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From the Web to Your Bookshelf: The Idealist Guides are Now in Print

From Meg Busse. Read more from Meg in her Career Corner column.


Spotted in stores by Idealist's Web Editor, Joanna Eng For any project, there is almost always some "scope creep" (a tendency for project requirements to increase during development beyond those originally foreseen). This applies to fixing up a house or apartment, planning a trip, creating a job search strategy, or writing a book. My colleagues Eric and Steve and I have plenty of stories for all of those situations and more. But most recently, we were able to bring one of them to fruition after years of shepherding the process of writing and publishing a book.

The Idealist Guides to Nonprofit Careers for First-time Job Seekers and for Sector Switchers began back in 2007 as an idea that was generously funded by the Lumina Foundation in order to help create resources for job seekers who are seeking information about finding and creating their own nonprofit careers. After numerous focus groups, much research, and several surveys, we decided that free, downloadable, online PDFs would be the most flexible format, allowing the broadest access to these books.

Since launching these books as free PDFs, we've been humbled by the response. Readers—from students and job seekers to university career services staff, nonprofit professionals, and career coaches—have found the books' approach accessible and their advice useful.

Many readers wrote to say that, while the free PDFs were great, they'd even pay for the convenience of having the book in a bound version. After dabbling with a print-on-demand service that enabled a print copy (at a high cost), we jumped at the chance to work with Hundreds of Heads Books to publish The Idealist Guides in an affordable and attractive version.

So three years and several iterations of The Idealist Guides later, we are thrilled to be able to offer a new, affordable print version that is available through Amazon, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and independent bookstores across the country. And while there is a bit of nostalgia as we bring this project to a close after an impressive amount of scope creep and some wonderfully steep learning curves, there is also a lot of excitement at the potential for these books in the current economic, social, and political climate. While there are many ways to create positive change, we continue to be inspired, amazed, and awed by the myriad ways people choose to work toward a better world through creating and cultivating their nonprofit careers.

To this end, we would love your help in getting the word out about the new print edition, as well as continuing to let people know about the free PDF versions that will always be available online. If you are interested in writing a review online, posting a banner on your blog, or sharing this information with your networks, you can find information, text, and code on this page (for the first-time job seekers' guide), or here (for the sector switchers' guide).

Thank you in advance for your help and best of luck with all of your projects (scope creep and all!).