A two-tiered TSA membership is certainly an option, but that is not what was suggested. Rather, it was suggested to drop the print copies altogether. There will be some additional bookkeeping headaches involved with another membership classification, but those should be minor and smoothed out pretty quickly. However, Mark's involvement will still be the same as long as there are still print copies.
The better question is not whether we can continue to save money by offering digital copies to those that want (we obviously can), but instead how to save money on the print copies and postage. $1.39 in postage is outrageous! Back in the day (and yes, I edited several issues of TC) we mailed out ALL hardcopies, qualified for a bulk mail permit, and sent 'em out cheap. I admit it is nice to have color, but repeated polls of Texas cavers show that regular issues and content are more important that color. So why can't they be produced in good ol' black and white? Mark's estimate of keeping costs to "under $4 per copy" is about twice as high as it could be under the circumstances. Mail the B&W, and save the color for the PDFs, says I. That would be even more incentive for folks to sign up for the e-versions. -- Jim -----Original Message----- From: Charles Goldsmith [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 3:01 PM To: Jim Kennedy Cc: Pete Lindsley; TexasCavers; Stefan Creaser Subject: Re: Digital I'm ok with you wanting a high quality print Jim, and most people are. But why should the majority of the TSA membership pay for a few people that want the high quality? If the majority of the whole membership wants to continue paying, I'm ok with it, but it always seems that the people who want the hardcopy is in the minority. My opinion, we put a monetary value with it, if you want a printed hard copy, mailed to you, you get to pay extra :) That would help cover the rising costs of printing and mailing it, and would push more people to use the digital copy. I know a lot of people are against this, no one wants to spend more money, but lets be realistic for a bit and humor me. Prices are going to continue to go up on postage and printing costs. TSA is in the black right now, largely due to the few who went Digital. As overhead continues to go up, do we adjust membership fees? My vote, drop mailing copies (cept to those who want to pay a surcharge for it) and go Digital completely. This would save TSA a lot of money, save Mark's sanity, and free up a lot of TSA money for other things. You could even drop rates for TSA membership if you wanted. Charles
