Book Progress and Administration

We are working on getting the photos.  We found one that Oxford U press already owns so that was good.   The next step will be copyediting.

I am still writing the history chapter.  It is going slowly because I have so many sources.  Someone will have to put it in some sort of order so that it flows well.  I found a time line on the African American Studies website.  I copied the pertinent items to another time line.  I have two other time lines that will have to be combined.

I still have to write the introductory chapeter and there are some women that I have to interview.

Next week I will try to interview the women.  I have given them enough time to get ready and I want to do it before the holidays.

I fianally worked on the administration part of the book.  I am now the owner of Sister Chemists LLC.  I have a tax id so that I can set up a checking account and get my royality advance.  The LLC is to manage the royalties, if any other than the advance.  Right now I need to money for the book expenses.  Some of the companies charge for the photos.

Now that the business part is done I will get down to writing next week.

Jeannette Brown

Background History

Well my assistant is working on getting photos from the book.  This means we are politely begging some of the women in the book for photos which is the best way to do it.  The publisher can scan them for printing better than we can.  The next best is to have a high resolution scan made.  Sometimes we have to pay for this service.
OK While she is doing that I am struggeling with the background history chapter.  I have a lot of information the problem is how to consolidate it into one chapter.  I will put the references at the back of the chapter for further reading.
Well since I took the Web 2.0 course which says I need to keep blogging, I am doing it.  But I also have to get back to the book.
More later.
Jeannette Brown

News about the book and other things

The good news about the book is that we are making progress!  I say we because I have a team helping me. I have hired a young woman who is studying for a PhD in African American History at Rutgers University. Her name is Shannen and she has experience in putting a book together.  We started last Friday searching for photos for the book.  I also have a young woman whom I am calling an intern, who will work for me.  She was recommended by one of the women from the Princeton Research Forum of which I am a member.  This young woman lives in Trenton, she goes to Mercer County Community College, and she wants to learn about publishing a book.  She will start next week.  So hopefully we are on track to get the book finished in December.

There is still a lot of work to do.  Besides getting the photos and the photo permissions, we have to get
permissions to use some of the text in the book and then copy edit the entire book to see that it fits into the size dictated by my contract so we have a long hard road to go.

I have dedicated all my time togetting this done.

However, as I look at the book I realize there is a lot more to say so that I have material for another book!  I have only talked about the women for whom there is a lot of public
information.  I have a list of women whom were listed in who's who in Black America that I would have to research or take their oral history.

Speaking of oral history, I did take a break to attend the Oral History Organization meeting in Atlanta last week.  I presented a paper about one of the women whose oral history had been released to the Chemical Heritage Foundation.  Her name is Reatha Clark King.   Since oral histories are private until they are released to the public, I could only talk about the women who have released their oral history.

This is not true for the book since most of the information in the book is already public.

While in Atlanta I did some research at Emory University archives.  The archives of Sinah Kelley one of the women in the book was there.  I waited through seven boxes of stuff. It was like wading through the attic of a person.  Sinah was born in 1916 so she was one of the pioneers in chemistry.  Her diary was there along with baby photos and a photo of her college graduation.  She went to Radcliff College so ten year and twenty-five year alumni books were there.  The good news is that she wrote about what she had been doing since college graduation so that I have some of her life in her own
words!  It is an interesting story.

At the Oral History conference, I took a short course in Web 2.0.  Blogging is Web 2.0 and I learned I need to blog more often.  Therefore, look for posts that are more frequent from me.

Jeannette Brown