On 7/7/20 9:23 pm, Jeff Zeitlin wrote:
> <snip>
> Thank you - and thank you to everyone who has chimed in!
>
> When I started Freelance Traveller as a badly-designed (actually, in
> retrospect, that initial design wasn't merely bad, it was outright
> dreadful) website in the mid-1990s, I envisioned it as a place where fans
> could get their stuff out in public. Over time, I learned a bit more about
> website design, and in about 1996 and again in 1998, I redesigned the site.
> The 1998 redesign was essentially today's design, modulo the occasional
> tweaking.
To borrow from one of the bitz on FT, the site's "Burgess Shale" period?
>
> I don't know whether there was a cause-and-effect relationship, or whether
> I changed my attitude to the site and presenting it as a community resource
> at the time, or whether it was simply right around then that I started
> owning and using the domain name 'freelancetraveller.com' (prior to that,
> it had been bouncing around the various free hosts, with URLs like
> "neotown.net/freetrav") but the 1996 redesign also really was when it "took
> off" and gained the notice of the Community. I was able to post updates on
> a more-or-less regular schedule, and people started _offering_ material,
> rather than my just getting stuff off the TML or other websites and
> _asking_ for reprint permission. That also gave me the opportunity to learn
> a little bit about what an editor (not just a copy-editor) and curator
> does, and that let me work with the community to (hopefully) improve the
> quality of what they would find when they visited Freelance Traveller.

We get steam engines when it's steam engine time.

We (as in all us mob, not just you and some wombat) got Freelance
Traveller when it was Freelance Traveller time?

Or you were the right schmuck in right place at right time, and have
been hanging onto the crazy rocket ride since?

>
> Over time, I adopted a goal: To emulate, as much as my small efforts could,
> the quality of The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society. Honestly, that
> was probably always in the back of my mind, from the get-go, in the very
> name of the site - "Freelance Traveller" _does_ sound like the kind of
> thing you might see on the masthead of a magazine.

I've actually gotten that reaction from a couple of the PA:VT mob.

You set out to build a brand that comes with an implied claim of
quality.  And if you haven't succeeded in doing that, you've produced a
_damned_ close facsimile.

I ask the other Learned Members (not Jeff Z) - what does "published in
Freelance Traveller magazine" connote about the bit that was published? 
And if you do reply, PLEASE snip the extraneous stuff.

>
> <snip>
>
> I still feel that way. Freelance Traveller is not about me, or about
> itself, it's about the community, and those who take the time to share
> their work.

Welcome to servant leadership.

I have found that to be one of the biggest parts of GMing, where the GM
is first and rearmost.

You're doing it on a bigger scale, and making it look _easy_.  I know
that means it's anything but, and the skill and experience you're
bending to the task is anything but trivial.

>
> <snip> and... asked the community what they thought about the idea of
> Freelance Traveller as a _magazine_, not just a regularly-updated website.

How long did it take for you to dig your heart out of your throat?

>
> The response was overwhelmingly positive. I have no idea whether it was
> because there _were_ no Traveller magazines at the time, because people
> liked the idea of getting a variety of new stuff in one convenient package
> rather than searching around the site, because it looked good, or what -
> but there it was. In my first "From the Editor" in that issue, it was
> pretty clear that I had already mentally committed to continuing to publish
> as a magazine, but even so, I never thought it would last even five years -
> not even the "pro" Traveller magazines made it that long, for the most
> part. More, I was working to a _monthly_ schedule, when even the pros had
> only come out quarterly.

At least part of it would be the convenient packaging - like how a
pre-packed kit of bitz can generally sell for more than the same bitz on
their own.

The value you added there was the curation - going back to the "What
does getting published in FT magazine..." bit.

And the best known way to find the boundaries of the possible is to push
past them into the previously-thought-impossible.

1 slightly-in-need-of-wheel-alignment editor, 1 apparently-aggressive
publication schedule, 1 crazy dream, and a similar result as physics -
push things far enough into a new regime and you get surprises like
nuclear explosions or Freelance Traveller.

The _cost_ of doing all of this (in time, skull sweat, etc) may also be
a bit lower than back in the day.

All interesting behaviour is overdetermined - there are at least two
sufficient explanations for said behaviour, which may have three fifths
of one half of sod all to do with each other.

>
> Nevertheless... There. It. Was. I was getting the support from the
> community, and I was generally meeting that monthly deadline. And you were
> dowloading it and reading it. And it lasted twenty-five issues, more than
> two years. And then it lasted fifty issues. And then it lasted five years.
> Twenty-eight pages of content _each_ _month_. Occasionally, I'd have to
> miss a month for Reasons, but I'd always give you a double issue the next.
So as the momentum built up, what was _really_ driving?  The editor, or
the magazine?
>
> And then I had to admit that I was really trying to do a little too much -
> not really because of the _amount_ of work, but because of the _time_ it
> was taking. So, I switched to bimonthly publication in 2016. But I didn't
> want to disappoint you, so I kept to the same _amount_ of material - the
> size of each issue went from twenty-eight pages to sixty. But with the
> additional time between issues I Could Do This. And you supported the
> change, and continued to support the magazine. And then, before I quite
> realized it, it was the end of 2019, and I had just completed _ten_ _years_
> of publication, barring one issue - and that was under extreme
> circumstances, and I got more support from the Community at that time than
> I could have imagined.

Do you realise how bummed out I was to discover that you were in fact,
human? :)

7 years of single-handed _monthly_ publication, when you said the "pro"
mags were lucky to make 5 years of _quarterly_ publication?  84 (-odd)
issues vs 20?

And then what, 4 years _bimonthly_ on top of the 7 year run?

Cue Goofy Holler here....

When did

a) FT become (one of) the longest-running 3rd-party Trav magazines?

b) FreeTrav realise his accomplishment, a?

c) FreeTrav stop freaking right out at his accomplishment, a?

>
> <snip> As of right now, _before_ I've added issue 100's articles
> to the website, there are _still_ just shy of 2000 articles on the website,
> dating back all the way to that first dreadful design. This issue will put
> it over _that_ milestone. Many - most - of those articles are, if printed,
> _over_ a page of text (or the equivalent in pictures).<snip>
No sir, no case of gravitational attraction here, none at all...
>
> You've been thanking me for Freelance Traveller, every issue. _I_ thank
> _you_ for the support that has made it possible to produce those issues. I
> ask only that you keep it up, so that _together_ we can keep Freelance
> Traveller going into the future.
>
>
>
> ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2020. Use of
> the trademark in this notice and in the
> referenced materials is not intended to
> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>
+1 to Tim C's suggestion about doing a retrospective, perhaps as a
feature article.  I'd be happy to proof-read it and review it, but I
can't write it for you - it's _your_ experience.

Probably a dumb question, but have you thought about rattling a tin cup
via Patreon or something similar? Or would that cause too much strife
with FFE?