Update on Events and Projects

ByDr. Berney

Update on Events and Projects

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present at the Heartland Unit NASW event honoring Social Workers. While there, I was asked several questions about some of the projects and events we are working. So, this morning, I thought I would provide an update on some of the things happening here at The Mental Breakdown and Paedeia.

1. I mentioned last month (that’s right, it is now April) that we are working on an online course for parents of children with ADHD. That course continues to progress well. While there is still some editing to do, several lessons are completely ready and prepared for upload at Udemy. So I am happy to say that it is progressing well and we hope it will be available by the end of this month.
2. For those who do not already know, Dr. Richard and I host two weekly podcasts. The Paedeia Education Podcast (or Paedeia for short) airs live on Mixlr on Friday mornings at 6:30 am EST. I know it is early, but many parents and teachers are up and getting ready around that time and can tune in while they are preparing for their day. This announcement notwithstanding, I have to be in court this morning on a case for which I was hired, so we will be postponing the Paedeia podcast until Sunday morning. We do not have a specific time yet, as we are trying to book a few guests for this week. Nonetheless, Paedeia will return to its regular day and time next week, April 8, at 6:30 am.
3. Our other podcast, The Mental Breakdown, regularly airs on Mixlr at 8:00 am on Friday mornings. Over the past few weeks we have had a number of listeners tune in live and communicated with us via the Mixlr chat feature. It is awesome to be able to interact and respond to questions, live, as we are airing and recording the podcast! So if you are available, tune in and join the conversation. — I suppose the same is true for the Paedeia podcast! Would love to hear your thoughts and questions as we air. As is the case with Paedeia podcast, we will not be airing this morning due to my required court appearance. We will air The Mental Breakdown on Sunday at a time to be determined.
4. We have taken a little time off from our monthly workshops. This week, to be honest, was one of the reasons why. We have been BUSY! Between the two of us, Dr. Richard and I have provided three workshops to a total of about 200 people just in the past four days! Nonetheless, we are ready to get back to them. We love presenting and sharing information with others and look forward to any other opportunities that come available. If you or your group (be it a church, business, or other organization) would like to hire us to come in and provide a workshop, get in touch with us and we will get the details worked out. For our regularly scheduled events, stay tuned for announcements about upcoming workshops, which will offer CEUs for LMHC, LCSW, and LMFT, as well as certificates for teachers who wish to seek in-service credit from their administrators. We will even give you a certificate if you do not need either of those things, but just want a certificate… 🙂
5. Speaking of workshops, we have a new partner, Webster University Lakeland Campus! Both Dr. Richard and I teach at Webster University and they have graciously offered their venue – which is very conveniently located at Lakeside Village in Lakeland – for future workshops! Their classrooms are very comfortable and can accommodate up to 50 or so people! We are very excited, so thanks Webster University!
6. Some of you may not be aware, as we are just getting it up and on its feet, but our publishing company, Paedeia LLC, is accepting submissions for publication. Paedeia is the company we do all of our workshops and publications through and we have recently decided that we want to open the doors and start publishing the work of others! We have hired a person to head that aspect of the company, Ms. Keirston, and she is eager to get to work! We will publish from any genre and plan to make this work as best we can for the authors. That is, when Dr. Richard and I published our first book through Paedeia, we had to spend thousands of dollars to get the book formatted, arranged, printed, bound, and shipped. It was an unexpected expense, but one we took on because we wanted to get our book out! Now, there are other, more cost effective ways to do this. Namely— ebooks (specifically, Kindle). So the process will work like this:
   1. The author can submit his/her work to Ms. Keirston at this link.
   2. We will review the manuscript and offer you any feedback or suggestions we have that may improve your work. This will include, for the most part, major issues (i.e., disjointed story, incorrect information, unexpected changes to character names, etc.). For smaller things, such as grammatical and spelling issues, we will attempt to remedy them, unless they are too extensive, at which point we will share that with you for you to address.
   3. During this process, we will work on cover art and the overall layout for the book. This will include illustrations, if needed.
   4. When the manuscript is finalized, we will reformat the book for e-publication and add the copyright and other “front matter.”
   5. We will then discuss with the author the sale price for the book. We will offer suggestions, based upon our experience, though we will leave the final decision to the author.
   6. We will then get everything posted to Amazon, and because of our affiliation with Amazon, the book will be available online within a few days.
   7. The all important question, then, is what the royalties are for the author… Well, we have certainly been frustrated with some of our projects with other publishing companies (which is what led us to starting Paedeia in the first place). As such, as opposed to the typical division that heavily favors the publishing company, we offer authors a 60/40 split, with the author receiving 60% of sales. As we enter the process, we will sign a contract with the author that will outline when and how payments will be made, so everything will be on the up and up.
   8. OK. That is the process. If the ebook does very well and it looks as though we have some financial reserve from the book sales (or the author wants to fit the bill), we will then consider doing a physical print of the book to offer through Amazon and other online book stores. As we publish more books (at last check, a company must have at least 5 physical books published), we will be able to apply to have our books in actual book stores. So, here we are, on the ground floor, ready to go. If you have an idea for a book or already have one written and stored on an old external hard drive somewhere in the back of your closet, dig it out and send it in! We will help with everything else!

OK. I think that is all of the announcements for now. There are other things going on, but I will save those for another day.

I hope that you all have a terrific Friday, a wonderful weekend, and are prepared to start another great week on Monday.

Dr. B