CompuServe Messages

I'm glad you like Morph's. I thought it was a good opportunity. We advertise there, and they offered a free six-month subscription if we sent our mailing list to a blind mailing house. That means we didn't "sell" our list, and more people will see a cool magazine and our advertisement in it! As for advertising in the Autodesk MM Guide, here's my perspective. We already advertise InterChange, our 3D translation product, in the AutoCAD Resource Guide. Side-by-side, I had no doubt that the MM guide would be a better place for us to advertise. Autodesk hands over the production of these guides to a third party. When compared with other advertising venues in a cost-per-thousand- customers basis, the MM Guide's rates were several times higher. Why? We were over a barrel because they had the monopoly of getting this book in every box. As for overhead, software developers have all that, too, so I'm very familiar. Dealers can be just as bad as consumers when it comes to shaving percentage points off the price of product: they can play both sides of the dealer / distributor coin, asking for distributor quantity discounts (like 60% off) instead of dealer discounts (40%) yet selling directly to consumers, they can ask for comp "in-store" copies and then sell them, they can engage in a half-dozen pre-sale phone calls with the developer before arranging a sale, and then buy from another distributor instead of buying direct. As for why the mom-and-pop dealership is doomed? I'd suggest you stop by your local CompUSA and just watch what happens for several hours: lots of people appreciating the endless selection, the good prices (10-20% over mail order), lots of impulse purchases, plenty of salespeople, and little sales pressure. Speaking as someone who pressed their nose against the glass of the display cases to lust at the IMSAI and Apple motherboards, I too will regret the passing of the mom-and-pop computer store. It sounds like you have some complaints about Autodesk's dealer policies. As a company that's depended heavily on dealer sales for their success, I hope they can fine-tune their policies. I'd recommend talking at length with your dealer representatives at Autodesk.