Many issues have been dealt with. CFVA membership prices have been lowered. CFVA members can now get significantly better rates on listings (though this took a bit of time - and the people who DID list in the meantime are screwed - more to come on this I think), and the search engine issue has been fixed to some degree - though not so well as it could be. - Nelson
The following letter was sent to a number of Colorado film and video freelancers and others on December 1, 2009.
Dear Freelancer,
As you may recall, I've been a booster of the Colorado Production Resource Guide (CPRG) for a long time: I've listed in the Guide and it's predecessors continuously for over 20 years, and I have bent the ears of a lot of crew members to get them into the Guide, even when there was no direct benefit to them.
However, things have recently changed, and I'm not going to be renewing my listings until the CFVA and the Guide address some problems I see in the Guide. Please read the following, and if you feel similarly please write to the CFVA Board (addresses below) before December 9, 2009 -- the date of the next Board meeting.
Your own listings may be up for renewal soon, so this is an important issue for you, too.
In September the CFVA evidently decided to cease publishing the print edition of the Guide. I say "evidently" because the community didn't hear about this from the CFVA until several months after the fact. The only notice came when I got a renewal message from Elevation Communications, the company that CFVA has contracted with to publish the CPRG. The end of the print Guide has been a long time coming, so that didn't surprise me. What DID surprise me was that listing costs are remaining the same.
Neither the renewal message from Elevation nor the brief November eBulletin item happened to mention pricing. It was only after I had almost finished renewing my three listings that I realized that the cost of listing in the Guide had NOT gone down, as I had expected. Instead of renewing I decided to write some letters. I have not been satisfied with what little response I've gotten, so I'm now writing to the community, to encourage you to contact CFVA and Elevation yourself.
Paper, printing and postage costs are an enormous percentage of publication costs. Going to entirely electronic publication saves a lot of money. The publishing system has been in place for a number of years, and is presumably paid for. Listings are maintained by the person listing. Elevation and CFVA are not providing any more value for the money. I don't expect Elevation to try to save us money; CFVA -- the publisher of the Guide -- is another matter. However I expect BOTH of them to provide marketing value for the money.
I don't know what the appropriate rate for listings is. I don't think $70 or $100 a year for advertising is too much to pay IF THE VALUE IS THERE, but I don't expect to pay the same amount for less. At the very least I expect my listings to decrease by the amount of printing and mailing the copy of the Guide I received as part of my listing. And I don't expect for a big change like this to be completely unannounced and implemented in a way that just feels sneaky.
One argument I've heard is that the high cost of listing is needed because they are losing the revenue from the full-color display ads. But they are also losing that print cost, and would seem to be making up the revenue in offering banner ads in the online version.
My complaint is less the cost itself so much as the lack of openness (informing us, just for starters) and the decline in value in the CPRG. That last item requires some explanation (next section "SEO"). But the cost does feel exorbitant in light of the reduced cost of publication. Perhaps there is a justification for this "high cost for less value", but it has not been tendered.
Try going to Google and searching on various film and video related terms; "Colorado video production" for example. Or "Colorado" and your own craft. Five years ago the CPRG would have been one of the top two or three "hits" on Google. Now it's often not even on the first page. This is not due to competition so much as it is due to the fact that Elevation has not set up the Guide pages to be readily found (called "search engine optimization" or SEO).
When Elevation took over the Guide I offered to help them deal with the SEO, based on the work that I'd already done on the online Guide. They said that they'd take care of it and didn't need my help. Years later it has still not been done, and the Guide has slowly crept off the first page of Google results. This is not a case of 'it didn't work well' -- the SEO simply has not been done at all that I can see.
Your listings constitute the only leverage you have.
If you would like to see these issues addressed in a timely manner NOW is the time to do something about it. Once you've renewed or bought new listings they have no reason to act; for five years or more the SEO has just been sitting there, undone.
Since each of us has our own issues, I've included some possible talking points for your own e-mails, also at the end of this message.
Let me encourage you to write today to Elevation and to the CFVA Board (addresses follow) stating your concerns. If you want to see action taken I suggest that you state that you won't be renewing your listings until these problems have been properly addressed (not just 'we will discuss it').
You should contact the Board and Elevation prior to the the next CFVA Board meeting on December 9, best by several days prior to the meeting. I suggest you also request that the CFVA keep you aprised of decisions taken at the meeting... basically: "what are you going to do about this?"
I don't like not being listed in the CPRG. I've listed for so long, and I think it's an important community resource. But overriding that for me is the feeling that the value of the Guide has decreased markedly, and that I have to work to correct that slide. Having done this job before, and having offered my assistance previously, I see my only option is to protest in the only ways I can - by not renewing and by encouraging others to do so as well.
And please, if and when the CPRG problems are fixed, please continue to list in the Guide. You may never get a call directly from the Guide -- I rarely do -- but it's still an important resource for us all.
Sincerely, Nelson Goforth
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