From arj@nvg.ntnu.no Wed Mar 11 03:30:45 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-board); Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:30:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sabre-wulf.nvg.ntnu.no ([129.241.210.67]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LhLhy-0003W4-CH for llg-board@lojban.org; Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:30:45 -0700 Received: from hagbart.nvg.ntnu.no (unknown [IPv6:2001:700:300:2000:2a0:c9ff:feab:76e2]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by sabre-wulf.nvg.ntnu.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C7AC94781 for ; Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:30:22 +0100 (CET) Received: from hagbart.nvg.ntnu.no (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by hagbart.nvg.ntnu.no (8.13.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id n2BAUM4T013844 for ; Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:30:22 +0100 Received: (from arj@localhost) by hagbart.nvg.ntnu.no (8.13.8/8.13.1/Submit) id n2BAULC2013843 for llg-board@lojban.org; Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:30:21 +0100 Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:30:21 +0100 From: Arnt Richard Johansen To: llg-board@lojban.org Subject: [llg-board] Re: Spending money on getting people to penguicon. Message-ID: <20090311103021.GT7405@nvg.org> References: <20090305191021.GE27391@digitalkingdom.org> <49B03EEA.3050305@lojban.org> <20090305212839.GI27391@digitalkingdom.org> <49B0473D.2060508@lojban.org> <20090305214356.GJ27391@digitalkingdom.org> <49B06356.9080901@lojban.org> <20090305235619.GO27391@digitalkingdom.org> <49B789EF.8060402@lojban.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <49B789EF.8060402@lojban.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i X-NVG-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-NVG-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-From: arj@nvg.ntnu.no X-Spam-Score: -0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 490 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: arj@nvg.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-board@lojban.org X-list: llg-board On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 05:52:47AM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote: > Robin Lee Powell wrote: > >10%? We're not using the money for anything. What are you saving > >the 90% *for*? > > At one time you mentioned that we might have to start paying a > commercial server to handle lojban.org. I can't imagine that this would > be cheap. Robin is currently paying out of pocket for a server on Amazon Cloudfront. > I assume we eventually intend to publish a dictionary, and/or republish > CLL. CLL cost us $17500 last time, and a dictionary would likely be > worse. LS might be cheaper for a softcover, but I don't recall that > they do "real" books of the sort that libraries put on their shelves. They do hardcover. http://www.lightningsource.com/products_hardback.aspx But it seems like they're not going to tell us how much it costs unless we log in to our account. Robin, can you do that? > A single press release to promote a new book will likely run $500, based > on the fact that it ran over $300 last time. > > JCB spent around $2000 for his last advertisement in Scientific > American, a splurge I could never justify with our own cash flow (we > spent $120 for a micro-ad in Discover which got us a lot of calls but > few sales because I had no clue how to write an ad to generate > business), but the original Loglan community was largely built on > responses to a SciAm ads in the 1970s. > > In short, big money is needed to promote the language wholesale, > something we have never tried because I couldn't in good conscience do > so without a dictionary in print. I think the World Wide Web has changed advertising completely, at least for the kind of enterprise we are doing. We can reach the right kind of people far cheaper now than before. To a certain extent I would say that the language is marketing itself. > I paid for it myself last time, but sending just two people to a > Worldcon, and selling books at a table would cost us well over $1000, > but would give us enormously more exposure than LogFest, which is being > held at a small local convention. > > I guess I'm not as confident that spending a large chunk of money for a > couple of individuals to attend LogFest will promote the language all > that much. I wouldn't think that LogFest itself is worth more than 10% > of our annual budget given the small percentage of the existing > community it serves. If it became a bigger deal, perhaps it would be > worthwhile spending more, but I doubt that it will. This, granted, is a good point. -- Arnt Richard Johansen http://arj.nvg.org/ Keyboard: The Ultimate Input Device