Transvestia

magazine in publication and provide the counselling and advice needed and sought by many of its readers. I am not sure that I know the answers but I can at least think of several measures that will help.

Time and money are the essentials of any problem like this. If you haven't enough time to do something yourself you employ somebody else and that takes money. To get more readers requires advertising which takes money and at the same time multiples the work to be performed and the burden on ones time. I'm choked for both so here are some stop gap

measures.

1) When I took inventory January 1 I found that I had and I'm sure this will be hard to believe, $9,500 in actual cost invested in printed stock alone, exclusive of the other equipment etc. necessary to run a business. Every year this figure has gone up. It does so because I have to print more copies of an issue than are likely to be sold right away because 1) I have to have some for those that come along later or who can't afford it right now, and 2) because the cost per copy is less in larger press runs. But tying up this money freezes capital which, if available, would be used to print other material like stories, etc. We haven't offered a new novel or TV Tale for quite awhile and the reasons are those we are discussing, time and money. Since I am retired I just don't have a lot of money to be invested in frozen inventory so that until some of that is liquidated I will not be able to bring out new material.

The thing that bugs me is that many of those who are annoyed by the fact that a given issue does not come out on time have large gaps on their record cards of issues which they do NOT have but which we still do. Although I mention it about every other issue and solicit readers taking advantage of the back issue deal both to save them money, liquidate some of my frozen inventory and free up some of my storage space, they are just as likely as not to squeal about the delay in the current issue rather than filling in with old ones. TVia is not a current events magazine like TIME or LIFE you know. Issues from 5 years ago are just as interesting as todays. Moreover to the relative new comers they may even be more helpful since practically every problem known to the TV world was discussed and commented on by somebody in the earlier issues of TVia

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