I do production work for a large journal in my field and I published books
under my own label on the side, so I have some idea of what's what in
publishing. The problem that ALL journal--magazine--and book publishers are
facing are in large part the horrendous increases--80% and more--in the
cost of the paper they use. One of the traditional ways of holding the line
against costs is to cut the page count. There are, however alternatives.
It's not too far fetched to think of delivering CQ, QST, or the magazine of
your choice on disk. That cuts the hell out of costs. It's the same book or
magazine, only you read it on your favorite Mac, Win95, DOS, or UNIX
machine, color and all. BTDT. I've done it. Another alternative is to
publish on the WWW. Same situation: the material looks the same--sorry it
don't retain the same taste, smell or feel--only it's distributed
electronically over the network. Once you have your text and graphics in
electronic form, you have three choices nowdays: PostScript to paper (hold
those costs, cut the page count), PostScript to a disk with reader (real
cheaper), PostScript to HTML or another of the descriptive languages that
the WWW will tolerate.
So, the bottom line--literally and figuratively--is in the choice of output
and distribution. Journals and books made of paper are rapidly on their way
to being history. You REALLY don't need to cut the page counts if you are
willing to explore alternatives.
As long as we're stuck to paper (chewing gum?), we'll continue to see
prices rise and issues of minority interest (contesting?) cut out in the
name of savings. Man, think how big the NCJ could be if it were distributed
on 3.5 inch HD diskette!
73+
Joe Feustle, N8AAT
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