Run Herring Run!
In 2014 the Herring Ponds Watershed Association (HPWA) was awarded a small New England Grassroots Environment Fund grant to create and print a trial run of a super hero comic titled, “Run, Herring, Run”. HPWA is an all-volunteer organization in Plymouth that focuses on monitoring, stewardship and protection of a relatively healthy and unobstructed river herring run in a state-designated Area of Critical Environmental Concern.
Last year we printed the graphic storybooks just in time for Plimoth Plantation’s first annual Herring Run Festival, and also distributed them at the Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens Alliance “Pine Fest”, and in conjunction with various kid activity tables that we hosted through the summer. The publication was popular with both kids and their parents. We’d like to order more for the 2015 herring migration season and invite others to join our print order to get quantity pricing.
The 5 MB print-ready PDF file of the comic is available for viewing or download on our HPWA website, where we freely give copyright permission to non-profit groups for herring education, but it takes the power of numbers to make printing cost-effective.
The key to print pricing is to boost the quantity high enough (20,000+) to justify set-up and running on a web press, reducing the price per copy to about 5-cents. We hope to collectively gather $1000 in commitments to place an order for 20,000 copies, and then divvy up proportionately. We have several groups interested so far. If your group could use 2000 copies ($100 worth) or more to give out at events, let me know quickly. We have $700 (14,000 copies) to go to place the print order. Time is of the essence to print, ship, and distribute to participating organizations for some of the earliest runs, starting soon.
In Plymouth we have about 2500 K-5 students, so HPWA might consider increasing our share of the order to provide every elementary student a copy at school during the herring run season, in April-May. Herring run stewards in other towns might consider the same strategy.
If your group is interested, please contact me at: lee@theherringpondswatershed.org
Thank you,
Lee Pulis, VP & Education chair
Herring Ponds Watershed Association
http://theherringpondswatershed.org
