 2. Then Phase 3. Then Phase 4.
Oct. 22, 2009
Today, I will finish the first draft of my economic commentary on the Bible. I finished the Book of Job yesterday. I must proofread it today. This is the last book in the Bible I had left to write. The Song of Solomon and the Book of Esther have no economic insights.
At my wife's suggestion, I began the project in April, 1973. I wrote one article, on one passage, each month. That was too slow. Beginning in the summer of 1977, I have devoted 10 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, to this project, with a one-year sabbatical in 1998, when I did not have access to my library.
Before the Web, I also had to raise the money to publish the early volumes, Genesis to Numbers. That took me 25 years. It took at least an extra 30 hours a week, unpaid, to run the Institute for Christian Economics. It was not good enough to write them. I had to create a market for them. There was never much of a market.
To do even this, I also had to write supporting volumes and monthly newsletters. I published other people's books, too. There were some good books. These appear in the department, Gary North's Free Books. //www.garynorth.com/public/department78.cfm
Now what? I must complete the final draft: phase 2.
I must now re-read all of it: 27 volumes.
I must make sure that what I wrote decades ago is consistent with what I found out later.
I must add chapters. I have found a few verses I should have covered before, but failed to see.
I must cross-reference the volumes by adding footnotes that refer to later volumes that I had not yet written.
Someone else will typeset the final volumes. I will pay to have them typeset and indexed. That will cost maybe $40,000. It may cost more. It will take two years.
In 1977, I set a time limit to this project: 2012. It looks like I will make it. Once again, Parkinson's law has been confirmed: "Work expands so as to fill the time allotted for its completion."
That will take care of the books' production. But, in today's world, books are not enough. People don't like to read.
Then comes phase 3. I must produce simple videos: an on-screen outline and a 25-minute verbal narrative of every chapter. That is over 1,000 chapters. I will post these on a video site -- not YouTube, which limits me to 10 minutes.
I will do a 2-minute YouTube summary, which will take people to a page for each verse/passage, which will have the embedded 25-minute video and my written comments. The page will have a link to a PDF of the book. This will be free.
The site will also sell the printed books: print on demand. This technology requires no physical inventory. With 27 volumes, bulk printing and inventory costs are too high. A non-profit publisher will get the money. I determined from the beginning that I would not accept any money for these books. This cuts off the complaint, "You did it for the money." The total project has cost me at least 70,000 hours of donated time, if I consider the hours I spent running the Institute for Christian Economics. There will be thousands more.
I will convert these to audio MP3s, so that people can use them for drive time. The non-profit outfit will sell CD-ROMs of these MP3 lectures.
All this will take at least three years.
Then comes phase 4. I will turn these into a home school high school 4-year course on the Bible. I will have to write weekly exams, mid-terms, and finals. I should set up a site for this, preferably with the exams graded electronically and grades issued. I might make some money off this. But probably not. I want to give away the course.
Phase 4 will overlap phase 3. I will not wait until I have all four years completed before I offer the course to the public.
Why do all this? Because writing the commentaries is not enough. I must persuade people to learn what is in them.
The great thing is that the video/audio material will not cost me money to produce. All I need is time. Time is not free, but I must spend it, one way or another.
For an author/educator, the Web is a miracle. It is like the printing press for Luther.
This is what it takes to change serious people's minds. The good news is that I have the world's politicians and central bankers working for me. They are fouling up the economy so badly that millions of people are thinking, "There has to be a better way." There is. It begins with a moral principle: Thou shalt not steal, even by majority vote.
Why did I do this project? Because I have my final project: a treatise on Christian economics. I have planned this project since 1960. That was the year I bought Ludwig von Mises' Human Action. To write this book, I had to write the commentary. I had to do my homework.
There will be a 1,000-page version, a 300-page version, a 100-page version, short YouTube videos, longer 25-minute videos, MP3s, and a high school home school course.
I also write 24 articles a week for my website.
Busy, busy, busy.
CONCLUSION
Think of your life's work. Think of what you must do to complete phase 1: the "raw material." Then how should you package it? How can you find a market for it?
You are not done until someone uses it. Maybe the user will pay money for it. That would be nice.
My point is this: you are not finished until others are putting to productive use whatever it is that you have offered for sale or for free use. For me, it was not enough to write the commentary. I must now put it into forms where people can learn from it.
Don't be tempted to quit just because phase 1 of your work is complete, unless someone reliable is going to finish phase 2 and beyond -- someone who will not drop the project. Such people are rare. Do not count on locating one and persuading him to take over phase 2.
It's not enough to be a producer. You must be a marketer, one way or another.