Timewaster's Guide Archive

Well, what are you suggesting? We already cut our print run in half (to 200 issues). For just the cost of artists and authors, it cost about $550 (some we paid out of our account and some paid by the English dept), plus $4 a book (which is the cheapest we've found). We have 50 current subscribers plus 39 people on staff, plus two copies for each artist and author so that's 28 more contributor's copies, so we need to print at least 117 issues plus some extra for those who buy separately. We maybe could go down to 150 copies, but that's only $200 less. So that's at least $1100.

Plus the English department won't take us back just for costing a little less. I think it's beyond cost, personally.

We really did fight this thing. Talk to Matt and you'll find out how many people he talked to in English, Linguistics, and the College to keep us at BYU. It may not seem like it to you all because you're hearing about this after it's all happened, but we've been trying to work this all out for a couple months now.

We do appreciate any help you all can give though. If you can think of something that we haven't thought of, we'd love to stay at BYU and we have until October, essentially to be able to find a way.

I vote Spider-Man and Six-flags guy.

Wow.

Just,... wow.

Let's ignore the baseless accusation that SF lacks academic merit (clearly, Orwell, Shelly, Poe, and Huxley aren't worth studying) for a moment. TLE has provided educational grounding for many students. Everything I know about publication either comes directly or can be traced to my time working at TLE. It's because of TLE that I could start doing other work, which is why I have my job today. Frankly, TLE has much more to do with my career than anything the English department did.

This is very sad.

If you guys need more allies, you may want to approach Dale Pratt in the Spanish Department. Mr. M took at least one class from him. He's the one that sponsored my ORCA grant about comic books. I don't know what he can commit to it, but it can't hurt to have faculty allies, right?

I'll start trying to send a $6 check for each issue, to do my part to keep you afloat. In addition, any work that you can farm out electronically to me I will volunteer to do.  I don't want TLE to die.

Thanks, we really appreciate the support. We did look into being under another department, but unfortunately the only departments that the College felt we could be under is English, and Linguistics and English Language (which has the editing minor). Neither of these would take us and the College wouldn't let us be under them. So there you are.

I agree with you that it's a great experience for students. Much of the faculty (Linda Adams, Mel Thorne, and Zina Peterson at the top) are very supportive of us and think we're the most professional magazine at BYU, but what can we do. We'll be accepting donations as well, and so we're hoping to be able to get enough that way. And we still have our BYU bank account (which we are being given permission to take with us) which will help (but not a whole lot). Here's hoping we get enough money!

What will really help is being able to use the HumPub still and having student slaves volunteers to help us run it.

I have a blog on MySpace.com and invited you as a friend, so respond already!!! So you can have a friend besides Tom  .

Just to clarify, since Jason frequently mixes the two positions up, I'm the managing editor currently and so well be in charge of the magazine for the next issue (not Matt who is the associate and will be managing. A minor detail, but is important to me since it means I will be in charge).

I would also like to thank Matt for the hard work he's put in and for helping me to take the magazine out on its own. If anyone has any ideas on how we can raise money to help with costs, let us know. It's hard to make money on a magazine that costs $4 to print (just for printing, not including payment to authors, artists, and contributor copies), and sells for $5. Because of this, we will have to raise costs from $4.95 to $5.95. Subscriptions are raised as well, but they won't really cover costs since we have to give a discount for subscriptions causing us to essentially lose money on them (although it helps get the word out and it's better to sell some of the print run and get closer to breaking even than to sell none).

As it is, it costs about $1500 total for each print run and we probably make back about $250 of that in subscriptions. Not much. So any help you guys can give whether it's getting the word out to everyone you know who might like it, getting subscriptions yourselves if you don't have one already (it's only like $10 a year!!), and whatever else you can do would be great.

It's not that I care about him, but rather I'm annoyed about hearing about him all the time recently. That's all. In fact, I'd really rather not know about the personal lives of actors. It can really ruin some movies for me when I don't want to watch a movie with this or that actor because of something I know about their personal life. Also, it bugs me that he has vocally come out against ant-depressants. Unfortunately people look up to celebrities and it could cause people to go off the meds just cause he says that they should.  I don't think that's a good thing.

I'm happy cause today at work I'm moving cubicles. I'm not happy with the work and trouble that is involved with moving, but I am so sick of my cubicle. It's right along an aisle with the doorway facing that aisle and so everyone walking by can see what I'm doing. There is a conference room a few feet away and and so I would overhear the meetings going on, which was very distracting, and there were a lot of people who would gather in the aisle outside my cubicle to talk. It was driving me nuts. Then I found out on Monday that I'm moving and today it's actually happening. My new cubicle is still on the aisle, sorta, by the doorway to it faces in so people walking past won't see as much of what I'm doing. Much more privacy. I would have preferred a cubicle farther in, but I can't really complain since I've only been working here like 3 1/2 months. So yeah--I'm moving!