When Did That Happen?

[kevin_standlee]

Well, I sure didn't notice until it was pointed out to us that Denvention Three raised their supporting membership price to $50 (from $40) on January 1, just in time for Hugo Nominating to open. That's rather unfortunate. It's legal, don't get me wrong -- the price cap is 125% of their $40 advance supporting membership ("voting fee"). I just think it's unfortunate, at least if you want to encourage people to vote. I have to say that this tendency to keep raising the prices on such low-overhead-cost memberships makes the prospect of requiring voting-rights-only (no publications) memberships at a relatively low cost a more attractive idea. I'm not going to launch a campaign for it, though, as I don't think there are enough votes for it. Business Meeting fandom is likely to be pretty happy with the status quo in this department.

Comments

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

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.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

And this is going to get worse, as we see paper progress reports decline in importance and frequency. I expect that we'll see future Worldcons make "electronic copies of pre-con publications" the default, and that eventually the traditional progress report will disappear entirely. As you know, that will reduce the marginal cost of a supporting membership even more.

I would expect a $20 "voting only" membership to be attractive to Worldcons, as I figure it would cost less than $2 in direct costs to service -- even less if set up in such a way as to not requiring paper mail of any sort -- making it very profitable in percentage terms.

[dave-gallaher.livejournal.com]

Looks like Montreal's default is electronic copies of progress reports. Their membership application has a check box for receiving progress reports by mail, with a note saying "We will supply all PRs electronically unless you specifically request a paper copy. Only on PR per household will be mailed."

Dave

This has got to stop ...

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to stop giving conventions my email address. As part of my membership fee, I want the publications.

Re: This has got to stop ...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

1. Then tell Anticipation you want them. They'll send them to you. They aren't saying they won't give them to you; they're saying you have to ask for them. Mainly they've just reversed the "opt-out" policy that most recent Worldcons have had regarding publications.

2. For every person like you, I'm pretty sure there is at least one person who doesn't want paper publications and is happy getting them electronically only.

3. In a few years, I expect Worldcons will stop publishing "progress reports" as we've come to know them. The number of such reports per unit time has been dropping anyway, as more and more information delivery shifts to web sites. Eventually, it's likely to stop completely.

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

Only on PR per household will be mailed.

René did tell me at Smofcon that they would send a PR for each member if you specifically requested it.