Re: ATM Page.

["Michael P. Lindner" <mikel@att.net>]

Daniel Kahraman wrote:
> 
> ...If all the components to make a CD out of this could be
> broken down and itemized ("cost") and then Kalmbach was approached
> with a refined proposal then...
> 
> So one of us with the resources you outline (scanner, software,
> CD-writer, donated labour from one of us TNs , and they make the
> profit!!!
> 
> Question: Who does what and where. Is anyone out there willing to do
> this on a volunteer basis while Kalbach makes money?
> 
> I think to us TNs it would be worth it.

Here were my (as remembered, I have to dig to find the original text)
proposal numbers.  Note that I do NOT advocate trimming out editorials,
event coverage, or ads.  This is because editorials, events, and ads can
be useful too.  For instance, corrections to earlier artciels are often
discussed in editorials.  Coverage of events may include discussions of
interesting scopes, and perhaps name a person I might want to contact to
ask about their work.  And ads are not that big a deal, since we only
have to have one copy of each in the electronic form, and it might be
useful to find out "how much did that scope cost 20 years ago?"

Assuming approx 50 issues with approx 50 pages/issue, I got 2500 pages. 
Assuming 80% text, that's 2K pages.  Estimating 2K bytes/page for HTML
text, that's 4 MB of text.  Assuming 25 images/issue, and 40 KB/image
(B/W GIF compressed), that's 500 MB graphics.  Thus the total size (with
index) fits easily on 1 CD-ROM.

Costs are cleaning and scanning material, cropping and OCR,
proofreading, conversion to HTML, image processing and retouching,
removal of duplicate material, and CD-ROM burning.  Some of this is
non-trivial if working from printed copies, as quite a few pages have
background images.

I guessed an average of 1 hour/page including all of the above steps, or
2500 hours of time.  At minimum wage (since none of this is really
"skilled" labor), that's about $12,500 "fixed" overhead.  Assuming cost
to press CDs and print labels is $2, plus $2 for shipping and handling,
we come up with 12500 + 4 * N = total cost.  If we do a run of 100, we
have a cost of $12,900, so we have to charge $129/copy just to break
even.  On the other hand, if we make 1000 copies (and sell them all),
the cost is $16500, so our cost/copy is $16.50, and if we sell them at
$60/copy (a fair price), our profit is 60000-16500 = $43,500.

That's probably not enough to be worth it to Kalmbach, even if they
thought they could sell 1000 copies.  Obviously, reducing the time to
produce is key.  I offered to do a single issue for Kalmbach as a
demonstration, and also to see how close my production time estimates
were.

It would be nice to donate the labor, but I can't afford to work 2500
hours for free, and I don't know anyone who can.  Do we have 100 people
on this list who would each work 25 hours for free, with scanners, HTML
and image processing software and experience?  Maybe.  Would it all look
like it belonged together when we were done?  Probably not, without a
lot of coordination.

--
Mike Lindner