WOOF woof

[randy_byers]

So I have agreed to be the OE of WOOF this year. WOOF is the World Organization of Faneditors, and it distributes an APA at every Worldcon. The traditional copy count for WOOF has been 100, but participation in recent years has been in single digits. On the other hand, the 2009 OE, lloydpenney thinks we'll get more participation in Reno. Extra copies of the APA will be distributed to interested bystanders. So what do you guys think the copy count should be? I've made this the subject of my first-ever LJ poll. (Hope this works!)

[Poll #1762952]

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Hope the poll gets more results than it currently has.

I don't know how accurate fanzine fans are in their counting, but my experience with mail art collation projects was that whatever copy count I asked for, I got at least five fewer complete sets. (IE, if I asked for 50, I got at most 45 complete sets.) I think towards the end I realized I'd do even better if I asked for a number that didn't end in 0 or 5 -- 53 or 48 copies.

[fmsv.livejournal.com]

Even though I've been a WOOF contributor for years, I'll admit that I just pulled my poll answer out of thin air. There are roughly half a dozen regular contributors each year, and maybe a dozen other people contribute as one-offs. I wouldn't be surprised if Reno gets more contributions than Melbourne, but I'm not sure it'd be a significantly larger number.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I very much appreciate a veteran perspective!

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I put 50 in as the "most logical to me given recent participation," knowing that I'd be silly and run a copy count of 73.

And that pointed me at the One True Obvious Answer. It's the 69th Worldcon; the copy count should be 69.

Provocative, memorable, room for lots of giveaways, and specifically related to this Worldcon. What more could a fan want?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Okay, I had been leaning toward 75 myself (for Goldilocks reasons), but 69 just became my favorite. Fricking brilliant!

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

You could collate it with two covers as an Ace Double. ;>



No, you HAVE to collate it with two covers as an Ace Double.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'll suggest it to Stu, who is doing the cover.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I'm all about clever ideas that make more work for other people.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Well, if Stu is game to do a second cover, my thought is to create a second ToC as well, listing a bunch of imaginary fanzines that aren't in this distribution.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. Yeah!

And.... we can brainstorm some titles and faneds... if there's a movie we want to see between now and worldcon.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I suggested 100, but then... I don't expect to be there, or to contribute, and 50 would probably be enough. (I think I had something in the first or second Distribution, maybe three or four in the years since then, and vaguely suspect that I may have been the OA/OC at least once.)

Maybe, one of these decades, some Dedicated Fannish Bibliographer will compile... at least a Checklist of WOOF Distributions -- two WorldCons I attended seemed not to have one. Roger Hill would be the primary person to check with on that -- he has (almost certainly) contributed to more of them than anyone else has.

I'm not absolutely certain, but am pretty sure that Bruce Pelz had WOOF in mind when he said that APA-L was his second-worst APA-related idea.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Did you see Dave Locke's comment over at file770.com?

The idea of generating some information about the history of WOOF seems to be popular, but so far nobody is volunteering. I don't know Roger Hill, but if anybody can put me in contact with him, I could ask for a checklist.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

How does WOOF work? Inquiring minds want to know. (and yes, I've been in an APA before, but not one that only meets once a year in a different place)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm putting together an official announcement, but here's a few important points to chew on for now. First of all, people need to let me know if they're going to contribute, and they need to tell me what their title and page-count is going to be so I can put it in the Table of Contents. Then they need to get their zines to the convention one way or another. They can either drop them off in the Fanzine Lounge or bring them to the collation in the Fanzine Lounge on Saturday at noon. We'll collate all the zines with a cover and ToC and staple them together. All contributors will get a copy of the distribution (if they aren't at the convention, I'll mail a copy), and then any extras will be handed out on a first-come first-serve or whimsical basis.

There are no guidelines for content that I'm aware of, although it would be interesting to hear from old-timers whether any traditions have grown up around what goes into WOOFzines.

[kproche.livejournal.com]

I can tell you (just got off an editorial conference call) that Yipe! definitely wants to put in a few pages, probably 4.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! I've got you down. I suppose I need to list the editors too. That's you, Jason, and Andy?

[kproche.livejournal.com]

Jason Schachat, Kevin Roche, España Sheriff, Mette Hedin
(and a cast of tens... check out an issue at www.yipezine.com for examples).
Could this mini-issue be a digest of some of our greatest hit[sic] or should it be all-new?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I don't see any problem with doing a Best Of or Greatest Hits or something along those lines. In fact, this is probably the perfect venue for something like that.

[kproche.livejournal.com]

It might work better as 6 pages (3 double sheets)... that way we could include a Mo Starkey cover, an item from each editor and maybe one of LP's ubiquitous LOCs :-)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me. You don't need to give me a final page count yet. With any luck I'll be able to do the ToC at the convention itself, in case there are late contributions, although I haven't figured out the logistics of how to do that yet.