Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, had a tremendous membership spike in January, an increase in total members of more than 30%. Why? A rate hike was going into effect February 1. Worldcon bids for 2017 are begging supporters to join. We’re now in the calendar year that the con will take place. And January 31 was the deadline for joining Sasquan if you wanted to nominate for the Hugos (if you weren’t already eligible as a member of LonCon 3 or MidAmeriCon II.)
I’ll leave as an exercise for the readers which reason is responsible for the most membership purchases….
| Sasquan Total Members | |
| 12/21/2014 | 3,737 |
| 1/31/2015 | 4,952 |
| Increase | 1,215 |
| Adult Attending Members | |
| 12/21/2014 | 2,508 |
| 1/31/2015 | 2,950 |
| Increase | 442 |
| Supporting Members | |
| 12/21/2014 | 1,047 |
| 1/31/2015 | 1,765 |
| Increase | 718 |
I requested these numbers from the committee, so although they’re a little different than what’s posted on the Sasquan site they’re good for drawing this comparison.
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I note that the cost of a Supporting membership did not increase February 1. It was $40 before and $40 after.
I’m probably an outlier in the data set, but I’m one of those 718 (!) new supporting members. I was already eligible to nominate as a member of both Loncon 3 and MidAmeriCon II. My Sasquan Supporting membership was a New Year’s prezzie I was glad and grateful to receive.
Loncon 3 had a 19% total membership spike during the same period last year, with 869 new members. While the raw numbers are lower (Loncon 3 had 473 new Supporting members compared to Sasquan’s 718), for Loncon 3, the Supporting membership spike was 78% compared to Sasquan’s 69% December-January spike.)
I don’t have membership statistics for previous Worldcons readily at hand. It would be interesting to chart the numbers and trend line over the past decade.
Geri: Actually, the supporting membership cost did rise for Europeans in this period, because when we raised the rate, we re-evaluated exchange rates across the board. Since the Euro weakened significantly against the dollar, that price went up even though the base cost remained US$40.
As for charting numbers, I actually own that spreadsheet. Since you seem interested in Loncon 3:
Total
12/21/2014 4,487
1/31/2015 5,353
Attending
12/21/2014 3,722
1/31/2015 4,090
Supporting
12/21/2014 605
1/31/2015 1,078
I have no doubt that Sasquan will have fewer members than L3. L3 was an outlier, a confluence of many factors such as being a tier 1 city, local to many Europeans for the first time in awhile, the entire Wheel of Time ending up in the Hugo packet, a great marketing team and other things. I don’t begrudge them their record-breaking numbers in the slightest.
On the other hand, Sasquan has from the get-go trended higher than Reno, Chicon 7 and LSC3 and is likely to be larger than MAC2 also.
Will Sasquan break the record? Probably not. Will it be one of the largest of recent Worldcons? Already is.
Depends how many sad puppies supporters join. Could be lots of supporting members. Last year baen put larry correias entire series in the packet. If he gets nominated again(probably will) and baen puts all 6 monster hunter books in plus if all other publishers put their books in , its a good deal just to get the books. The big one is if Jim Butcher gets niminated and his publishers puts his entire series in the packet, then you are likely looking at a massive increase in supporting members.
The wheel of time encyclopedia is out this year. There will like be a push for Harriet Rigney for best eitor next year. Those encyclopedias tend to be expensive, if they put the whole thing init could be a big increae in supporting members.
Interesting point, Guess. Which raises the question, did Orbit hurt the chances of their works up for the rocket by only including samples?
Well, an Orbit novel did win last year, so people either voted based on the excerpt or the excerpt caused people to go out an buy the book (or check it out from the library).
Yeah, I don’t think we can derive anything meaningful from Orbit’s strategy, particularly with a sample size of one election.