OK you PPOA members – here’s some “members-only stuff”!

Yes it’s new and it’s good. We have about 1400 lifetime PPOA members all over the world, while somewhat less than half of you are “active” (meaning you are chippin’ in $25 a year for the active status which has been getting the Pumproom Press mailed to you each session.) It seems like just about all of you like the website and the PrP newsletter, as an awful lot of you downloaded the free PrP #43 which appeared recently on the PPOA.org website in nicely printable .pdf form. As you surely noticed, we placed the Pumproom Press #43 on line for everyone to see and download, while we continued mailing hard copies to all of our active members. With just 1400 members, we somehow get two- to three-thousand hits on the site each month, most from non-members. <Pretty neat, but let’s get ‘em to join!

Well, from another viewpoint, the printing and the mailing of the PrP is killin’ us, so we are setting up to do something differently. PPOA was not designed to make money, but breaking even might be nice. We’re nowhere close to that now, and my tax man says we can’t do a tax deduction because we’ve claimed it too often making it now (for three years) defined as a “hobby”. Semi-retired as I am, that $5,00 to $10,000 a year pocket money is no longer an option!

Here’s the new pricing arrangement: If you are remaining “active” with the $25 a year donation, you will have on-line access to the Pumproom Press with your member number and postal zip code getting you access to the new “active-members only” portion of our website. There, and only there, you will find the .pdf version of the latest Pumproom Press available for viewing or printing. If you still need a hard copy mailed to you, the annual “required donation” will be $40 for each four-issue year.*

When first joining PPOA for the lifetime fee of $75, all the back issues requested at the same time will still be another $65 — $140 post-paid total. If, as a member, you’re simply ordering all the back issues in hard copy, the full set of 44 back issues and a few PrP Extras will now be $90 postpaid, including whatever is current in hard copy.

Is it getting confusing? It’s easier just to join with the $25-per-year thing, and go on line. We are always looking for contributions and articles for the site and the newsletter; we might give you a “year’s” membership for a published article. Give it a thought…

Kent Williams

*You’ve heard that before, I’ll bet. A “year” is four issues long, no matter how long it takes…!