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Re: [AGA-mcm] How much more TAG?
Almost everyone not heavily invested in the AGA that I've talked to says
that TAG is the only thing that the AGA offers them. There are other
fringe and less tangible benefits, but TAG's about it as far as they're
concerned. More often than not now it's just not giving them what they
want.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that if it's not giving them what
they want "now", I can't imagine that it ever did. The quality of the
articles is as good or better than when Neil was doing the magazine. (Neil
did a fantastic job, but didn't have access to the number of experienced
people we do now) And now the magazine is a high quality full color mag as
well. So if they don't like it now, I doubt they ever did. I'd also be
interested to know what percentage of the people you've talked to about it
who WEREN'T involved with the internet/plant forum scene.
Increasing the size/some content of TAG would/should make it a better
value for those folks.
Really? I can see that the comments about photo size would be alleviated.
But the content wouldn't change all that much... certainly not in kind. We
could probably add another article, maybe two. But they would still come
from the same sources. It really bugs me when they say that they can see
the same articles on the internet faster than they can in TAG. I almost
never use reprints. So if they are seeing the same articles in both places,
the people who are submitting articles to me, are then putting the article
up on the internet before it comes out in TAG. Since we are FAR from being
able to pay our contributors, there is NOTHING we can do about this.
(though I do think it's a bit sleazy of people to do)
So, for those current nay-sayers, what about making the magazne bigger,
would make it more acceptable to them. (I am glad to say that in general,
whether via the internet or other sources, we get much more positive
feed-back on TAG than negative) I personally think that we are better off
looking to attract people who don't know of AGA/TAG at all, than we are
trying to satisfy those who just seem to have a negative view of AGA without
being willing to do anything to improve it.
I'm trying, honestly!
I know you are! And we will get more ads with time. But we know it's not
easy.
I did have a question I wanted to raise with y'all. What do you think
about doing a quid pro quo ad deal with the North American Water Gardening
Society? They've got their own publication "Aquascaping Lifestyles
Magazine" which IMO is a good one. We carry it at the store and I've been
impressed with it so far. I sent her the information packet almost two
weeks ago now and haven't heard back. I'm going to be following up as
soon as I get a Yes/No/Maybe from y'all on this.
I guess I'd go for a strong "maybe".<g> If you were talking about a full
page ad, we would have to decide what the benefit was of giving up another
page in TAG with no monetary benefit. Are the pond people likely to become
members based on an ad? I'm not sure how much cross-over there is between
the two hobbys currently. Are our members going to be interested in
subscribing to a pond magazine? Or is it just (to them) more wasted space
in the magazine?
I CERTAINLY would not be opposed to a one-time (or even periodic, though not
every issue) exchange of small ads, as we did with ANGFA. We don't even
need to go to the BOD on that, Cheryl and I handle those as an editorial
decision. I also would have no problem with making some of their
organization materials available when we set up a display at a convention in
exchange for them doing the same. (we are also currently doing this with
ANGFA, though I have an uneasy feeling that we benefit more form this than
they do) but this is part of the courtesy hobby organizations have
traditionally extended to one another.
Karen
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