Re: MCM - Digest V1 #143

[Neil Frank <nfrank@mindspring.com>]

Hi All,

I survived Floyd and can now join the conversation. (early last night it
was headed straight for Raleigh). Whew!!


>From Karen:Fiinally a word about stock holders.  IMO, it is very important
that AGA
>become the majority stockholder in this venture.  I think it is money well
>spent, and allows us to keep the magazine within our control to a greater
>extent.

I agree (see more comments below)

>From DaveG: And I have no doubt that he may have had past problems in
assembling
>>content.  And that these may have made issues appear late (as they have
>>with Neil in the past when he couldn't get good content and had to delay
>>publication).

Can DaveG and Erik find out if the issues were late because of lack of
content or other reasons. [with TAG, the 1999 issue was not late due to
lack of content]

>From DaveG:
>>Now Herlong will have NOTHING TO SAY about what goes into PAM.  So I don't
>>think his views on collecting trips are very relevant.    
>>

DaveG: what are your views on desired topics in general and on collecting
trip articles in particular? 

>From: ErikO
>The ACA does pay him, some $500-1k per issue, as editor and production
>manager.  This was a change when he took over production in '92; formerly
>the editor was volunteer.

I did not know this and I am a lifetime member of ACA!  When I talked to
Herlong recently, he did not volunteer this information but did say that
authors don't get paid. Does anyone know otherwise?


>From: "Merrill Cohen" 
>
if we are going to invest money, why not just
>pay like is intended for PAM for AGM and have the one good magazine?
What have I missed?

Merrill, this is a good point. It is my understanding that with PAM, the
costs of the publication are subsidized by advertising, other stockholders
('angels'), PAM sales to non-AGA members and AGA's contribution($12per
year?). Currently, I am guessing that AGA pays ~$9 per member for TAG
production and mailing. These costs have been very variable over the past
few years because the style of the issues have changed (some with color,
some are double or quardruple ones and we sell extras as back issues at a
moderate profit).  [If we had our annual printing+mailing costs for the
past 3 years (and divide by the approx # members), we could
evaluate my WAG estimate.] From this we could even substract our back issue
sales to give a lower number. If these numbers are in the ball park, it
looks like the cost to the members for PAM will be a nominal increase for a
full color mag. Now, we could try to do this ourselves the costs for our
publication can easily double or even triple. Therefore, it will involve
adding and managing advertisements (something that AGA once did, but
dropped because it was unmanageable FOR ME, there were not as many
potential advertisers out there in 1991, I probably did not charge the
advertisers enough and I did not investigate other ways to make it happen),
we would also need find an outlet for an extra 1,000 to 1,500 issues
(because it is not costeffective to do 4 color process printing with our
current 900 issue run - a few years back it was 600-700) or we could try to
increase membership to 2000 (something we have not aggressively done on an
international or even US/Canadian scale..ie. we don't run ads). And we
still have to deal with the VERY IMPORTANT issue of getting articles and
pictures. With PAM and DaveG we have a different approach and a different
much more agressive manager/editor. Of course, as Paul questions below, we
are assuming that paying authors will provide a steady stream of quality
stuff from a VARIETY of authors. Also, AGA is not taking a big financial
risk (aside from the additional few dollars per member to get the
publication over our current ~$9 costs). It almost sounds too good!  Maybe
one alternative is to ask Dave (or someone else) to do the same think as a
continuation of TAG. Just like BB, we can pay some individuals to produce
the magazine. 

DaveG: what is your opinion of making PAM an AGA product? If AGA were to be
the 100% stockholder, how much would we have to put up?

>From:Paul K
 what kinds of articles will they be
>writing?  I don't think we want articles touting the author's secret
>miracle forumlas that solve all planted tank problems.  We don't want
>articles each issue about a slightly different variety of Echinodorus found
>in a slightly different ditch in Uruguay.  What kind of articles do AGA
>members want, and who will write them?  If the authors are going to be
>mostly the active European people :C. Kasselmann, N. Jacobsen, K Horst,
>etc., can we get enough out of them to keep PAM supplied?

I would think (and hope) that the authors would also include hobbyists from
the US.  But the questions remains: what kind of articles do WE want. What
kind of articles does Dave want?  As current editor, I have published some
of the topics mentioned above. I would not want to do it all the time, but
if people sent me that material and it was well written and illustrated, I
probably would! However, I don't want PAM (or TAG) to excessively focus on
collecting trips (as someone suggested that BB has been doing) and I
wouldn't want it to only write about the newest plant in the hobby. I like
the hobbyist feel and would like as much as possible on advancing and
understanding the art and science of growing plants and illustrating
different successes in the hobby. However, if the collecting trip article
talks about the habitat of Echinodorus or Cryptocoryne and mostly shows the
plants and does not dwell on the native children, pictures of birds or
buying trinkets in town, then I think such an article is USEFUL stuff. On
the other hand, it would be great if PAM try to maintain a hobbyist feel
and never become excessively commercial. 
To properly comment on this we need to see some projections on the number
of and type of articles and the ratio of articles to advertisements in PAM.
Also useful would be a comparison of pages and content of  current TAG to
prospective PAM. (Current TAG "generally" has 22-23 pages of text/pictures
not counting the pages with filler ads.) How much of PAM can be devoted to
AGA stuff, including some member provided material. Could contributors
still get something to make it fair... like a minimum of 1 year
subscription for any published contribution?

DaveG: what do you envision for PAM in terms of pages and topics for
articles/pictures?

--Neil