I appreciate all the opinions and feedback. It's great to hear new
voices and old. I would like to put in a couple of things, then I will
let the conversation resume.
1. What Jeff said: One reason this is attractive to me is that we could
easily do a *series* of booklets to offer in our bookstore. We already
have three great topics: beginner basics, algae, and moss. We could
approach ADA about the fourth one, aquascaping. Or someone else could
do it. Any topic that has been presented at an AGA convention is fair
game for a booklet, IMO. So even if "Mosses" don't do well, other
topics could make up for it and once we have a template, it won't be
hard to "plug and play" so to speak.
2. Some of you may know that I make my own dog and cat food. I buy
booklets from Monica Segal, www.monicasegal.com. Her booklets are five
sheets of paper stapled together, without illustrations to speak of,
and they are VERY informative, easy to read, surprisingly professional,
and sell very well. I will find out what one would cost to print
locally.
3. While I don't object to web-based information per se, I think
there's a lot to be said for handing over dollars for something
tangible.
That's all,
Cheryl
Erik Olson wrote:
Well-put Mike.
I'm also in the corner of being pro-"doing stuff". The AGA is not
growing by conserving funds. Our membership is
level-to-slowly-dwindling at the moment. We're not going to generate
any excitement by doing the same stuff for the next few years. Gotta
try some new things.
That said, why NOT run some numbers on it & find out how much it
actually costs to make a small book.
- Erik
On Fri, 19 Jun 2009, Mike Hellweg wrote:
Web-based publications are free for a reason
- they aren't worth much, and anyone can put together a pretty
website. Just look at
the horrible mis-identifications out there on even the good websites.
As an HAP chairman for my local club, I have to deal with this
all of the time. Fortunately we have a great botanical library here in
St. Louis and I'm slowly getting people trained to use it.
As for a web publication - it's not easy to carry a web book around and
read it on the patio on a nice sunny day without lugging all
kinds of gear with you. It's not a good idea to take a laptop with you
into the fishroom to compare photos to specimens in your
tank. You can do those things with a printed publication. In
addition, real publications have value because they are fact checked
and edited professionally. For us to publish something, it should also
be unique.
Any item has a value. As the AGA we tend to undervalue our product.
Not sure why, but we always have. Yes, hobbyists are
notoriously cheap, but they WILL pay for good information. Nice photos
reproduced well will help sell a publication, too.
For TFH or Bowtie to buy a book and put it together they run many
calculations first. These are proprietary, but I can tell you they
won't touch something unless they can be sure something will sell
several thousand copies, at least. I doubt a niche book like algae
or moss would do that well, so I doubt they would touch those topics as
stand alone books. They don't fit with their current
business models. They sell to the mass market.
We're looking at a niche market - maybe a couple hundred copies. This
can do well enough for us if we market it properly, keep costs
in check, charge a reasonable markup, and don't go crazy with the
initial printing. We can learn from mistakes we've made in the
past. And it doesn't have to be a TFH or Krieger level publication.
TAG is beautiful and an already established format. This
booklet can be approximately 40 pages with no ads, just lots of good
information and some great photos. We should be able to sell at
least 200 copies. I'd bet we sell many more than that.
Here's a real example of something that can sell to a niche market - in
this particular example people who want to learn how to ship
fish. I wrote a simple 20 page black and white desktop published book
with no photos. It is NOWHERE near as nice as TAG, even the
old black and white TAG. It is called Shipping Tips for Tropical Fish
Hobbyists and is 20 pages of single spaced information about
just that. I currently sell it only on Aquabid and at swap meets for
$12.99. In the past two and a half years I have sold nearly
700 copies. In the beginning I was selling 30 to 40 copies a month,
one at a time. I'm still selling 5 or 6 copies a month. I
print them and put them together as they are ordered, so my only
carrying cost is blank paper and covers.
There is a market out there for good information printed and put into
one single publication and people WILL PAY for it. This
is what we can do to be different! We're not TFH, Krieger or Bowtie
looking at a mass market, so don't think that way or you will be
disappointed.
We're the AGA and we have a small market of people who keep pretty
plants in glass boxes full of water. We also have people who
write well and who have information that people will pay to read. If
we have experts on various specialized topics such as mosses or
algae, so much the better.
If this one does well, we could do a whole series of small booklets:
mosses; algae; crypts; swords; grass-like plants; rhizome
plants; stem plants; foreground plants; aquascaping; plant tech
(lighting, CO2, dosing, etc.).
My two cents,
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: Karen Randall
To: 'AGA Advisory Committee'
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: [AGA-mcm] Aquarium Moss Publication
As one of the people involved in the proposed algae project, I have to
say that I wouldn?t be happy with a web-based publication? I
never have been. I suspect you may find other authors who feel the
same way.
Karen
From: aga-mcm-bounces@thekrib.com [mailto:aga-mcm-bounces@thekrib.com]
On Behalf Of S. Hieber
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 6:55 AM
To: AGA Advisory Committee
Subject: Re: [AGA-mcm] Aquarium Moss Publication
Being an Adam Smithian, I'd like to suggest that, if there was already
a high demand for this product, someone in the "for
profit" sector of the economy would probably already be producing it.
Does TFH miss a trick? So, I agree with Ben but also
don't have any missgivings about there being much money to be made --
it seems to me more a question of how much subsidy we
want to undertake. Wouldn't it be cheaper to pay somone to put the info
on line rather than hire a paper printer and have to
handle shipping, turnaround times, etc. I know printed color paper has
its intrininsic virtues, and we have some of the best
people for bringing paper to it's most artful frution, but if it's
information dissemination we're interested in as a service
to the community, isn't the net a more obvious choice? I'm thinking
something more along the Watson model might be more
appropriate, more effective and more cost-efficient.
sh
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From: Ben B. <rodeotrout@gmail.com>
To: AGA Advisory Committee <aga-mcm@thekrib.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 4:07:31 PM
Subject: [AGA-mcm] Aquarium Moss Publication
I'll take the opposite viewpoint and say if this is something we want
to do, then we should take anyone's money who is willing
to part with it. Maybe we could give members a discounted price.
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