51
After having assessed all of the materials and advice I had gotten
for running the local science fiction club, I came up with my
approach by the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Eight.
Originally designed as an all consent club, explaining why the
meetings never went anywhere as they could never get everyone to
agree on most things, I decided I would run it more as a
business. As they had already settled on me to head the club at the
end of the previous year, I defined my role as directing the club
and making the choices for it, after asking for advice. I
was effectively making myself a Dictator, but as I had
spent three months meeting with various core members seeking their
thoughts and input, they felt I would continue to ask their advice
and were willing to let me do this. Especially as they had
originally been planning to junk the club all together just a few
months earlier.
Next was my Lieutenant, Daina, who would serve as the
co-manger of the club as well as do some of the necessary behind the
scenes grunt work such as keep in contact with science fiction
authors through the mail and butter them up for appearances at future
meetings. Then there was the Editor... While the same
person who had been sending out the club newsletters over the
previous three years, after looking over his output I had decided to
take over the monthly two-sheet and instead offered him the role of
being the editor of a new quarterly fiction 'zine that would now be
published by the club. It was formatted after The Doctor Who Report
I had come up with six months earlier and would contain short stories
from members of the writer's group that Daina & I were both
associated with, artwork from the artists who had sent in their work
to be used, and an introductory welcome page from the editor,
himself. I sold it to him as a higher profile step up from doing the
monthly meeting notice and he accepted it. And finally we would have
the Treasurer, currently an empty slot with me as an
acting money manager.
I gathered a group of the core members who were interested and
explained this new set-up and focus to them for their 'feedback', but
essentially it was just to get their buy-in. One of the original
founders perked up and seemed to think it could really work. She
noted that if we raised our profile high enough we could contact book
publishers and ask for free books. Could we? Yes, as
long as we offered to review them and tout them in our newsletter,
they'd love the free publicity. I kept this idea in mind and,
knowing Daina was the most prolific reader of the group, asked if she
might write me up some reviews to include in the initial monthly
newsletters as samples. She agreed.
While Daina handled buttering up the authors, my task was to figure
out what non-author meetings we could have. Calling around, I got in
contact with some speakers' bureaus to see if they had members
wishing to present something on a science or science fiction topic.
I further found that the Air Force was willing to send out one of
their representatives to talk of the space related research and work
they were doing. And
I visited the local public radio station to see if I could rope in
their D.J. of the space music show to come in and talk of the space
focused wing of new-age music. I got one better as he brought in a
local space music artist himself for the evening!
When it came time to assemble the first Quarterly, I set up a time
for the editor to meet with me, look over the artwork and stories
that had been submitted for the first issue so he could select what
he liked and we could format the issue that would carry his name.
While he did come, he really wasn't interested in having to go
through all of the material and left all the choices to me. He would
write up the editor's page and get that to me when I was ready to
print-up the masters. When that night came, I called him and he came
over, but had nothing with him. I printed up the master sheets and
went to work splicing them together into fourteen & a half by
eleven inch sheets while he used the computer's word processor to
figure out his one page. I had long been done but didn't want to
pressure him and kept myself busy with other things until he had
finished his first draft.
Looking it over I noted some sentences that could be clarified and he
took a polishing pass on them and we printed it up and I trimmed it &
taped it to its corresponding master page. I asked if he was going
to join me to the copy store to help print it up. Nope, he
had other things he had to do and I was off to print up the Quarterly
and assemble it and staple it all alone as I had been with TDWR in
recent months. While I took it for granted that I'd be doing The
Doctor Who Report alone when I started it, I had imagined having help
with the local science fiction club's variation...
When it was time for the following Quarterly to be planned out, he
told me on the phone he'd leave that to me and to give him a call
when I needed his page. When that day came, he was a no show
for his page. I debated doing the Quarterly all by myself from
now on, including the editor's page, but I instead called up Daina
and told her she was now the editor. She was soon over to compose an
editor's page to be included in the issue I had otherwise completed
and then helped me print-up and assemble the master sheets. She
was a good choice as she actively took over the task of choosing the
fiction selections and core artwork for all the subsequent issues,
allowing me to only be the facilitator in the publishing process
while I otherwise focused on the club's monthly newsletter and my own
upcoming TDWR issues.
Mailing in sample copies of the refreshed newsletter to book
publishers, which included Daina's reviews of books as well as
another club member's reviews, the book companies soon responded by
sending us boxes of upcoming paperback, and a few hardback, science
fiction & fantasy books. After Daina and I made our picks, we
brought them to the meetings to let the club members pick out which
ones they'd like to keep in return for providing us reviews once they
were done reading them.
Ultimately, the renewed monthly and new quarterly publications were a
huge success as well as the meetings and Daina was now able to woo
known science fiction authors to come and do a reading
for the club and discuss their work. One of Daina's book reviews so
impressed a major author and his publisher that he quoted her review
on his subsequent books, flyers and web pages for decades to come!
The Phoenix had risen and I used this success to buoy my spirits
as I faced the years of heart rending medical experiences that still
lay ahead for me...
No comments:
Post a Comment