I'm sending this message to let the readers of and subscribers to
_Vinyar Tengwar_ know of some changes that are being made effective
immediately.

With the rise of the Internet and, more recently, the release of Peter
Jackson's movie trilogy, there has been a steady increase in the number
of subscribers to _Vinyar Tengwar_, and in the number of back-issue
orders I receive each month. While this is welcome news to us as a
community of scholars, allowing us to reach a wider audience of
enthusiasts and, hopefully, to cultivate new scholarship, it comes at a
cost to your editor.

I have been self-publishing _VT_ since shortly after I took over its
editorship, laser-printing, folding, stapling, trimming, and mailing
each copy of each issue. When subscribership was less than 200, this
was not too burdensome, and allowed me to hold the cost of
subscriptions down low, and unchanged now for more than a decade,
despite rising postage costs. In addition, I have been doing the same
to produce back-issues all along, and again, when the number of issues
that had been produced was still in the 20s or 30s, the burden of
filling an order for a complete set of back-issues was not excessive,
especially since such orders came in about once or twice a month, tops.

However, at now nearly 400 subscribers, with 44 back issues in print
(soon to be 45), and with complete back-issue orders coming in
sometimes 5 or 6 per month, it has become all but impossible for me to
keep up (and those who have now waited, in some cases, for many months
for their back-issue orders to be filled and mailed, might remove the
"all but" from that statement). I hoped to enlist some local volunteer
labor to help me catch again and keep up, but an e-mail appeal for help
produced no results. Therefore, I am faced with the necessity of making
such changes as I can to reduce the labor burden on me, while keeping
costs down and keeping issues in print. Electronic publishing and
back-issue archiving immediately suggests itself; but while that may
prove to be a possibility at some point, it is not yet. So, effective
immediately:

1) New issues of _Vinyar Tengwar_ will no longer be printed and
produced by the editor, but instead will be offset-printed at a
commercial print shop. The number of subscribers now makes this
cost-effective (but see next item), and will maintain a print-quality
that I find acceptable.

2) To offset the rise in printing and mailing costs, the cost of each
issue of _Vinyar Tengwar_ will increase by $1.00, and subscriptions
will increase accordingly. Thus a 4-issue subscription for US delivery
is now $12, for Canada and South America delivery it is $14, and for
everywhere else (sent airmail) it is $16. All current subscriptions
will remain in effect at the previous price -- the new cost applies
only to subscriptions made from this point on.

3) Until I can fill all existing back-issue orders, only issues 36-45
will be available for ordering, at the new per-issue cost, but with a
%25 discount for orders of 5 or more issues. When I have caught up with
orders, I will announce renewed availability on the VT web page at
http://www.elvish.org/VT/

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank all
of the readers and subscribers for your interest, and patience, over
the years.


--
=============================================
Carl F. Hostetter Aelfwine@... http://www.elvish.org

ho bios brachys, he de techne makre.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
"I wish life was not so short," he thought. "Languages take such
a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."