...but how much would capping the membership to make the con fit into two hotels (and no convention center), and cutting the duration reduce membership costs?
It would probably lower the cost to $125 or less. But actually, that would raise the unit cost per time slightly, from $40/day to about $42/day, which makes the event worse value-for-money, not better.
Digression: I'm reminded of an exchange I had leading up to the Calgary Westercon, when I was trying to explain that Westercon was twice as long as the local SF con and cost twice as much. I wrote, "If milk is $1 for one liter and $2 for two litres, is it fair to complain that the two litre bottle is too expensive?" The only reply I got was, "I don't drink milk."
What are the largest expenses that have driven Worldcon membership prices up to where they are, now?
Fixed facilities costs. When we were obliged to move into expensive convention centers without increasing in size that much, we incurred a huge fixed cost.
The other thing that would drive the cost down would be if we could roughly double the number of people attending. The variable cost to the organizers of a Worldcon membership isn't that high -- I calculate it as around $20 -- so drawing 10K members instead of 5K would allow a substantial reduction in price.
I'm skirting the obvious facts that a) the current floating Worldcon membership list may contain more than 2000 or 2500 people who will continue to demand the privilege of attending each year, and b) many of those repeaters probably *like* the features of current Worldcons that require convention centers to facilitate.
That's probably true. I think that any Worldcon committee that wanted to do so could announce that they planned to shorten the con to three days and impose a membership cap in order to keep the price down to something "affordable." I also think such a bid has virtually no chance of being elected. If they were running unopposed, a bid would materialize to oppose them and "save Worldcon for the masses."
And yes, the subject has been discussed in many places, including this LJ. I don't want to sound tired of discussing it, because I'm not. I suppose it would not hurt to try composing a sort of FAQ on this subject. Maybe it's something I should contribute to Conrunner.net.
no subject
Digression: I'm reminded of an exchange I had leading up to the Calgary Westercon, when I was trying to explain that Westercon was twice as long as the local SF con and cost twice as much. I wrote, "If milk is $1 for one liter and $2 for two litres, is it fair to complain that the two litre bottle is too expensive?" The only reply I got was, "I don't drink milk."
Fixed facilities costs. When we were obliged to move into expensive convention centers without increasing in size that much, we incurred a huge fixed cost.
The other thing that would drive the cost down would be if we could roughly double the number of people attending. The variable cost to the organizers of a Worldcon membership isn't that high -- I calculate it as around $20 -- so drawing 10K members instead of 5K would allow a substantial reduction in price.
That's probably true. I think that any Worldcon committee that wanted to do so could announce that they planned to shorten the con to three days and impose a membership cap in order to keep the price down to something "affordable." I also think such a bid has virtually no chance of being elected. If they were running unopposed, a bid would materialize to oppose them and "save Worldcon for the masses."
And yes, the subject has been discussed in many places, including this LJ. I don't want to sound tired of discussing it, because I'm not. I suppose it would not hurt to try composing a sort of FAQ on this subject. Maybe it's something I should contribute to Conrunner.net.