thoughtful1) That some people who want to vote, fairly and by reading/watching as many of the nominated works as possible, are prevented by the cost of a Supporting Membership.
2) That there is thus an untapped source of revenue for Worldcon, in the form of the Voting Memberships, and that this would be a large enough group to make up for the decrease in Supporting Membership sales.
3) That this would not interfere with the Hugo Voter's Packet.
Some of the concerns are as follows:
1) That the potential for voter fraud would increase with the reduction in initial price (IE, someone who was trying to vote-fix could buy three $40 memberships for the cost of two $60 memberships, thus allowing for a higher number of false/purchased votes).
2) That the decrease in Supporting Membership sales would not be countered by the increase in Voting Membership sales (Mary and John always buy Supporting Memberships, for $60, so they can vote; now that they can buy Voting Memberships for $40, they do that instead; Worldcon has essentially lost $40 in revenue).
3) That reducing the price too much would cause publishers to rethink participation in the Voter's Packet.
All of these concerns are valid.
The Hugos, like everything else about Worldcon, are a volunteer organization. They are not run by a fully trained team of crack voter fraud investigators; they're run by fans like you and me. Anything that increases the chances of voter fraud is something we need to seriously think about, for which reason I would not recommend reducing the cost of voting rights below $40—although I would also at that point suggest the creation of a "school age" voting membership, which costs $20 and is only available to fans ages 14-20 (high school and start of college). Trust me, when I was a senior in high school, $20 was a fortune, and I was not committing voter fraud. But I was growing into someone who would absolutely support and believe in these awards. Could someone buy themselves a Hugo? Yes. But someone could buy themselves a Hugo now. If Oprah wants a Hugo, she can buy it. People will gossip, and the community will find out, but Oprah will have her Hugo.
Now the finances are an important consideration. A lot of each Worldcon's seed money, according to my understanding, comes from Supporting Memberships and pre-Supports. If you take that away, we could wind up in a situation where there are no Hugos, because there is no Worldcon. And if the idea that the convention costs a lot of money, consider this: they have to make rockets, and Hugo rockets ain't cheap. They're incredibly high-quality pieces of statuary, produced in far too small a number to start getting "mass production discounts." (When I print a CD, for example, the first disk costs about $2,000. But the next 999 are free.) So in order to open the doors wider, we're threatening the income that keeps the infrastructure of the awards stable. That's part of why I don't recommend rushing into anything: I just think the conversation is a good thing to have.
Finally, there is the voter's packet, and that's where things get hinky. There's no guarantee, year to year, that the packet will exist; publishers are under no obligation to allow their works (often their most popular, and hence most potentially profitable) to be given away for free, and that's what this essentially is, since neither they nor the authors are seeing any royalties from this distribution channel. I am okay with that—for me to have gotten on the ballot in the first place, a lot of folks have to have read my stuff—but I don't make the final call. So what happens if we say "Voting Memberships are $40" and the publishers say "Great, you can't have our books"?
I don't know.
I know the first thing would be the authors getting punished. Orbit chose not to make the books by their nominees available in all formats this year, and while I do not criticize them for that choice, it did result in my receiving email that flat out said "I was going to vote for you and now I'm not because I hate this file format." People can be petty when thwarted, and I guarantee that if four authors have their books in the packet and one does not, that fifth author is losing, as well as taking a lot of shit. I don't like taking shit. I have plenty.
So what we need is a) a price point that does not cause the Worldcon to lose money to the point where it becomes unstable, and b) does not upset publishers, while also c) allowing fans who really want to be a part of this process to participate. And that's why I don't want to see the amendment that would keep this from ever becoming possible to go through. Not because I think the Hugos should be free, or want to see it turn into an even bigger popularity contest than it already is: because I think it's important to encouraging participation in the awards from an ever-growing number of fans. Whether it's saying "individuals can cede their voting rights to the convention to be re-sold for a lower than Supporting rate to low-income fans" or "teens vote cheap" or "we need time to think," I believe that thinking is what needs to happen. Not closing off the conversation when it's just getting underway.
