With our new editor, Mike Welker, this long-neglected publication is receiving a long-overdue re-thinking. Our current issue, Nr. 7, is completed about to be published. We'd like to have your thoughts regarding the future direction to be taken by the magazine. From: "Mike Welker" > Let's talk about how to make the articles downloadable pdf... As to the question of the online magazine and creating a password-entry device, I leave that to your webmaster--but I think it would be a great idea to make access an annual sub price equal to the mag or lower price. How many outstanding issues (hard-copy) are needed to satisfy present subscriptions? I think granting these folks access is a no-brainer, but I think a lower price for convenient access should attract a lot of persons to subscribe--I don't want to offend present subscribers in the process... From: Kevin Zucker We can do a .pdf download very easily. I have asked Mark Edwards how to limit that to current subscribers. Not sure how I want to handle the web-only subscription fee. Makes sense to charge less for the web version, but we were only covering printing and mailing costs with our current $18.12 subscription price. Maybe we could convert the subscription to online only, stop printing it at all, charge $9 for four (electronic) issues, and extend people's sub if they've paid already on a 2 for 1 basis. From: Mark Edwards Keep printing hard copy. There are still people who like paper. Sell 3 ways -- print only, web only, and both. Price on the web site says $17.96, not $18.12. Raise $18.12 to $18.95, or $9.95 for 4 issues web only. Give me images and copy for the subs (Regular and Scholar) and I'll put them on the Games page. Let's link the store to the game page, so if you click on a description, the games page opens up in a new window, scrolled to that item. From: Mike Welker I was thinking that $9 for four issues sounded about right--and with the web-magazine, it could become possible to do some things that couldn't happen before... a scanner can produce full color images, and if you have map and counter images, replays, snapshots, analysis, and game design articles can be enhanced to help capture both sides of the readership brain. To start, a basic transition would be good... then a strategy that slowly adds these more enhanced things. I'm a little hampered by not having software that would allow me to access the images, but I am getting a large o-time in my December paycheck... I could begin getting some software that would help make me a content creator. Back to OSG News November 2002 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Operational Studies Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com