The purpose in creating an archive of book summaries is to provide our readers with exposure to the books they don't have time to read.

They are not meant to be a total substitute for the book, yet will provide the essential ideas in the book. An average book deserves a summary of approximately 10 pages.

We are creating a collection of summaries of all the important books on intuition development.

For a good view of book summaries in another field, you can see the collection of summaries of books related to counseling and healing HERE!

(starting with about the fourteenth item in that list, a summary of the book, On becoming a person, and the books that follow.)

Readers really appreciate these summaries because it gives them a good taste of the book that they might not otherwise get to read.

People who write summaries say that they gain writing skills, because it is not easy to put the book ideas into their own words.

No "quotes" are allowed-copyright rules-and your own words are required-but when they do work it out to explain the ideas in their own words, the summarizer "digests" the book very well, and now has a personal comprehension, the book will always be a part of them, and they find they can talk about the ideas to other people.

It is a real growth experience, but it takes a lot of work.

I provide some guidelines for writing book summaries, and help the summarizer whenever needed. It is a partnership that helps us and serves our readers. The authors also seem to like the program because it gives readers some sense of the value of the book and boosts awareness and sales.

Many people volunteer initially to do book summaries, but few choose to go on to actually do them. In the past, when I have put out the announcement for book summarizers, many people responded, but then, finding out about the work involved, few people continued on, because of the work involved. It is not a job for most people.

We have such a tiny book budget, that we have to make sure that every book we buy for someone gets summarized. Those who do summaries are getting a new book every time they do a summary.

They get to choose the books we buy for them (only exception is a book already summarized, or one not obviously related to intuition development).

Some summarizers are building a great library from the books we buy for them. However, we do require that the summarizer "prove" their intent by starting out by "fronting" their first book.

That means, think of a book on intuition that you'd like to summarize, either one in your own possession now, or one you can check out from a library. Let's agree on the book, to make sure it will work out.

Do the summary, and then ask for the book of your choice and we buy it for you and send it to you. End result: you've summarized a book, and have received a free book in exchange. You can stop there if you want.

If you want to go on from there, summarize the free book we sent you and we'll send you another book, of your choice, and from then on you receive a free book for every one you summarize.

We used to send out free books to everyone who asked to be a summarizer. The result was that most of the people found the work to be too hard, didn't do a summary, but kept the book, and we were out the cost of the book.

So we no longer provide the first book right away. But you still earn one free book for every book you summarize, only you have to seed the process by providing the first book yourself, although we'll help you select and locate it.

We find this process is both fair to all concerned and makes sure that only those who are motivated to complete summaries are the ones we invest with free books.

If you wish to continue, email me (starbuck@ls.net) and we can brainstorm how to get you started. If you don't wish to participate, no need to respond.

Thanks for your interest.

Henry Reed, Ph.D., Editor

www.intuitive-connections.net