August 10 2013, 00:41:49 UTC 3 years ago
For $60, you get over $200 worth of what your peers think are the best books of the previous year, plus other materials that sometimes a person can't even purchase in their region. And you get to vote on Hugos, Campbell, and Worldcon Site Selection. There is simply no valid argument for "this should be cheaper". This is better than any deal you can get on Woot!
August 10 2013, 01:04:36 UTC 3 years ago
August 10 2013, 02:21:29 UTC 3 years ago Edited: August 10 2013, 02:27:08 UTC
Your assumption is false. I lost my father and our house at a very young age. We were poverty line before the fire, and we were destitute after the fire. My mother raised 3 kids on $3.75/hour. We lived in a ghetto of government subsidized housing. I worked 40+ hours a week shoveling snow and babysitting until I turned 14, where I got a full time job. By the time I graduated high school I was attending school, working nights at one job and weekends at another.
We were poor. Dirt poor. Like nothing, not a single thing for Christmas poor unless a charity gave us something. Poor like "police don't get paid enough to come into your neighborhood" poor. You could smack the walls of our one-bedroom unit and listen to all the cockroaches and mice run scampering.
I got your poor right here.
To make this conversation relevant to Worldcons, I spent my first three Worldcons sleeping in rooms with 10+ people on the floor. Or sleeping under the stairs when we couldn't find a room. I remember playing music on a Boston street corner with a hat out so that we could come up with toll and gas money we needed to get back to Virginia. For the first 10 years I attended Cons, I worked them because I couldn't afford to attend them otherwise.
So now, if you want to complain that attending far-away Worldcons is expensive: yeah, I got your back. I know. By the time you pay for a flight and 5 nights in the convention hotel, you're out nearly $2000. It ain't cheap, and that's before you bought a badge (which is nearly irrelevant in that scope). In fact, I often help people who aren't weren't nasty to me about it attend. I'm not poor any more, and I like helping people do things they might not otherwise be able to do. That's one of the ways I pay it forward.
But the topic here is not attending Worldcons. The topic is the value point of a supporting membership, and the fact that it's already a give-away of some of the best fiction out there. I question if you truly know anything about poor, because I know a lot of people that grew up poor and we are always looking for the best value out there. We are always looking to get more for less, because we grew up having no choice. This is hands down the best value out there for fiction. If this had been available when I was still sleeping in my car, I would have found $60 to pay for it. Because duh. Hell, that would have been cheaper than my gas cost to go back and forth to a library who would have held those things for me.
The other thing about the real poor, the working poor, is that they respect hard work. I've never met a poor person who steals from others. That "privilege" belongs to sons and daughters of the middle class, to those who can afford to get caught and go to jail. The working poor are too busy trying to survive to take that risk.
EtA: I'm obviously not discussing the desperately poor, as they aren't a topic in this discussion. Desperately poor people have neither livejournal accounts nor e-book readers, and thus aren't relevant to this discussion.
So, how about you stop making assumptions and explain why you criticized me about understanding poor people. You're easily middle class if not upper middle class in your "happening neighborhood" New York city condo. And you grew up in a unbroken home in a middle-class suburb. So why were you making this argument in the first place?
August 10 2013, 02:59:19 UTC 3 years ago
WTF are you talking about? What condo? Do you think everyone who lives in NYC walks around with hundred-dollar bills falling out of their pockets?
I’m making this argument because you’re acting like $60 is nothing, and there have been several months in the past few years when paying an extra $60 would have left me with no food for a week.
August 10 2013, 03:10:25 UTC 3 years ago
My home is in Hunter's Point, SF. Google it. It's "happening" all right, if you're into gang warfare.
