Stethoscope Press, an on-campus publication that prints full-length student books, sought alternative fundraising methods after receiving insufficient funds from the Wesleyan Student Assembly Student Budget Committee (SBC) this year.
Stethoscope Press is committed to developing and publishing bound books that are completely written, edited, and designed by students.
“We print books written by students,” said Head Editor Piers Gelly ’13. “One author, one book. It’s editors working with authors to produce books. At the end of the day, everyone works with the designers. Everyone helps out a little bit.”
Davy Knittle ’11 founded the student group three years ago. Initially, the books were composed of chapbooks printed at Downey House. Leah Zidel ’12, former head editor, expanded the student-run publication last year to print flat-binding letter-pressed books, which required additional funding.
“Last year our budget was $4,200, and that got us 400 copies of 4 books, each with letter pressed covers,” Gelly said. “The SBC gave us everything, and it was all funded by them, and it worked out.”
This year, Stethoscope Press asked the SBC for $8,000 in funding to cover 400 copies of 5 books, one with color images, but the SBC provided less money for the group’s printing costs.
“I went to the SBC and asked for money and they came back with $3,200, which they said was enough to fund 200 copies of each book,” Gelly said. “But with the way printing costs scale, it’s the more books you print, the cheaper they are.”
The total amount of money Stethoscope Press needs to publish 200 copies of 5 books this year is $4,740. After realizing this, Gelly went back to the SBC with a second request for money.
“I explained to the SBC that they had not given us enough money to do what they said we could do, which was 200 copies,” Gelly said. “They thought about it, came back, and said, ‘Sorry, we can’t give you any more money.’”
SBC Chair Nicole Brenner ’15 recounted the process.
“We funded Stethoscope sufficient money to print two hundred copies of each book based on the initial quote we were given,” Brenner wrote in an email to The Argus. “Unfortunately, based on a later, and significantly larger updated quote, our funding was no longer sufficient to fully fund Stethoscope’s request.”
According to Brenner, another reason for denying the entirety of Stethoscope Press’ funding request is that the group is not inclusive enough for larger amounts of funding.
“Stethoscope is a great publication, and it’s evident that a lot of time, effort, and energy has been put into their publication, but the final product is five books, each authored by one student and an understudy,” Brenner wrote. “We generally like to see things that include more students in the process because we’re here to fund student activities, and we want everyone to be able to participate.”
Although only a small number of students are directly involved in the publication process, Gelly noted that many enjoy the works produced by Stethoscope Press.
“Last year, we had 400 copies of each book, and they were gone in a week,” he said. “We put them all over campus, and everyone took them, and there was a reading, and everyone seemed pretty happy with them.”
In order to print 200 copies of 5 books, Stethoscope Press predicts that they will need just under $5,000. This amount is over $1,000 more than the SBC allocated to them. In order to reach their funding goal, they looked for alternate means of fundraising outside of the SBC.
“We got a little bit of money from the writing program,” Gelly said. “We had a bake sale yesterday, and we made a fair amount of money doing that. We also started this Indiegogo project.”
The Stethoscope Press profile on Indiegogo, a website similar to Kickstarter that helps individuals and groups raise money by using strong marketing tools and social media, reached its funding goal of $1,200. As of the time of publication, Stethoscope raised $100 more than its goal, for a total of $1,300.
Amy Zhang ’15, one of this year’s Stethoscope writers, also noted that the bake sale proved important for publicity.
“We feel like [the bake sale] gave us a lot of publicity,” Zhang said. “Even after the bake sale, people asked why we were selling things, so we got to talk about the Stethoscope Press.”
Brenner noted that the SBC encourages students to take advantage of alternative fundraising methods.
“The SBC is entirely supportive of alternative funding methods,” wrote Brenner. “Kickstarter is something that a lot of groups are able to successfully utilize when the SBC is either only able to partially fund a request, or must reject a request.”
Gelly stressed that he and the other members of Stethoscope Press do not have negative feelings toward the SBC.
“The SBC has a lot of stuff that they have to fund, and they only have a finite amount of money,” Gelly said. “So I wouldn’t say that they callously denied us money because they hate us; it’s just that they weren’t willing to work with us.”
He added that the final books produced by Stethoscope Press are unique to the University.
“To my knowledge, most other schools don’t offer people who know about book parts and design working with editors and writers to produce full-length student books, which is an incredible opportunity for undergraduate students,” Gelly said.