FROM ThE EdiTOR's
DESk... 1994: "WE HAVE To WRiTE ThE WORd
'FiNiTO'"
by BEN POEhlANd, MANAGiNG EdiTOR
| New Policies For 1994 1.) As of January 1, 1994 prices for back issues of AC magazine or disk have been raised to $5, inside or outside the USA. 2.) As of January 15, 1994 a moratorium has been placed on all new subscriptions to AC. New subscriptions received after January 16, 1994 will be returned. 3.) Readers whose subscriptions expired with the October 1993 issue (label #1093) whose renewals weren't received by December 4, 1993, have missed the December 1993 issue. That issue is now in short supply and is available only as a Back Issue. (See the masthead on page 3 for information on obtaining Back Issues.) October renewals received after December 5, 1993 will commence with the February 1994 issue. 4.) Readers whose subscriptions expired with the December 1993 issue (label #1293) whose renewals weren't received by February 5, 1994 have missed the February 1994 issue which will be available to them only as a Back Issue at the new higher price. December renewals received after February 6 will be rejected. 5.) This magazine will pass into history after the April 1994 issue. A notice will be published in April giving current subscribers information about their subscriptions. 6.) The subscriber list was "frozen" on February 5, 1994. Current subscribers as of that date will be maintained until AC ceases publication. No renewal notices will be mailed in 1994, and spontaneous renewals received after February 6, 1994 will be rejected. |
Hobson's Choice
Since December 5, when I was forced to order our publisher to reduce the press run of the December AC due to a drop-off in subscriptions, I've been losing sleep. I keep having this recurring dream, one I've had before in periods of stress induced by a conflict between the desires of my heart and the dictates of common sense. The details vary, but it's always the same dream. I had it for the third time just last week, and the profound state of distraction with which it starts my day has begun to affect my performance at work. Here's the script:
I'm driving a car (not my own car, it belongs to someone else) on a modern superhighway and come to a large body of water spanned by an enormous steel-and-concrete bridge. The bridge resembles the Walt Whitman Bridge spanning the Delaware between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, or maybe it's the Chesapeake Bay Bridge connecting the environs of Baltimore to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. (My apologies to those of you who haven't seen-or even heard of-these places.) The paved highway continues onto the bridge, and as I drive up on it I'm feeling very secure. Waves appears as mere ripples on the surface of the dangerous water hundreds of feet below.
Suddenly the bridge isn't so high any more. The roadbed is now quite low to the water, like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel on the Maryland side (again, my apologies). The foaming tops of angry waves are splashing up over the roadbed. I don't like this. I glance anxiously in my rearview mirror to find out what happened to the tall steel bridge I started out on: there's nothing there. There's a sudden rattle under the car. Instinctively, I tighten my grip on the wheel and am dismayed to see the road before me is no longer paved. I'm driving on rickety wooden slats, like the old piers I used to fish from on the Rappahannock River in Virginia as a kid (more apologies). It's single lane, no guardrail. I worry what will happen if I meet another car coming in the opposite direction.
My alarm intensifies as I glance at the water. It's muddy brown, ugly, menacing. Roaring and foaming. A river in flood. A sudden cessation of the rattle under the car brings my attention back to the road. There's no road. Just two slimy wooden planks, one under each wheel of the car, with a gap in between. And these planks lead straight down into the foaming brown abyss. Desperately seeking options, I again glance rearward-into nothingness, which scares me more than the raging water. I want to back up, go back the way I came. Nope, nothing there, just blackness. I stomp on the brake. It fails. I throw the gearshift in reverse. The knob comes off in my hand. I feel the car inclining downward. I don't want to go forward, but I can't go back. No choices left. I switch off the engine. Too late, I'm engulfed in the raging brown foam.
I awake flailing and thrashing, gasping for air, my heart pounding my ribcage with jackhammer blows. Consciousness gradually seeps in like a soothing salve, telling me it isn't real, it was just a dream. My breathing slows, my pulse drops. The first pale rays of a winter dawn are peeking through the window. It occurs to me that, once again, I've been presented with Hobson's Choice. The Devil or The Deep Blue Sea (or brown, as the case may be). Bummer, the alarm clock goes off. I stumble groggily into work, ignoring the famliar sight of all the hi-tech instrumentation in the chemistry lab. My thoughts are preoccupied by the unhappy decision I know I must make. A decision I've put off too long.
The Vanishing Bridge
I'll save myself much work by asking you to dig out your copy of the April '93 AC and read my article titled "Us Guys Iz Yooze Guys". Everything I said then applies now. The troubled subscription history of this magazine in early 1993 is repeating all over again in early 1994.
For most of 1993 AC was undersubscribed. Our first five issues were literally acts of faith. During the first half of 1993 I was biting my nails to the quick with each issue, hoping beyond hope we'd reach our mandated minimum of 500 subscribers. Ever so slowly, the magazine grew. By September of '93 we finally reached our goal of 500, even surpassing it slightly with the mailout of about 530 paid subscription copies in October. The swelling sense of confidence and optimism (ah, that mighty steel bridge) I felt during the summer and fall of '93 lulled me into complacency. I eased off worrying aout the future of the magazine and began putting my effort into improving its quality.
