Marketing & Dealers Tables
Only tangentially related to my last post is something I've thought about when it comes to the price we charge for Dealer's Tables at Worldcons (and other conventions). I seem to recall that at ConJosé, our prices weren't too high, but we didn't include any memberships in the cost of the table, which meant we had dealers complaining about how unfair it was that, from their point of view, we were charging them an extra $200 for their table.
Suggestion to conventions: increase the cost of your dealer table rent by $100 and include one membership, but say, "$100 discount if you already have a membership." (Insert a different dollar value in the slot depending on how much you charge for memberships.) This gives memberships to the dealers who don't buy memberships in your convention until they decide to actually sell at the con, while not punishing those people who bought memberships earlier. This is particularly important for conventions like Worldcon and Westercon that generally don't set their dealer table prices until less than a year out.
Besides, people seem to like "discounts" and dislike "surcharges" even when the net cost effect is the same either way.
Suggestion to conventions: increase the cost of your dealer table rent by $100 and include one membership, but say, "$100 discount if you already have a membership." (Insert a different dollar value in the slot depending on how much you charge for memberships.) This gives memberships to the dealers who don't buy memberships in your convention until they decide to actually sell at the con, while not punishing those people who bought memberships earlier. This is particularly important for conventions like Worldcon and Westercon that generally don't set their dealer table prices until less than a year out.
Besides, people seem to like "discounts" and dislike "surcharges" even when the net cost effect is the same either way.