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 11 2013, 21:03:56 UTC 3 years ago
We can actually reduce the cost of Supporting a bit more - to the cheapest in real terms it's been since the 1980s if not before - by removing the paper publications (making it possible to opt-out). People have discussed this for a few years but my feeling is that it is likely to go through now. In principle this might reduce the Supporting Membership down to $30 or even $25 - although some other Constitutional changes would need to happen to allow this in practice. So we'll probably see $40 for 2014, 2015 and maybe 2016 and maybe then a drop to an even lower number.
For people who've been focused on the $60 charge to join up this year, and may not have known what to expect in future, this should be very good news. $30 is a LONG way from $60.
My own experience (Chairing a Worldcon, working Chair's staff on several others, and helping with the Hugos - so hopefully quite relevant!) is that this would address the first two points Seanan raises. I would also hope that at $30 for a full Supporting membership, the need for some other special cheaper category of membership just for the Hugos would be unnecessary.
The only question then is at what point the publishers will become uncomfortable - and to that, we don't yet know the answer. I am hopeful that since they support the Packet at $40, they would continue to do so at $30. But it also depends on how many people download the material and what their perception is of the value they are getting in return from the publicity.
August 13 2013, 00:12:56 UTC 3 years ago
August 13 2013, 05:50:47 UTC 3 years ago
August 13 2013, 09:25:49 UTC 3 years ago
Of course, we already have an "electronic vs. paper" choice on progress reports so we're only talking about the Program Book here. Typically the Program Book costs $20,000 - $25,000 to print for around 5,000 copies, and brings in around $20,000 in advertising. BUT then you have mailing costs as well, for supporters and no-shows.
If we made this change, we'd need to look at the overall budget impact on printing, advertising income, and mailing costs, and then we could look at how much we could reduce the rates by. My guess is that for supporters it might be $5. (Souvenir Book print & mail for one person is about $7 on average, from a rough calculation; reduce this a bit for the lost ads).