Help fund Jake's Untitled Book

As I've said earlier, I'm in the beginning processes of starting to write a book. 

The book will be about the relationship between millennials and politics. Again, still very much in the planning stages on this, but I have realized during my planning that creating a book from almost nowhere is pretty tough to do with hardly any funding. And while I will attempt to fund this as much as I can on my own, some folks have recommended that I start crowdfunding this effort. 

In crowdfunding, I will commit to a few things:

1. I will be completely transparent about where the money that is donated on this page goes. (More on that below). 

2. I will not rely solely on the money raised here to fund this effort. I will also be paying for this effort out of my own money as well. So please, if you do not have the means to donate, do not feel obligated.

3. This book is going to happen with or without your donation. You're probably not supposed to say that when you're soliciting money from people, but I think honesty is really important when you've got your hand out. 

4. I won't withdraw a cent of your money until I actually start writing real content. 

5. If a book doesn't come to fruition in the next year and a half (my timeline), I'll gladly refund your money to you. Again, my entire goal is to be transparent about the status of your money in this project.

I'm really committed to this idea and to this project. The reason I'm asking for money is because having some help with the funding will make the process a little easier for me and for the people helping me on the project. 

So, with that all said, here are some details about what I'm working on:

There's no hiding the relationship between millennials and politics. If nothing else, it's the relationship between one generation coming into its own. 

But there's something different about this generational shift. It's the first time a generation has come of age in the age of the Internet, not to mention that this very same generation came of age just before and after 9/11. 

So like I said, there's something unique about this generation. I want to take several hundred pages and tell you about it. 

Here's how I'm going to do it:

I'm going to do hours and hours of interviews with people all across the millennial generation. I'll talk to people who love politics and I'll talk to people that hate it. I'll talk to people who want to be the President of the United States and I'll talk to people who want to overthrow it. 

I'm also going to read every single thing I can that mentions the word "millennial" and "politics" in the same space. I'll probably also read things that contain just one of those two criteria. 

And finally, I'll bring it back to academia — I'm going to talk to people who have a piece of paper that says that they know what they're talking about. I want to look at this issue from a psychological, sociological and several other ogical ways. 

What makes this book different:

I want to do things a little differently with this book. 

I want everything associated with this process to be 'open source.' When I say 'open source,' I mean that I want everything that I do to be open and obvious to the reader. 

Bottom line: I'll probably make some sort of a conclusion with this book, because what would a book be without a conclusion? But because politics is a touchy issue, there's a chance you might not agree with the conclusion I make. So, I want you to have access to everything that I did. 

At the time of publication, I will launch a website where I will post the transcripts of every interview I conduct (unless a source goes off the record, in which case I won't publish the content of that portion of the interview). In addition to the transcripts, I will also post any documents I reference throughout the process. 

Basically, I want a dynamic, easy-to-digest bibliography for anyone to reference at their leisure.

But I don't expect everyone to go read pages and pages of transcriptions, so after the book's publication, we'll launch a weekly podcast series to talk about the book, the reaction to it, and where the issue goes in the future.

What I need money for:

I will not be able to do all of this work alone. I plan to enlist the help of at least one person to help me transcribe and edit interviews. I don't believe in slave labor, so I'd like to compensate whoever does help me with that task. 

Although technology is great, I do anticipate the need to do some kind of travel for interviews and to meet people to talk about this book. 

My last resort: self-publishing.

I completely plan on trying to get this book published with a real publisher, but in the scenario that that doesn't happen, I still do want to produce some form of a product.

The ending of this long missive:

I'm committed to this project. I'm ready to give this all I've got. 

But I do know that doing it alone will be pretty rough. I'll do it, if I have to, but your help would be appreciated more than you could ever know. 

If at any point during this process you are curious about anything related to this project, please reach out. This isn't my project anymore. It's ours.