Quote:
Originally Posted by Kris Riley
If I was to donate my time authoring the dvds, which is something I do for work. The replicating of 200 dvds with cases and labels would cost about 1500 dollars (possibly less) and it would be decent enough to sell. You might make twice as much as you payed for duplicating and printing off sales. Also the place I work for can also do the sales and mailings of dvds to people and pay the royalties to Bill & Kerry. It's all about what you would want to spend.
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Thanks, Kris - this is much appreciated.
Clearly it's a good idea. There would need to be a third-party system in place, and the same goes for merchandising and other similar 'added value' ideas. But this has to be possible to set up.
John aka#404 summarized our position well on the previous page. Here it is again - with some further added thoughts as Kerry and I debate this further:
We understand all the points of view and respect them fully. We're not at all decided how best to proceed. The problem we're trying to solve is basically how to fund Camelot... Avalon costs almost nothing to host compared with the running costs of the entire Camelot enterprise.
The problem is that we're running out of money and we have to find some way of keeping afloat. Lots of people do not realize that we sell nothing, have no independent financial support, and have gone way out on very thin ice in order to do our work, all of which has been made available for free.
Camelot's research will always remain free - because no-one can own this important information, that belongs to all of humanity. That is our firm position re Camelot and will never change.
Various solutions considered:
Advertising: never.
Merchandising: yes, good idea, if everything can be handled by a third party.
DVDs/CDs: all of our videos, transcripts and audios so far would fit on maybe 10 CDs, which could be sold as a set for about $90. It sure saves a LOT of downloading... and at less than $1 per hour for watching (and keeping) this material and all it contains, has to be pretty good value.
DVDs are a slightly different (higher quality) product... maybe of our most popular videos. If we sold separate DVDs of each interview, it'd be quite a catalog - and some items might not be as popular as others.
Donate buttons: they're at the foot of all our pages, on both sites, except the forum itself. We could add them to the forum pages... but it might be a bit of a coding challenge as the forum template software is not easy to amend. Prompts that we really appreciate donations (and are dependent on them!) do make a difference, and we do fully take that point.
The Book of Camelot: we have someone who's promised they will publish anything we write... but, actually, self-publishing might be a better way to go (or simply creating an online e-book). We do have a lot to write about, and all we need is the time.
Subscriptions:
* If we charged a nominal fee for membership, the forum would always remain accessible on a read-only basis to all visitors. We'd never once considered anything different.
* Having read all comments and suggestions, we're now thinking of an extremely modest $1 per month subscription -
with the option, when registering, of choosing to add-on a regular, small voluntary monthly donation.
* We're also considering ways in which members could sponsor other nominated members. (Those with a genuinely tight budget, or with no bank accounts, might somehow flag a request for support in their member profile. No shame, just practicalities that we understand.) We welcome feedback.
We think that we we implemented all of the above, it would all work and Camelot's mission could continue. We can't really know until we do it.
I'd like to state again that we fully and respect understand all members' views on this and
the other thread, and the very helpful way that all these views have been expressed. We're not in any way trying to lock anyone out: but we have no other sources of funding, and we're totally reliant on some system - now outlined above - which is at once a fair response for our work and continues to make all the information available.
Very best wishes to all, Bill