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Unfortunately, cheap and quick is what everyone
else does. We need to be better than that. If we do this, let's do
it right.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 11:15
AM
Subject: Re: [AGA-mcm] Aquarium Moss
Publication
If you want to do it really cheaply and quickly, just
produce a power point presentation and make it available for download.
This would be the ultimate in availability, and wouldn?t be a lot of
work to produce.
On 6/19/09 9:22 PM, "Cheryl Rogers" <cheryl@dustyuniverse.com>
wrote:
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 <http://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> <mailto:rodeotrout@gmail.com>
To: AGA Advisory Committee <aga-mcm@thekrib.com> <mailto: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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