Dare I say it? For a brief moment, I allowed myself to have a little fun. Those of you enjoying improved sound and video in your computers know firsthand what it means when I "have a little fun". The added graphics in the October and December issues, and the extra pages in the December issue, didn't happen by magic. The extra work required took a huge bite out of my private life.
I had the December issue under active production for a full six weeks, about twice what I spent on any other single issue. I began it in October, when renewals were coming in. Maybe I should have kept a daily count. But I was busy working on the unique challenges presented by the December issue. It was all I could do to open the envelopes, place the forms in a box, and return the occasional "defective" subscription (where subscribers or the post office made obvious screwups). The physical bulk of all the paperwork made an impressive appearance. It looked like the subs were just rolling in, I had nothing to worry about except getting the December AC out the door. Which was a plenty big job all by itself.
On the weekend of December 4, with the December issue already en route to the printer, I had to update the subscriber list and print out the mailing labels. That job took about 16 hours-the entire weekend. When it was done I ran a count of current subscribers for the stat sheet I always furnish our publisher. I didn't believe the figures at first, I ran the stats again. (Now the bridge is much lower, see the waves splashing onto the road?) We had lost 150 readers. I contacted the publisher and told them to reduce our press run for December. Just like I did a year ago this time for the February '93 issue (which is now sold out). After putting so much effort into the December issue, it was a crushing blow to then have to turn around and order the press run reduced.
It got worse. With the mailout of the December AC, approximately 60 additional subscriptions expired. I personally mailed out those notices on the morning of December 6 (on my way to work). As of this writing (the middle of January) only about 35 of those have come back. The usual constant trickle of new subscribers and late renewals mostly offset these late December losses. Even so, by January 1 of 1994 we were down to 375 subscribers: about where we were a year ago. (Mama, how did I get onto this rickety wooden pier?)
A New Phase
During the first year of our existence, we could only add subscribers to our rolls. In August (well, June actually) this publication entered a new phase of existence. You'd think someone (our publisher?) might have warned me. Nope. As with all things connected with this strange enterprise, I've had to learn the hard way. (When you're totally ignorant, you don't even know what questions to ask.) This new phase has to do with cycles of subscription renewals. In this phase, you not only add people to the rolls, but you also now have the capacity of losing them. I would describe it mathematically as a shift from simple addition to the dynamics of a first-order differential equation. Maintaining an accurate summation of the dynamics on a daily basis requires vigilance. I wasn't in a position to be vigilant, even if I had been aware of the coming change in subscription dynamics.
There were about 15 subscriptions that expired in June and August combined. Notices were sent; most failed to renew. That was an alarm signal, and I missed it. It was masked by the constant trickle of new readers (about 5/month) we're always adding. The only thing I noticed was that the growth spurt we experienced in the spring of '93 seemed to have slowed down a little, then resumed its usual pattern of slow but steady increase again in September. It seemed normal to me. Things usually slow down in the summer, right? People are away on vacations and stuff. Hey, no big deal.
Then came October, when roughly 70% of our reader base turned over. While I was entirely preoccupied with production on the December issue, the you-know what was hitting the fan. Very insidious, how magazines die. It happens slowly, quietly. Real easy to miss if you're preoccupied (and brother, was I ever!). Until you sit down one day and do a little counting. Then it hits you like a ton of bricks: 35% of the renewal notices never came back. Pretty much the same pattern for December, too. October and December together account for almost 85% of ACs renewable reader base. Those two renewal cycles determine our future.
If you're the type who likes to play with numbers, play with this: AC will start this subscription year with 380-400 paid subs, 20% below our mandated minimum. We'll lose 1/3 of those by this time next year. We'll add about 60 new readers during the same period (assuming the "trickle rate" holds up, and the Killer Winter of '94 seems to be clobbering it). The most optimistic projection sees us ending the year with 70 fewer than we now have. We are falling ever further away from the minimum 500 we need to sustain this effort financially. We can't go on like this. How many more readers will silently disappear during the renewal cycles in the year ahead? And, at what point will AC run upon the shoals of bankruptcy?
I don't intend to find out.
The CSS Factor
In early December, Computer Software Services made a rare mass mailing to their customer list, informing them of new product offerings. (Some of you may recall receiving this.) Included in the package was an AC subscription form, and in his cover letter CSS proprietor Bob Puff devoted a paragraph saying lots of nice things about AC. Already despondent over the jolt I received at counting up our October losses, I looked to the CSS mailing to save us by bringing in 135 new readers by the middle of January 1994. It seemed possible. The CSS mailing was a major effort: 900 pieces. Surely, a 15% response wasn't asking too much? For the next four weeks I clung to this as our last chance for a miracle. The anxiety was unbearable. And this recurring dream started.
