Founder's Blog

Greetings. As you all know, we had the entire crew of the largest ship in the US Navy, the USS Bonhomme Richard sign on for Operation eBook Drop with its thousands of crew. The point of light here is Lieutenant Commander Pittman, who distributes the coupons over the ship's activities board. That authors have experienced some download activity, is not suprising. I've had a dozen downloads myself and a few other authors have told me they have also. However, if you don't see thousands of downloads, don't be disappointed. The aircraft carrier in question has an around the clock activities schedule that includes everything from picnics on the deck to watching Avatar with the original cast. If I had to chose between reading alone in my hammock or watching the Omitcaya in the company of Sigourney Weaver and Steven Lang, I'd go for the blue people.

Still, it might be interestig to know how we landed such a big ship. It was by accident (serendipity), like everything else with this program. I received a request from a mother of a crew member, who wanted to sign her son up . When I saw that he had a .mil email address, I questioned whether we wanted to encumber the address with our coupon blitz. At the time I had no idea where the prospective troop was stationed or that he was even in the navy. That was in early December. The mother said she'd ask her son, and when I didn't hear from her by Christmas, I emailed a prompt. The next thing I know, I received a email from LCDR Pittman wanting to know my interest in the USS Bonhomme Richard's onboard communication systems. It was then that we started email communication and LDCR Pittman embraced our program as "excellent." And thus, we have become one of hundreds of activity programs for the largest ship in the navy. I can hardly say we adopted an aircraft carrier (like we have a submarine, the USS Oklahoma City). It's more like we've been adopted by the navy as an onboard activity - an alternative to a "steel" picnic or watching Avatar with th A-list.

To date we have 97 recipients (troops or points of light) for our 346 authors. There's no way of calculating the number of coupons dropped or books read (I estimate it in excess of 100,000). It really doesn't matter. It's much like our publishing initiatives. The numbers don't matter as long as we've reached one reader and made a difference. In this case, the readers are platinum and the difference is . . . how do they say it in the commercial . . . priceless.

Edward C. Patterson