If you are a member of the Europa Association, or follow our publication schedule closely, I don't have to tell you that this issue (TEM # 36) is late. This is the second issue of our 1994 publishing year, and therefore theoretically the March/April issue. However, we abandoned that scheme of measurement long ago, deemphasizing "one issue every two months" while maintaining (at least so far) "six issues a year".

The flow of issues has indeed been sporadic; it is not uncommon to see a three month gap with no issue, followed by back-to-back issues a month apart or even two issues delivered at the same time. So what's the problem? There are three primary contributors to this frustrating pattern: time, staffing, and economics. I will address each in turn.

Time

With the exception of Keli Brown (who minds the store, mans the phone, and handles the orders), all employees of GR/D are part- time workers, with fulltime jobs elsewhere. For example, I work 40+ hours a week as the Cost Accounting Manager for Char-Broil, a manufacturer of gas grills in Columbus, Georgia. After a long day at the office and a 40 minute commute from a different time zone I am pretty burned out most week nights, and so for all practical purposes my magazine work is confined to the weekends.

This means that on average I have eight weekends to get out each issue. In actual practice, however, it doesn't work that way. I have a family (replete with a teenager and three cats) to interact with; there are vacations to take, errands to run, and relatives to visit. There is also a large lawn to maintain, which requires the better part of a day to deal with. During the summer the grass must be cut every other week (and summers in Alabama lasts from April until October). Then throw in a major non-magazine project such as reviewing and editing the rules and charts for Second Front (the equivalent of two issues of TEM and a few weekend business trips for good measure. What results is that I may have no time at all for a month or two, followed by a period when every weekend can be devoted to the magazine. My free time is often, like the frequency of the magazine, a case of feast or famine.

Even after the magazine is in Winston's hands and he takes it to the print shop, there is no guarantee that the folks there will be able to jump on it right away. The magazine must be squeezed into a schedule already crowded with other ongoing GR/D projects (most recently Second Front) as well as print jobs for other, non-GR/D customers.

Staffing

You have probably already read in the past about how the part-time GR/D staff is spread all over the United States. John Astell is in Massachusetts, I am in Alabama, Arthur Goodwin is in California, and Winston Hamilton is in Iowa. Consequently, communications necessarily consume much time and energy, as files must be transmitted via modem and printed copy must be mailed or faxed back and forth.

Furthermore, the assistant editorial staff has been similarly dispersed. Jason Long and Roy Lane are in Illinois, Victor Hauser and Deen Wood are in Texas, and Mark Pitcavage is in Ohio. Keeping materials flowing smoothly back and forth between the staff over the last five years has presented a logistical challenge that frankly has not been consistently met. Keeping the pipeline filled and flowing has required more time than I have been able to devote.

And while the "scenario-each-issue" concept is an excellent feature, greatly increasing the value of the magazine, it severely taxes our limited resources, drawing as it does researchers, designers, developers, and playtesters into an already tangled loop. Smoothing the wrinkles out of a magazine scenario at the last minute has caused more than one issue to be severely delayed in the past.

Economics

When you are not paid a salary to perform a job, the leverage your boss can bring to bear upon you is extremely restricted. If the magazine is not on time (however that may be defined), what is Winston going to do about it? He can't reduce the amount in my paycheck, since I don't receive one. The way things now stand he has only two choices: he can tolerate a sporadic publication schedule while continuously cajoling me to be more prompt in the future, or he can fire me and find someone better able to deliver the magazine on time. So far, to my continued amazement (and relief), he has exercised the former option.

While I don't get a paycheck from GR/D, I do accrue some non-monetary rewards for my work, such as the use of an excellent MacIntosh IIcx computer, free GR/D product, and a trip to Origins each year. The assistant editors fare far worse, getting only what scraps remain after the bones have been picked clean (perhaps a free subscription, a game here and there, or the occasional hotel room).

Furthermore, they have as likely as not been ill-equipped to handle the editorial demands placed upon them, having to make do with inadequate or incompatible computer equipment or, on some occasions, no computer equipment of their own at all. That most assistant editors eventually lose interest and move on to other more rewarding pursuits does not surprise me at all.

So What?

Okay, so we don't have the time, people, or money to do a consistent job. That's no excuse, right? Right. We must take the appropriate action to climb out of (and stay out of) the hole we constantly place ourselves into.

We are thoughtfully analyzing the problem to try and figure out how to escape this syndrome of tardiness and achieve a reliable record of delivery. A number of good ideas have been proposed, and we'll have a concrete plan of action developed by next issue.

We'll share it with you then.