I don't know you well enough, but your "a few months" of poverty comment reminds me of everyone who claims to know poverty because they had no money while attending college on their parent's middle class budget. Maybe I'm wrong. You may very well know bone-crushing poverty much better than the list of middle-class neighborhoods your now hidden livejournal entry showed. I'll put aside my instincts and believe you. You have my belief. You know poverty.
Now please stop the attacks, and make some point about how your knowledge of poverty gives you an insight about how this should be priced. (ie, get on topic?)
August 10 2013, 03:42:24 UTC 3 years ago
Anyway, yeah, it’s a hot nabe right now. It wasn’t when we moved in. My next-door neighbor’s apartment was the place the local drug dealers would hide in when the cops came by. Fortunately, we’re rent stabilized, so we can still (just barely) afford the place. If we moved, it’d have to be to a smaller apartment in a worse neighborhood, and would probably wind up costing more anyway. Don’t jump to conclusions about people’s finances based on what NYC neighborhood they live in — I know people paying less than I am in better neighborhoods, because they’re still living in an apartment their parents or grandparents moved into decades ago.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say I know “bone-crushing” poverty. Let’s call it “eye-watering” poverty. My point being that I don’t have $60 to spend on $200 worth of books, no matter how good a deal that is. And I’m sure there are plenty of people in worse shape than I am.
I’m not saying there needs to be a cheaper packet for us — I accept that there are things I can’t afford, and that a Hugo Supporter’s Packet is pretty minor in a grand scheme of things. (Get me going about health care sometime if you really want to hear me pissed off.) But you’re not the first person I’ve heard toss off the $60 amount like it’s nothing, and it’s getting on my nerves.
August 10 2013, 03:56:03 UTC 3 years ago
My apologies for that. I never meant to say it was nothing, so I expressed myself badly. I do feel that it is a fantastic deal at the price it is at, and I am also aware that supporting memberships are basically subsidized by the membership already. I have difficulty imagining that this number could go lower.
For my part, I'm tired of middle class people (not you) saying that they should be given the works and the ability to vote for free. Some of the loudest voices are very well off financially. Worldcon is a membership society, if you want to vote you have to pay your dues :)
Note that I would absolutely support any opportunity to lower rates for people who could be proven to need financial assistance, but I don't think this is feasible for a fan-run organization.
"I haven’t removed anything... "
Oooh. Also right. Dangit, sorry. User headspace error, I failed to realize I had one open window on ?skip=10. I'll remove my claim from my original post to prevent others reading my mistake (but leave my apology here)
I do have to express jealousy that your job gives you access to books at a level I could not afford ;-)
August 10 2013, 04:18:27 UTC 3 years ago
My work for NYRSF is a volunteer thing, not a job. If I had a regular job, I might be able to afford a $60 Supporting Membership Packet.
August 10 2013, 04:23:03 UTC 3 years ago
August 10 2013, 05:12:09 UTC 3 years ago
August 10 2013, 05:14:58 UTC 3 years ago
August 12 2013, 16:28:15 UTC 3 years ago
A co-op is an apartment owned by a cooporative corporation which which you own shares in in order to occupy rather than rent.
I'm not sure how universal the terms for a rented apartment are. "a rental" is typically what I use.
August 10 2013, 03:45:02 UTC 3 years ago
August 10 2013, 04:00:23 UTC 3 years ago Edited: August 10 2013, 04:06:09 UTC
...where did the Edit button for comments go? Oh, can't edit posts with replies. Doh!
Anyway, I wanted to both edit out my accusation that was undeserved but also to put a comment that people who know me will attest to: I knew poverty. I worked my ass off for years, and I'm in a better place now. I just never stop thinking that way.
If you make it to San Antonio, I owe you a beer or poison-of-choice :)
August 10 2013, 05:10:14 UTC 3 years ago Edited: August 10 2013, 05:11:25 UTC
And we’ve already committed to a family get-together that weekend, so even if the money were to show up, no Worldcon for me this year.
August 10 2013, 03:18:49 UTC 3 years ago
August 12 2013, 08:24:15 UTC 3 years ago