From sersun1!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ennews!fishpond!fnf Mon Jan 18 17:18:13 GMT 1993
Article 20755 of comp.sys.amiga.misc:
Path: sersun1!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!agate!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ennews!fishpond!fnf
>From: fnf@fishpond.uucp (Fred Fish)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: to be or not to be
Message-ID: <C11CEu.qn@fishpond.uucp>
Date: 18 Jan 93 05:54:30 GMT
Organization: Amiga Library Services
Lines: 35

Over the last couple of years, I've noticed a trend where fewer and fewer
people are on my direct subscriber list.  This last year has seen a
particularly sharp decrease, from about an average of 75 subscribers
to the current low of 41.  That's right, there are only 41 people or
organizations in the whole world that receive disks directly from me
as of Jan 17, 1993, with about half of them being outside the United
States.

During this last year, the amount of time I have had available to spend
constructing disks, doing accounting, and otherwise managing the library
has also dropped sharply, so that more than ever I depend upon using
outside help for things like presorting the submitted material, creating
prototype disks which I then use for constructing the final disks, and
doing the actual duplication, packaging, and shipping of the disks.
I cannot expect these people to work for nothing, so I have been paying
them reasonable compensation for their time out of the ever dwindling
subscription income.  It has reached the point where sometime in the
next month or two I will make a decision about whether or not to shut
down the library, since if there are insufficient incoming funds to
meet the operating costs as well as pay for an occasional perk like
a trip to an Amiga show once or twice a year, or some new hardware toy,
there is little incentive to continue spending 20-30 hours a month
running it.

If you are in a position to influence a club, computer store, or other
Amiga related organization to maintain a direct subscription for new
disks, and thus help fund continued maintenance of the library, and are
interested in seeing the library continue to grow, I'd urge you to
consider doing what you can to help push the number of direct subscribers
back up to more reasonable levels.  Thanks.

-Fred
-- 
|\/ o\  Fred Fish, 1835 E. Belmont Drive, Tempe, AZ 85284,  USA
|/\__/  1-602-491-0048 {asuvax,mcdphx,cygint,amix}!fishpond!fnf