They're becoming more and more typical. At a Booster event, they are paying for first class flights for the actors if they're at distance, hotel rooms for them and any guests, and an appearance fee of around $30,000 for somebody like Nathan (and it's about that for Adam and Alan). Plus the actors tend to take a good cut of the autograph and photograph fees.

What has happens isn't terribly complex. Con companies have been fighting over guests, and as a result at times they have got into a bidding war over them. It's been going on for many years, and it's pushed the prices right up. There's actually an agent out there for actors who's sole roll is to negoiate convention attendance fees, and funnily enough: he's very successful at what he does.

It's all about supply and demand, though. Flan 2 was a sell out. People are willing to pay those kind of prices, but it absolutely only works if you know what the hell you are doing.

Now, this isn't the case everywhere. For example, Sean Harry's conventions in the UK are a fuck of a lot cheaper and have a similar number of attendees. For his last convention, he didn't get all the cast. No Nathan. But it ran and it ran fine. That's because Sean understands business.

Unsure. I have no idea how much the actors get paid to be there, because I wouldn't pay them. I'm told that their fees are huge.

The venue itself is "free" with a the room block and F&B contract.

The fans rent the rooms, the contract promises that will eat and drink x amount of chicken and cosmos, and the cost of that goes into the ticket price.

The price is offset a bit by vendors who pay to be there, but that's pretty small.

ETA: Waiting til the last second to cancel was a move to fill the room block and offset the attrition BE would have owed.

"Despite poor ticket sales, Booster Entertainment continues with it's history of never cancelling a guest".

Didn't they cancel Francis Capra from the VM one due to low ticket sales? Or did they put him back on?

Kalshane - it becomes even more scary if you work out the amount of money they made with other things (Lifetime passes - $25,000)

Holy Jesus. That's fucking ridiculous.

The only way I can work out that cancelling at the very last possible moment saved them any money is if they never actually rented the venue at all and planned to cancel from the beginning.

Well, they booked it, though, right? That's why the BBB couldn't use it. So there had to be something going on there.

an appearance fee of around $30,000 for somebody like Nathan (and it's about that for Adam and Alan)

Wow. That makes it all the more impressive that they just showed up anyway, for free.

Attrition, that's all. Attrition rates can be huge. It means they would have paid for every hotel room, in addition to food and beverage losses, if they had canceled.

Polter-Cow: I need to correct a misunderstanding. It's $5000 each, and they sold 5. Ergo, $25000.

But it's still fucking ridiculous. It was a way for them to get huge income quickly.

Didn't they cancel Francis Capra from the VM one due to low ticket sales? Or did they put him back on?

They cancelled him, but then put him back (openly saying they paid extra for him, I seem to recall) when people complained.

Polter-Cow: I need to correct a misunderstanding. It's $5000 each, and they sold 5. Ergo, $25000.

Aha, okay! That's still crazy.

Attrition rates can be huge.

Okay, this makes sense. It shifts the burden of cost from the fans back to the corporation.

It's not nice, but it makes sense.

Wow, up one side and down the other.

Thoughts:

1. What Hec said.

2. Someone(s) need to sue Booster's collective corporate ass and put them fully and permanently out of business. If not because they've done anything illegal, because it's clear from their verbiage and management that they are dumb hateful people.

3. I try to keep the real live talent people types separate in my head from the product. That way, I can appreciate a movie even if I have a personal dislike for the actor, say, or dislike a script by a writer I adore as a person. The Firefly folks are really blurring that for me: I loved the show, and the more I learn about the people behind it, the more I love them too, and that feeds back into my love of the show.

4. The fans are pretty okay, too.

On a lighter note (and we could probably use one) today's Penny Arcade discusses the Firefly MMORPG. [link]

ETA: I also e-mailed Tycho to let him know my opinion of the Multiverse folks is pretty high because of their actions during the Flanvention fiasco and linked a couple relevant blogs. Might get even more people looking at the craptacity of Booster Events and the greatness of all the folks that came through after the cancellation.

Now, I know I don't go to media cons, and SF-lit cons are different animals, but, (a) the two cons I go to are in their 44th and 18th years, respectively and (b) neither of them costs more than $50 for the whole weekend.

Of course, the special guests appear for reimbursement of expenses plus cheez crackers, and the autographs are free.

I go to two Cons a year. One is very much like Nutty describes. The other a gimungous anime con, with voice actors, creators and musicians flew in from Japan, tons of programming, etc. Both of them don't charge much more than $50, (less if you pre-register), no cost for autographs or photographs (and a lot of artist guests will draw quick sketches for free as well).

Of course, none of these have (in the US anyway) movie and TV stars, so it could very well be a different thing.