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Investors
Prospectus on the sale of a book
to be written and published by October of 2009
This,
or something like it, will be the front cover.
By
Harry Welty
Former
Duluth
School
Board member, Columnist,
blogger and web page author and spokesman for Let
Duluth
Vote.
This
investment opportunity will only be open for one week and will be closed as of
Monday June 29th,
2009
, or once $100,000 has been
raised, whichever is sooner. This
will be a short term investment and all profits from the book sales will be
distributed no later than
Dec. 31st, 2009
.
This
email written by Harry Welty on
June 22, 2009
and sent out to 200 angry
Duluth Taxpayer’s explains the investment opportunity.
Friends of the voter, Friends of the taxpayer, Friends of fair play,
I got a fearful email this morning worrying that my book idea would cause
me to stop raising money when we really need the money. WRONG WRONG
WRONG…….It is how we will raise money: Read my reply now because we can’t
afford any confusion about how I propose to raise money. While you’re reading
you may even discover how to make a little profit on the bond.
Dear Friend, (I’m keeping my worried
emailer anonymous)
I don’t and won’t have time to write any darned book until we’ve raised
our $100,000. If we don’t raise it I’ll still write it but we won’t have
our bond and at the moment that’s the only thing that counts.
Because I’ve analyzed the economics of this I know we can “sell” a
minimum of $75,000 to $80,000 dollars worth of books by October. I need people
to understand I intend to apply that money to cover the costs of potential
losses should we lose the court case and forfeit the bond. THAT WOULD MAKE
CONTRIBUTING TO THE BOND A
LOW
RISK DONATION with the possibility of also winning the court case and getting
all the bond money back. If that were to happen donors would get their $100,000
bond back
AND
share in any profits generated by the book’s sale.
Printing a 200-page book would cost about $1.50 a book. Mailing it would cost
about $1.50. If we sold them for $20 that would give us a $17 profit per book.
So who are our potential book customers and book investors?
There are over one hundred Ordean homeowners who
will lose several percentage points on their home valuations if Dr. Dixon builds
Ordean High.
There are at least 500 major licensed landlords
paying through their noses on Red Plan taxes which are set to increase. The list
is being sent to me.
I’ve got 800 regular readers of this blog. (www.letduluthvote.com)
Let Duluth
Vote has received donations from over 1500 separate households.
There are 85,000 taxpayers who could see a 30% to
50% reduction in their school taxes if a reasonable alternative to the Red Plan
is substituted by the new school board elected this fall. Four seats out of
seven are up for a vote. That’s a majority. Does anyone think a pro-Red Plan
candidate stands a chance of winning? I don’t.
There are thousands of Duluth Central Alumni.
There are probably tens of thousands of people who
are mad at
JCI
.
There are millions of people who love underdogs.
We don’t need any of these people to buy my darned book by June 30 but we
do need $100,000 for a bond. I’m prepared to put $5,000 toward the bond on the
expectation that once the sales come in I will be reimbursed. In fact, the only
way I can hope to recover the $12,000 I’ve spent fighting the Red Plan so far
is to make sure we sell $150,000 worth of books by October. I’m looking at
this like both a conservative and an entrepreneur. Being a conservative I’m
operating on the expectation that we will lose the case and forfeit the bond.
But as an entrepreneur I know that IF WE SELL ENOUGH BOOKS AT $17.00
PER
BOOK NO
ONE
WHO CONTRIBUTED TO OUR BOND NEEDS LOSE ANY OF THEIR DONATION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is MUCH more than people taking a risk on winning a law suit and praying
to recover some or all of their money. This is an investment opportunity! I want
anyone kicking in anything over $1,000 to be paid off first FOR THE AMOUNT OVER
$1,000 THEY DONATED/INVESTED. After we’ve paid off the investment portion I
want every donor paid off. If we sell/raise more than $100,000 I’m prepared to
share the additional proceeds with anyone shrewd enough to have invested in this
project. Think of AMWAY. Think of all the sales people we would have. First and
foremost everyone who stood to lose their bond money would have a big incentive
to spread the word and sell this book.
AND
YOU CAN
BET
THAT MEANS ME. I don’t want to lose another cent let alone $5,000!
You and I know in our hearts that 2/3rds of
Duluth
hates the way the Red Plan was forced down our throats. That doesn’t mean
that we can sell a $20 book to 30,000 households. Well then, how many books
could we sell in
Duluth
alone? I’ll bet we could sell 3,000 easy. After two years of
“advertising” this book (fighting the Red Plan) these books would be scarfed
up by people like seagulls attacking French fries.
At a profit of $17.00 per book we’d have to sell 5,833 of them to raise
$100,000. We don’t even have to spend anything on printing until we know how
many books to order. We will wait for presales to tell us how many to print.
We got another $1,000 check Saturday from someone who had no guarantee of
getting it back before this method of fund raising occurred to me. That’s four
$1,000 checks. Two more are pledged. I’m prepared to put $5,000 in this
investment myself. If I can find enough people like me who can see a good
business opportunity we can use their money to leverage additional
contributions. We could announce tomorrow, Tuesday, that we have a matching fund
of $50,000 and are looking for other contributors ASAP to raise the bond. Until
we raise our $100,000 we can keep letting “investors” in.
Every $10,000 worth of books we sell in the next two months will take 10% off
the potential loss to Bond donors.
If we make $100,000 in book sales every donor to the bond will have to
declare them as earnings on their 2009 taxes. I’m not panicked by any means.
As Ambrose Bierce once said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged, it
concentrates his mind wonderfully.” I’m concentrating really hard right now.
If we get a $100,000 bond and a temporary injunction Ordean will remain a middle
school and Central will remain a high school.
I thought Judge Hylden would bump the bond up to a million dollars last week.
He didn’t. I take that to mean he’s watching to see what we do because he
could have put us out of our misery last week. If we fail to raise $100,000 he
won’t have to accept any of the blame. But the longer he waits while we’re
ripping our hearts out raising the bond the harder it will be for him to justify
putting us through all this hell.
If there aren’t a dozen “venture capitalists” out there
Duluth
will never have a future. We just have to find them to save our schools from a
deranged School Board.
Harry
To invest simply print out this pledge, fill it out and
write "investment" at the top include your check and mail it to the
listed address.
First come first serve.
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