Re: Glorantha Digest V1 #280

From: David Gadbois <gadbois_at_cs.utexas.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:37:59 -0500

   From: Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com>    Date: Mon, 15 May 95 19:03:22 -0500

   Sandy's humble suggestion: Do not reprint any issue. If someone    wants a past issue no longer in stock, David offers to have a gopher    xerox a copy of it and mail it to said someone at an exorbitant    price, high enough to cover both the xeroxing and the time taken to    do it, plus a nice profit for Reaching Moon.

I used to sell photocopies of back issues, but I stopped because the demand fell to a level that it just was not worth it to me any more. While putting numbers on the value of the time it takes to do something one does for fun is kind of silly, here are some anyway: It took me about three hours to photocopy 10 issues each of Tales 1-8. Even with letting orders pile up for a few weeks so I could amortize the time it takes to do things like preparing materials, printing mailing labels, going to the post office, managing the money, and adhering to to the rigorous Reaching Moon Megacorp Accounting Procedures, it still takes about 15 minutes to fulfill an individual order. Assuming an average order of three issues, US$2.50 postage, US$5.00 materials cost, a labor rate of US$80.00/hour (what I charge for consulting), and Megacorp royalties, that works out to over US$12.00 per issue. And that is not including the tens of hours spent building and maintaining accounting systems, dealing with printers, and sitting on thousands of bucks worth of inventory. Plus, while I am pleased and proud to help spread the Gloranthan word, there is just not that much joy in sitting around stuffing envelopes and doing double-entry accounting. And I am just a distributor: They editorial and design work that the folks in England and Australia do is even more time consuming.

I hope this does not sound too whiney, but that is why I don't do back issues anymore. When we get Best of Tales out, I hope the issue will evaporate.

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