It’s awesome! The reactions we’ve gotten to Archaeology Odyssey. They’re nothing but raves—from our two important constituencies. Like lawyers who divide the world into clients and lawyers, we divide the world into readers and scholar/authors. Both groups have told us how much they admire what we are doing.
So in that sense, the decision was easy: We’re no longer a quarterly. We’re going to six issues a year. But still we need your help. No matter how successful we are already, new magazines lose money for the first couple of years. Circulation is still too small to attract a bevy of advertisers, and it will still take a few years for people to notice us.
Let me be blunt: Please help us. The easiest and best way to do this is to give gift subscriptions. Your intellectually curious friends and relatives will love you for it, and gift subscriptions are offered at a special low price. Our hope is that when it comes time to renew, the people to whom you give gifts will want to renew at the regular renewal price. (We’re also holding the price line here, too—six issues at the same price as for four.)
And of course you can also help us by renewing your own subscription at the first notice we send you. This saves us the substantial cost of additional notices and lets us have your payment sooner to get us over the hump.
As a direct thank you, I promise that this will be the last discussion in the Editors’ Page of the problems of getting a new magazine successfully launched.
I cannot end this first year of publication without acknowledging debts. My thanks go first to the eminent scholars who had the courage to put their names on the line and publish in a new, untried magazine—and to work with us to make their articles more informative and readable.
My next debt is to our wonderful readers—curious, intelligent, responsive, knowledgeable and articulate, as we know from their letters.
And, finally, kudos to our dedicated, hard-working staff. It was they who really made the final decision to go from four to six issues a year. We simply cannot afford to increase the size of the staff at this point. So we will produce two additional issues—a 50 percent increase—with the people we have. Our readers are worried about the burdens of going to six issues (see the first letter in The Forum), which, I think, reflects a unique relationship between our readers and our staff. Suffice it to say that there are enough helping hands around that the burden will not become unbearable.
It’s hard to believe, after all the planning and hoopla, that we have completed our first year. It has been an exhilarating, sometimes breathtaking experience. Next year’s articles will be even more fascinating to read and more beautiful to look at, but it seems impossible that they will be as much fun to produce. This has been a fabulous year. To all, our heartfelt thanks.
It’s awesome! The reactions we’ve gotten to Archaeology Odyssey. They’re nothing but raves—from our two important constituencies. Like lawyers who divide the world into clients and lawyers, we divide the world into readers and scholar/authors. Both groups have told us how much they admire what we are doing. So in that sense, the decision was easy: We’re no longer a quarterly. We’re going to six issues a year. But still we need your help. No matter how successful we are already, new magazines lose money for the first couple of years. Circulation is still too small to attract a […]
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