Bill Patterson hasn’t been able to publish the Journal since January of 2010 and that was the issue from July 2007. The main reason is simply that he doesn’t have a couple of clones to do all the things that have been on his plate during that time, especially with the enormous amount of work on the biography that needed to be done. Frankly, I am personally glad that he devoted his time to the biography making the wait for it much shorter than it would have been if he had had to lose focus on it periodically to spend time on the Journal.

I have spoken with him and, in addition to lacking the time, there is also a problem of funding. There are simply insufficient funds available to him to publish the next issue*. He suggested that he might consider trying to get the Society to take over publishing it. I thought that might be a good solution and suggested that maybe the Society could up its membership fees and include a Journal subscription in the membership. Currently his total costs run around $10 a copy to get it out the door and on the way to expectant readers.

Bill also pointed out that in terms of ongoing content, publication of the papers that come out of academic conferences are now providing a large part of the contents, so that it's no longer a "founders problem" of coming up with content; the content essentially comes to the Journal as a result of its longevity and embedment into the community.

So, we agreed that we might stick our necks out and see what the Forum readers thought about the idea. Your responses might be the impetus that would be needed to have the Directors of the Society think about the proposal. If there is a sufficient positive response to this thread, I will undertake to try to have a motion passed at the next Board Meeting to have this done.

Now, I have never been one to ask the question, “What do I get out of being a member of the Society”. I always considered membership a privilege, allowing me a way to ‘pay forward’ some of my debt to Heinlein.

This, however, would provide an additional ‘getting something’ from Society membership, one well worth the higher fee.

I would include in the motion that Bill, if he wishes to, would continue as Senior Editor, but in addition to him and his associate editors, the Society would have to have some additional volunteers to handle the copy editing, printing, shipping etc.

Non-members would still be able to subscribe to the Journal at the regular rate, although, I personally can’t see why one would want to pay full price when you could get the Journal and membership for a reasonable additional fee.
Let me know what you think.

*I have to concede that I have an ulterior motive and possible conflict of interest. I have an article included in the next issue, a side-by-side comparison of three versions of Heinlein’s 1941 GOH speech. I would really like to see this finally in print.

Works for me...I'm sure there will need to be board discussion about the sweet spot on the price point for membership, but if you went to digital publication cost would go waaaay down. And I think underwriting the Journal would be a VERY clear link to benefits of membership. Sort of like Air & Space and support of the Smithsonian museum.

The additional volunteers might be difficult, but if you removed physical mailing tasks out of publication it might be easier than I'm imagining.

I second the idea that the Board should consider it, add it to their next meeting agenda for discussion, etc.

OK by me, too, and since I'm a professional copy editor, maybe I could help out.

Works for me.

Works for me.

sounds good to me justin !

I wouldn't mind paying an extra few dollars a year to pay for publication of the journal.

Publication of the Journal would be the push to get me to join the society....

Rob