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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Fred Fish)
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From: [e-mail] (Fred Fish)
Subject: The Fishing Report - Jan 94
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 94 02:54:07 EST
Lines: 171


           T H E    F I S H I N G    R E P O R T

                Jan 5, 1994


This is the first in what will hopefully be an ongoing series of news-
letters to inform people of what is happening with my CD-ROM distributions.

As I write this, the December Freshfish CD-ROM is entering production and I
have started preliminary work on the next Freshfish CD-ROM, as well as the
1000 disk archive CD-ROM.

-------------------
CONTACT INFORMATION
-------------------

I still continue to receive a lot of mail that is forwarded from my old
Belmont address, taking an extra 5-10 days to reach me.  Please make a note
of the following current contact information:

    Amiga Library Services
    610 N. Alma School Road, Suite 18
    Chandler, AZ  85224-3687
    USA

    FAX or voice:    [phone]
    email:        [e-mail]  or  [e-mail]


---------------------------
PREORDER PRICING ELIMINATED
---------------------------

The initial concept for pricing the CD-ROM's was to provide two standard
prices, one for orders that were received prior to production of the
CD-ROM, and one for orders that were received after production had
commenced.  The rationale for this was to encourage people to preorder
CD-ROM's so that I could closely match supply with demand.  The goal was to
avoid having either too many discs and not enough orders, or too many
orders and not enough discs.

Now that I've gone through the production cycle for two Freshfish CD-ROM's,
I have a much better grasp of the costs involved, both for initial
production runs and for what is called a "remount", where another small
production run is done to meet an unanticipated demand.  So I have decided
to eliminate this price differential, and use the preorder price (currently
$19.95 plus shipping and handling) for all CD-ROM's.

I think I can probably do pretty well at matching supply and demand,
without driving the costs up past a tolerable level with either
overproduction or too many remounts.  I still encourage preordering
however, if for no other reason than to ensure that a disk is available for
you.  If you wait until after production, and I have guessed wrong on
matching supply with demand, you may find that a disk you are interested in
is sold out and no more production runs are planned.

----------
BACKISSUES
----------

I still have a limited quantity (75) of the Oct-93 Freshfish CD-ROM's
available, plus a very limited quantity (18) of the Hypermedia Version 1.7
CD-ROM's (floppy disks 1-900).  These disks are available on a
first-come-first-served basis for $19.95 plus shipping and handling.

------------------
Freshfish CD-ROM's
------------------

My original concept for what is now the Freshfish series called for
production on a monthly basis, and in fact the disks were refered to as
"monthly CD-ROMs".  As most of you know, that short of a production
schedule turned out to be a little too optimistic, at least for the first
few CD-ROMs.

I still think the concept of a CD-ROM series that is updated on
approximately a monthly basis is good, and long term I will work towards
reducing the production cycle to hit the goal of releases every four to six
weeks.  For the next couple of CD-ROM's I will be satisfied with a six to
eight week release cycle.  Naturally, people that have preordered a certain
number of months of the "monthly CD-ROM" will still get exactly that many
Freshfish CD-ROM's, it will just take a little bit longer to get all of
them.

Currently I'm planning for the third Freshfish CD-ROM to be called the
"February Freshfish CD-ROM", and to go into production at the end of
February, with shipping during the last week of February or first week of
March.  The fourth Freshfish CD-ROM will be the "April Freshfish CD-ROM",
with production planned about the middle of April.  I'm not yet ready to
project release dates for Freshfish CD-ROM's beyond that point.

-----------------
QUARTERLY CD-ROMs
-----------------

The original concept called for a CD-ROM to be produced after every third
monthly, containing all the new material from each of the previous monthly
CD-ROMs, up to the limit of available previous monthly CD-ROM's or reaching
the maximum capacity of a CD-ROM, whichever came first.  These CD-ROM's
were refered to as "quarterly CD-ROMs".

I need to come up with a more descriptive name for this CD-ROM series,
hopefully one that is as cute and appropriate as the "Freshfish" name for
the CD-ROM's which bring you the "freshest available Fish".  I've already
ruled out "RipeFish", "CannedFish", etc, so please don't suggest those.

The first disk in this series should be available shortly after the release
of the February Freshfish CD-ROM, which would put its release date in early
March.  It will contain all the new material from the Oct-93, Dec-93, and
Feb-94 Freshfish CD-ROM's.  I'm not sure what I will use to fill the
remaining space (assuming there is some).  It will depend on exactly how
much space does remain, and upon what sorts of suggestions I get from the
user community between now and then.  My current inclination is to include
archives of the floppy distribution, starting with the most recently
released disk and working backwards, until the CD-ROM is full.

--------------------------
1000 FLOPPY ARCHIVE CD-ROM
--------------------------

Last summer when I was laying out plans completing the floppy distribution
to disk 1000, and switching over to CD-ROM distribution, I projected
reaching floppy disk 1000 by Jan 1994.  This was based on releasing 25
floppy disks concurrent with monthly CD-ROM's in Oct, Nov, Dec, and Jan.
Obviously I am going to miss that projection.

I am currently at disk 950 in the floppy distribution.  Between now and the
release of the February Freshfish CD-ROM, I am going to attempt to organize
another 25 floppy disks to be released concurrent with the February
Freshfish CD-ROM, and then do the final 25 disks to be released concurrent
with the April Freshfish CD-ROM, about the middle of April.

Between now and April I will be doing as much work as possible on the 1000
disk archive CD-ROM, using the currently available floppies and new
floppies as they become available.  It is possible that the release of this
CD-ROM will be concurrent with the release of the final 25 floppies and the
April Freshfish CD-ROM, but realistically, I am expecting the release to
happen a couple of weeks later.  Pushing two or more CD-ROM's out at
exactly the same time may be just too much work.  So expect the 1000 disk
archive CD-ROM between the middle and end of April.

Many people have asked for details about how the 1000 disk archive CD-ROM
will be organized.  My current thinking on this is to do two different
versions, one that consists of a single CD-ROM with everything in archived
form, and the other that consists of a two CD-ROM set with everything in
unarchived form.  Each of them will be the same price ($19.95), and people
that have preordered the CD-ROM will be asked to select which version they
want.

The single CD-ROM (BBS-ready) version will contain archives on a
per-floppy-directory basis.  That is, each of the main directories on a
floppy will be put in a separate archive, and the "overhead files" such as
the contents of the :c directory and the usual "readme" files, will be put
in yet another archive.  To reconstruct a disk all that will be necessary
is to format the floppy, and then unarchive each of the archives in the
root directory of that floppy.  A CRC list will be provided for each disk,
for validation that the reconstruction was successful.  A tool will be
provided that handles all the details of this process, and makes
reconstruction of floppies as simple and painless as possible.

---------------

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year's.

-Fred ><>

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