Editorial

What's this? Another new format for Smith's Report? Can't he make up his mind? I'm trying to. Last week I finished issue 15 of the newsletter in its regular format. Size: 81/2 x 11. Number of pages: 8. Folded into a #10 envelope. It's a job that should take three or four days from start to finish. I worked on it off and on for three weeks. Maybe four. I never did get it right. I'm too old and too cranky to work on a four-day project the best part of a month and have it come out not so good anyway. I decided I would do the next issue of the newsletter in a format I've been thinking about for some time. As a “booklet.”

The more I thought about it, the hotter my brain got, until I said, what the hell, I'm going to do issue 15 itself, this issue, as a booklet. I'll use up another week or two straightening out the details. When you're hot, you're hot, and time and money mean nothing. I like the way these little booklets fit in my hand. I like the way I can slip them onto a bookshelf between real books, and how they look like they almost belong. I like the way I can visualize the layout for a page this size. It's smaller, it's simpler, it's handier. It's the way I need things to be in real life.

So Smith's Report, issue 15, is in a new, longer format. I intend to get it on to schedule. I will have more news in it. Among the knowledgeable, it's widely believed that, when you're doing a newsletter, it's a good idea for it to be newsy. Of course, I'm going to do the news the way I do it, so SR isn't going to be quite like any other newsletter you read. I suppose we'll all just have to live with that.

—Bradley R. Smith
Editor and Publisher