Wednesday, November 18, 2015

New Jobs

44


As the revelations concerning my health treatment were coming to light over the period of a couple months in the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Seven, I actually had other things going on in my life. Since I no longer had a job, these things kept me from completely dwelling on the numbing medical records review...
While in the hospital for four days I borrowed a friend's laptop and worked out a format for a Doctor Who newsletter, I'm calling it 'The Doctor Who Report' for this text. After working out what each of the sections would have and creating temporary example content for it, I went to my regular copy shop and asked that they print me up a few copies that I could use as demos and also gauge the pricing for the complete issues I hoped to come. Once done, I realized I'd made a small mistake in having the whole issue printed on colored paper and concluded that the actual subscriptions would have a cover on colored paper, but the inner content would be on white for ease of reading.
As the most readily accessible people who might be interested, I called for an off monthly gathering of the local science fiction club members who might be intrigued and roped in a friend to host the gathering. There I showed the example copies I'd made and told them of the concept and goals of the fanzine, short for 'fan magazine'. Many liked it and quickly signed up for the first year's subscription and I had the minimum number of subscriptions I'd need to fund the initial issues.
After that meeting, I then created flyers for the pledge drive volunteers who had helped me during the Doctor Who pledge drive and mailed them out with the remaining example issues. It worked and I got even more subscribers and I was off to write the first full issue.
Earlier in the year I had met the show's producer, John Nathan-Turner, and he had welcomed me to submit a sample script and a collection of new story ideas, which I had completed and mailed off. For the first fictional tale to be serialized in TDWR, I picked the second Doctor Who story I had written up a few years earlier and based my sample script upon. The text was already done and I simply had to transfer it from my old TRS-80 computer floppies to IBM DOS compatible floppies so I could format the story in Microsoft Word and figure out the best segment breaks for the serialization. For the news page of the issues, I trawled for the most interesting news stories from Doctor Who magazine as well as from my meeting with John Nathan-Turner and created my own take on them. The opinion piece I had used in the example issue was for fun and I discarded it to instead jot-up a more suitable, serious piece to close out the final pages of the issue. A bit of tweaking, I then printed the seven and a quarter by eleven inch proofs on my printer and taped the appropriate pages together to create the master sheets. Once reduced by seventy-seven percent, the roughness of the dot matrix printed text would coalesce and give the issue a respectable look & feel, just shy of professionally published works, I hoped.
What crushed me when I went to pick up the first batch, though, was the price tag. It turned out that for the demo issues, since the copy store staff knew me they gave me a break on the pricing but never told me. As I had calculated the price of an annual subscription based on the cost of the demos, when they charged me full price for the complete issues I ended up shelling out about half again my own money to pay for it. As I didn't have a job, this would be impossible to maintain, but at the same time I couldn't very well go back to the subscribers and ask them to pay half again more toward their subscription, or else. It would sound like extortion. I ended up just losing the money out of my own pocket and immediately upped the subscription price listed in the future issues for renewals and new subscribers. While this would eventually help me break even, some of the initial subscribers had ponied-up for subscriptions covering a few years, so their entire subscription run would be at below cost pricing. Ignoring the problem for now, with the blessing of the comic book store owner I knew, I was able to put a few copies 'on the shelf' at his two stores to give TDWR greater exposure and bring in more people.
The first issue printed, folded, stapled and mailed solely by me, I was glad to have it out of my sight as I desperately mulled over what I was going to do for the cost of the subsequent issues...
I went to that month's meeting of the local science fiction club and at least saved myself a few dollars on postage by hand delivering some issues to the subscribing club members who showed up. The meeting was a disaster. The group had devolved into having meetings about what the meetings should be about and after nearly a year of this, they were ready to break up and dissolve. As I wasn't one of the core members, and neither were my failed Dungeons & Dragons group cohorts Rochelle & Daina, we didn't know what we could say about the problem and the meeting broke up into what was expected to be our final post meeting dinner at a local restaurant.
The mood was somber as the core members lamented the ending of the group as none of them wanted to run it anymore. Curious, I asked what was involved in running the group and they mentioned figuring out what to do with the meetings such as inviting authors to speak etc., organizing the occasional special event such as an art auction or convention to raise money, and creating and mailing monthly newsletters to the members and associated groups. The members there looked at the nicely printed copies of TDWR and then looked to me as someone who could get things done and asked if I'd like to volunteer to take over the club for a bit? I said I wouldn't be able to without help and looked to Rochelle & Daina. Rochelle flat out said she couldn't as 'she had so much else to do.' Daina, though, said she'd be willing to help as long as she wasn't directly in charge. With two new willing volunteers, the existing treasurer slash publisher of the club was willing to stay on and, as I had no other job to keep me occupied in life, I agreed.
My one condition was that I could have four months to get a handle on things, review the current membership, organize upcoming meetings and then I'd have things rolling by springtime. As the group had already been expecting to never again have another meeting, trading that in for just a four month break seemed like a good deal to them.
Suddenly, within two month's time frame, I was now in charge of two science fiction fan groups at once! My secret reason for wanting the four month delay was so I could get the rest of my health issues cleared up and out of the way before focusing on my new group's needs.
Surely, I could get my health issues addressed by then...?




impatient? Paper, eBook
help me break even: Shop 

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