I think a large (and this is a 25%) increase in supporting membership costs violates the spirit of what a "supporting" membership was and is supposed to be -- a way for someone to help a Worldcon even though they can't attend.
We did some rough calculations for N4 about the cost of servicing a supporting membership. It worked out to less than $21. We never raised our $35 rates (and had fought tooth and nail with our bidding opponents to keep that rate down), because we recognized that 2/5 of every dollar paid to buy a supporting membership went into easing the financial burden of the convention for everyone. That doesn't amount to a huge offset as an aggregate, but it surely does in spirit.
Denvention 3, which has four fewer publications than did N4 so far, is tracking to cost less per supporting member serviced (roughly $15 or so from their plans) than did N4, even accounting for inflation.
Frankly, raising subscribing rates (when everything we know about costs tells us they are already a substantial money-maker) really cheeses me off. (And raising the rates to $50 -- more than 3X what it costs to service that membership? Particularly when you realize that they are not sending previously-published PRs to late joiners? Even more annoying.)
I vehemently dislike a voting-only membership...but I dislike what I see as price-gouging on supporting memberships almost as much.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-01-04 02:07 pm (UTC)We did some rough calculations for N4 about the cost of servicing a supporting membership. It worked out to less than $21. We never raised our $35 rates (and had fought tooth and nail with our bidding opponents to keep that rate down), because we recognized that 2/5 of every dollar paid to buy a supporting membership went into easing the financial burden of the convention for everyone. That doesn't amount to a huge offset as an aggregate, but it surely does in spirit.
Denvention 3, which has four fewer publications than did N4 so far, is tracking to cost less per supporting member serviced (roughly $15 or so from their plans) than did N4, even accounting for inflation.
Frankly, raising subscribing rates (when everything we know about costs tells us they are already a substantial money-maker) really cheeses me off. (And raising the rates to $50 -- more than 3X what it costs to service that membership? Particularly when you realize that they are not sending previously-published PRs to late joiners? Even more annoying.)
I vehemently dislike a voting-only membership...but I dislike what I see as price-gouging on supporting memberships almost as much.