My agony went for nothing. The miracle didn't happen. Not even close. By January 15 the CSS mailing had netted AC only 13 new subscribers plus two renewals. Devastated, I struggled within myself to accept the brutal facts.
Hollow Numbers, Ugly Equations
Groping for perspective on the dilemma, I went back to the beginning: the Mail Campaign of 1992. Our stated goal was to find 500 people who would commit themselves to supporting the magazine. We collected 615 signed postcard pledges. Certainly more than enough.
Rubbish. O£ those 615, only about 260 ultimately honored their pledge in 1992-93, and some of those took their sweet time doing so. If the Campaign Committe could have known this in May of 1992, it would have declared the Campaign a failure, and AC would never have begun. By late 1993, it was finally clear that 60% of the signatures collected by the Committee were worthless. In short, AC was founded upon a lie and has been living on borrowed time from the beginning.
The only things that kept us afloat financially were the conservative nature of the business plan I concocted for this weird experiment, plus a lot of hard work on the part of our Advertising Editor, Disk Editor, and Disk Distribution Manager whose labors brought in enough revenue to cover our subscription deficiencies. Financial solvency is a necessary, but not alone sufficient, requirement for the ultimate success of AC. Making money is not what we are about.
Balanced against the good this publication has done for the community is the effort required to produce it. I think the AC Staff will agree when I say the effort required far exceeds what any of us expected. That especially applies to me. This magazine has now totally usurped my private life, replacing a few close personal relationships with a multitude of more distant ones. I serve as pivot-point between staff and publisher, and the relations between these two vital components of ACs operational machinery haven't always been entirely cordial. The emotional consequences of this were slow in developing, but are now clear: I'm coming unraveled. I've asked more of myself, and of the staff, than human flesh can deliver.
I finally distilled the question down to its ugly essentials. How many AC readers are worth the utter destruction of my private life? (What a hideous equation!) Incredibly, I came up with a figure: 500. But, we don't have 500. We never really did (a growth spurt last spring due to transfers from the demise of AIM artificially swelled our base, but nearly all failed to renew). This, then, is the turbulent reality I had striven to ignore: the muddy maelstrom of Truth, against which I've flailed in vain these past weeks in the nether-world of dreams. That solid span of concrete and steel, that bedrock foundation of 500 subscribers, was a myth (no wonder it disappeared behind me!). The equation does not balance, and I do not possess the emotional fortitude to face another year with this magazine barely clinging to the edge of existence. It's time to end the agony of anxiety that has characterized this publication since it was launched.
Closing Up Shop
Although the engine I created to operate AC never ran as smoothly as I envisioned, as in the dream its forward momentum can't be stopped by just turning a key or throwing gears into reverse. It took a long time to start, it will take awhile to bring it to a controlled stop.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to do it. Hopefully I'll be able to supply details in the April issue. Like many of you, I live in the shadow of the demise of Analog, ANTIC, and AIM. The collapse of those publications left a bitter residue of cynicism from which the community has never quite recovered. If at all possible, I intend to see to it that AC doesn't end that way. I believe the resources exist to enable us to make refunds. Working out the logistics will take some doing. Just as the creation of a magazine was new ground for me in 1992, so the dismantling of one-with minimal financial impact on those of you who faithfully supported us-will be my challenge in 1994.
The SLCC Consortium
Now that I've got you totally bummed out with all this depressing news, I'll offer a glimmer of hope. In January and February I had several lengthy discus sions with AC Staff Reviewer Bob Woolley of the San Leandro club in California, who is just as concerned about the future of the 8-bit as you and I are. Bob seems to have secured an agreement with Jim Hood (an accomplished graphic artist, DTP person, 8-bitter and President of SLCC) to produce an all 8-bit magazine to carry on the traditions established by this publication.
Bob and Jim appear prepared to accept the fact that their publication might have barely 300 subscribers. Bob mumbled something about it maybe being 40 pages. Will it be bimonthly like AC presently is? Probably. How much will the subscription cost? I don't know. Will they publish a disk? I don't know. Will any of ACs present Staff go to work for this new publication? I don't know. Will the new publication even be called Atari Classics? I don't know.
Bob agreed to have his "consortium" submit a 4-page article, pre-typeset, to be included in the final (April '94) issue of AC. The idea being to give all present sub scribers to AC an opportunity to sample the flavor of whatever this SLCC Consortium might produce. Our plan is to include a clip-out form you'll be able to mail off to these guys if you like what they do in our April issue and feel you'd like to support their effort. I've given them a deadline of March 15 to submit their material for inclusion in the April AC. I'm real curious to see what, if anything, arrives in my mailbox from Bob and his co-conspirators at SLCC.
The California effort is entirely independent of the present Atari Classics, and the shutdown of this publication will proceed according to a plan I'm still working out with Unicorn Publications, whose details will hopefully also be presented in the April issue. It's getting to be a very strange world for Atari 8-bitters in 1994.
