STATEMENT
5th March 2009
Dear readers, subscribers and friends,
After months of negotiations and promises I have now accepted that we
can no longer publish UFO DATA
as a printed magazine.
The credit crunch has been blamed for everything over the last six
months, but along with the financial climate and banks having wobbly
knees at the thought of helping businesses carry on in these times,
it also seems the interest in this classic subject is at a lifetime
low.
Much information is available on the internet and all recent efforts
to publish a magazine have failed at large personal costs to those
involved, myself personally included.
It has cost me around £10,000 over the last 18 months to produce the
magazine and present some of the best conferences this country has
seen.
Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed every minute of it.
However, the time has come to make a decision.
Without bankrupting myself to keep the 300 or so loyal subscribers
in print, I have no option but to go no further with the printed
magazine.
The magazine costs around £3,000 per issue to publish and we had a
thousand subscribers two years ago. That dropped last year, hence
the personal cost, but this year it is down to the 300 mentioned
above. You can see for yourself that the maths just don’t work.
Philip Mantle has informed me today that he has
to walk away, feeling he has done everything possible to keep the
project alive. I thank him for his efforts and he played a big part
in trying to move forward, but delays from an interested party has
just slowed things down for months, leaving us with no choice but to
draw a line under
UFO DATA Magazine.
My heartfelt thanks go to one individual who has been there for me
and the magazine and without him we simply would not have been able
to operate. He is Steve Johnson.
Research, webmaster and public relations, he has done everything in
a professional and friendly way.
Thank you Steve for everything.
Those who have sent payments by cheque to renew subs since December
will find we have not cashed these (we needed to know we were safe
to publish) and I have refunded all recent PAYPAL activity.
By way of recompense, and again at my own personal cost, I will
endeavour to send all listed subscribers a final electronic version
of the magazine along with a DVD from the 2008 conference featuring
the best of our lecture presentations.
This will take a little while and I will have to fund it personally.
This will be some 600 DVDs and CDs, so please I ask you to bear with
me.
Once again I thank you all on behalf of myself and the many
individuals who have made the last four years possible.
Thanks a million.
Russel Callaghan.
