We at LPC are big fans of transparency, so we have decided to report out publicly on the financial details of each year’s Library Publishing Forum. These reports are meant to serve as a resource for fellow conference planners, as well as helping our community better understand the decisions we make around the event. If you missed the report out on last year’s in-person conference, you can read it here. This post will report out on the finances for the virtual Forum held May 5-8, 2025.
Breaking even
The Library Publishing Forum has never been a revenue-generating activity for LPC. Our goals have always been to 1) put on a good conference that is affordable for attendees, and 2) not lose money on it. We have kept registration rates extremely low by holding our in-person conferences in inexpensive campus venues; bringing in as many sponsor dollars as possible; and keeping everything on a shoestring budget.
Our cautious budgeting plus our consistently growing list of attendees meant that, before the pandemic, we frequently made a small profit on the Forum, which went into LPC’s operating reserve. Since 2020, however, the pattern has been that our virtual conference years make a profit, and our in-person events go over budget. Since we have now settled into a steady pattern of alternating in-person and virtual conferences, our new goal is to break even across a two-year span. That means that we are OK with losing some money on an in-person conference if we can make it up the next year on a virtual conference. As you can see from last year’s report-out, we still have some tweaking to do to make that possible.
Revenue
The Forum has two sources of revenue: sponsorships and registrations. We are lucky to have a loyal group of sponsoring organizations who have stuck with us as we have transitioned from 100% in-person events to alternating years with virtual. Most Forum sponsorships are $500 or $1,000, so we’re not bringing in a huge amount of money, but it’s enough to make a significant dent in the event costs.
As mentioned above, our registration rates are as low as we can possibly make them. For virtual Forum years, we charge $25 per registration, with a free option available at the point of registration for anyone who needs it.
The revenue breakdown for this year’s virtual Forum was:
- Sponsorship: $4,500
- Registration (269 attendees [195 paid, 74 waived], minus Eventbrite fees): $4,200
- TOTAL: $8,700
Expenses
Virtual conferences are about 10x cheaper for us to put on, with the biggest expenses being keynote honoraria and the technology we use. One of our key pieces of technical infrastructure, Sched.com, raised its prices considerably (we paid about $800 in 2023 and about $2,500 this year) and we didn’t have time to look for an alternative. We expect to look carefully at online program platforms in future. Here’s the full breakdown:
- Technology (Sched and Zoom add-ons): $2,635
- Extra staff: $774
- Keynote honoraria: $2,000
- Design: $720
- TOTAL: $6,129
The bottom line
We made a surplus ($2,571) on this year’s virtual conference. That’s a smaller margin than previous virtual conferences, mostly because of the increased technology costs. Still, it’s great that the event covered its costs and gave us a tiny surplus to put towards next year’s in-person conference. (Stay tuned for an announcement of the place and dates!)