[EuroPython] questions, questions, ...

[Laura Creighton]

> 
> > > 1) Pearson Education Benelux isn't able to attend the conference, but
> they
> > > would like to produce a little brochure which can be handed out at the
> > > conference concerning their open source titles.
> >
> > Clearly they should pay for this service.
> 
> Ok, sure, that's normal I think, but does somebody has experience on the
> amount of fee we can ask for these kind of things?

Sure.  Here is how you calculate it, 2 ways:

You have to fill this in with the real numbers, because I don't
know what the real numbers are.

We promise 200 attendees.  Each attendee is worth about .50 Euro to
market to.  Therefore you charge them 100 Euros.  (The .50 is a good
number. The 200 I do not know).

However, I think that this is overcharging.  Here is why, second
way to calculate this:

Average cost of book they sell is: 35.00 Euros. (I made that number up)
Expected number of Sales from an attendence of 200 people: 20 (I made that one
up as well).  Somebody said that their profit was 10% -- they
advertise selling 10% over cost.  This is before they figure in their
expenses.  So - 3.5 times 20 = 70 Euros -- and they have to get charges
out of that.

All these figures you should be able to get from their marketing department.

Since you did not know how to calculate this, then you probably do not
know that this is no big secret.  When you are negotiating a price
with them, give them this as a back of the envelope calculation, and
then fill in their real numbers.  This is a completely open
transaction.  Nobody wins if anybody hides anything, and it is in
nobody's interest to be dishonest here.  This is a straight business
to business trade, cash for access, with no complications and no
strings.  We do it all the time.  You come with this sort of a
calculation -- not the number, give them the 'and how I calculated it'
they will know to file you under 'business' and not under
'shopper/amateur'.  If they think you are an amateur then they will
have the option of using the other set of playing rules in calculating
such things, which is 'get as much as I can while paying as little as
I can, no holds barred since they will not know if I am being
reasonable or not'.  I am not accusing them of that, just it is the
eternally availabel option.

And I have likely forgot some small thing, for instance I assume that
taxes are not to be a problem, but if they are, then that needs to be
factored in as well.

Good luck,
Laura

ps -- 700 Euros for a booth seems mighty steep to me.  I don't see 700
   Euros worth of Customers coming over to see my stuff.  This is what
   you get when you build a by-hackers-for-hackers conference -- the 
   cost of the booth must go down because hackers are not ideal segement
   of the market to reach, unless, of course, you are selling hacking tools.