Sunday, February 17, 2008

Clarifying the date

I must have put the original cover letter on the site so my apologies. The date of the booksale is April 26th and not the 19th. Please make a note of that if you recorded the wrong date.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Rules and questions

Rules/procedure for the 2008 Used Book Sale:

1. Collect books for the sale: Things to consider. Do not gear your choices just to homeschoolers! Also don’t assume that homeschoolers just want text books. Homeschoolers love to read all sorts of books and learn from all sorts of books so……don’t assume that school means textbooks.

-types of books then to collect: Novels, best sellers, popular children’s books, series books, coffee table books, non-fiction books, how-to books, and basically any book that may be of interest to others.

-types of books to avoid: obviously ‘inappropriate books’ that may cause obvious offense. The committee reserves the right to remove books if this comes up and we assume prudence will be used. The other type would be outdated non-fiction or books that may be obviously of no interest to anyone.

Arrange for an area at your church to store your congregation’s books.
Recruit members to assist with set-up, the transporting of books from your congregation to Emmaus and assist with set-up.
Recruit members to help with the day of the sale. This shouldn’t involve too many people or too much time.
If there are concerns from contributors that they want their books that don’t sell back, then they need to make proper arrangements to see to their safe return. This would be best handled at the close of the sale as the people of Emmaus will need to clean up to prepare for Sunday services.
****There is a central sign-up sheet for this help. Please have your people call Karin Horner, 234-5696, to sign-up for times and to make things as efficient as possible.

Cover letter

Used Book Sale:

Emmaus Lutheran Church invites you to participate and attend a Used Book Sale on April 26, 2008 from 9am to 2 pm. We are organizing a sale to benefit the Emmaus Lutheran Church window replacement fund and in addition there will be opportunity for the sale of books to benefit MLEA through the proceeds of books donated towards MLEA.

What does this mean? It is time to weed out books from your shelves at home! The idea of this sale is for the members and relatives/friends of members and students of MLEA of the participating MLEA congregations to collect books off their shelves of their homes to donate towards the sale. Tables will be set-up specifically for MLEA participating members to display their books for sale to the community. Emmaus will set up as many tables needed to accommodate the books donated. Each congregation should designate an area at their own church’s to house books donated until the time of the sale. We are sending this information out now so that there will time for members to search for books.
Then…..of course it would be EVERYONE is invited to attend the sale and enjoy themselves.

There are several rules and guidelines that are enclosed on a separate sheet of this letter. These rules, this letter and all other information will be posted on the blog, Emmausbooksale@blogger.com. The sale will be most successful if the participants do everything they can to fulfill the expectations. The expectations are pretty painless, but if put off will be a lot of work in the long haul.

Because this is also a fundraiser for the window fund at Emmaus, we will be offering 90 percent of the sale of the books from MLEA to MLEA themselves. 10 percent will go towards the Emmaus window replacement fund. The book keeping will completely be handled by the people of Emmaus. Several registers will handle the ‘check out’ process. The members of participating congregations should volunteer to help with set-up, keeping track of the tidiness of the tables and then the clean up of any left over books. Emmaus will not be able to take responsibility for the removal of the leftover books.

I have made this as simple as I can and am happy to field any questions there may be from the congregations. I would be happy to have my phone number listed, 234-5696, for people to ask questions. I am also asking that the questions come only to me and not be fielded through people may only think they know the process. I could certainly put some of the questions and answers on the blog listed. If you think it would help, I could find time to come and explain the sale some more at your church in the months to come.

The sale itself will advertised throughout the community and especially to the area homeschoolers as they LOVE Used Book Sales. Emmaus will be handling most of this but of course the congregations participating can do everything they can to place fliers anywhere there might be people who read books and love them (hopefully that means everywhere).

Please see the included list of ‘rules’ and I hope these will prove helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Karin Horner
Emmaus Lutheran Church
Window Replacement Fund