Some news about the Hugo voters packet
From Charlie’s Diary:
It has become customary in recent years for authors of Hugo-nominated works to provide the members of the World Science Fiction convention who get to vote for the awards with electronic copies of their stories. The ball started rolling a few years ago when John Scalzi kindly took the initiative in preparing the first Hugo voters packet; since then it has become almost mandatory to distribute shortlisted works this way.
Unfortunately, as professionally published authors, we can’t do this without obtaining the consent of our publishers. We are bound by contracts that give our publishers the exclusive rights to distribute our books: so we sought their permission first.
This year, Orbit—the publisher of Mira Grant’s “Parasite”, Ann Leckie’s “Ancillary Justice”, and Charles Stross’s “Neptune’s Brood”—have decided that for policy reasons they can’t permit the shortlisted novels to be distributed for free in their entirety. Instead, substantial extracts from the books will be included in the Hugo voters packet.
We feel your disappointment keenly and regret any misunderstandings that may have arisen about the availability of our work to Hugo voters, but we are bound by the terms of our publishing contracts. The decision to give away free copies of our novels is simply not ours to take.
Link to the rest at Charlie’s Diary
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases. 
Soooooo, Orbit doesn’t want their writers to win awards?
Looking at the slate, they weren’t going to win anyway.
This just insured that Jordan gets a posthumous lifetime achievement Hugo.
What would be REALLY funny is if they just somehow pulled a Nader and got Correia the win.
I don’t see it happening, but it would be epic.
I bet these authors are LIVID.
Yeah, but at the end of their joint statement, in the part PG didn’t quote, they ask that people not pester their editors, publishers, etc. about it, out of concern that it might look like they put us up to it and it could imperil their relationships and ongoing contract negotiations with their publishers. So please think about that before you go looking for someone to send an angry letter.
Hostages are often eager to urge people not to bother the hostagetakers.
Here’s a fantastic idea: ditch the loser publishers and DIY, guys. Then you can give your novel for free to anybody you please, including the packet for THE MOST IMPORTANT SCI-FI AWARD IN THE WORLD.
Ah publishers, always having the best interests of their authors at heart. This is nurturing at its best. Bless ‘em for doing such a thankless task.
Where would all these authors be without them?! I shudder to think.
It’s worth noting that, apart from Correia’s controversial “Sad Puppies” nomination, every Best Novel nominee on the ballot is an Orbit book (yes, even Wheel of Time, which is published by Orbit in the UK). So unless some kind of miracle happens, Orbit is guaranteed to have a Hugo winner anyway.
Orbit put out a statement on its website saying that it didn’t think it was right for authors to feel pressured into giving away their works for free for the sake of awards. I wrote about the whole thing here.
Nice article, Chris. Thanks for the background work.
Awards seem like a mutual backscratching society these days. Maybe that’s not fair, but that’s how it strikes me.
I love Charlie’s blog but a visit there usually results in a huge time-sink as the comments are always great. I read through them all here and found two items of interest;
From Charlie, responding to a previous commenter;
“Surely some feet need to be held to the fire, and are not editor’s lower extremities best toasted in this instance?”
The decision was taken by Orbit’s CEO, personally. I have discussed the matter with him. So has my agent. So have Seanan’s and Ann’s agents. He’s not budging.
Please DO NOT pester Tim Holman. It won’t work, and he might get the impression I set you up to do so. My agent is currently in the process of closing the deal for the next two Laundry Files books with Orbit. If you want to see them published in the UK at all[*], it would be a really bad idea to get my British publisher’s CEO personally pissed-off at me. It will also leave a big fat hole in my cash flow for a couple of years if this deal tanks, so I won’t thank you, either.
Are we clear, yet?
[*] We’re talking books 6 and 7 of an existing series. No other British publisher would touch it at this point because the existing publisher could exert huge leverage over their marketing if they felt like getting nasty, for any reason at all.
Out of all the comments this is the closest thing I found that could be called a hint at self-publishing;
“There are a lot of different attitudes to the idea of giving work away for free, but we hope most people would agree that writers and rights holders should be able to make their own choice, without feeling that their decision might have negative consequences.”
I think Charlie is doing a good job of keeping his minions from exploding across the internet, but underneath the façade I think he’s a bit miffed by all of this.
Personally, I hope he wins.
Well, this is certainly a poignant reminder on how incredibly helpless and frustrated a writer can feel when in the “nuturing” environment of trad pub.
What was that line again? “He beats me, but he’s my publisher! Don’t make him angry!”
Yeah.
Every time I read stuff like this, I recall how glad I am that all those publishers rejected my first novel. What a bullet I dodged.
Oh, yeah. Me too.
Boy, am I the only one to whom it sounds like Holman is pulling something . . . I mean, “He’s not budging. And don’t bug him, because if you do, he might cancel my other books. And if he cancels my other books and I sell them elsewhere, he could tank the other publisher’s marketing efforts, too.”
What is this guy, three?
He’s thinking like a CEO;
Number of free copies given to Hugo voters > number of potential sales due to book A wining a Hugo. Therefore no free copies will go out. Period.
As was mentioned already the publisher has a lock on the award already and that’s all that matters, right? Who cares who the author is as long as the publisher wins the award?
Because that’s what the readers look for when it comes to books that win Hugo awards, who published it.
And here I am thinking that having a Hugo sticker on a book would probably sell more copies in the long run. I guess that’s why I’m not a publishing CEO!
To be fair I’ll point out that Orbit has several books in the running for an award. That means that every book would require A LOT of free copies going out. The winner would have to generate enough sales from his/her win to make up for ALL of the free copies that went out. So, I can maybe see why the CEO would listen to his bean counters on this one.
This is a weird situation. The number of books up for an award is actually working against them here. Either way the authors are getting screwed, sorry, make that nurtured.
“I guess that’s why I’m not a publishing CEO!”
Could be your wardrobe, Dan, just saying.
Too many cravats, or not enough?
Sure, it may cost some sales in the short term, but it seems to me that when you have a chance to support your writers in a very public way, you do it. Because, as you said, nurturing.
Ahhh, I see,
One must not confuse nurturing with profiting, my friend. To do so leads to the Dark Side.
Your cravats are of the perfect number, and quite sporty I might add. I have long wondered why you don’t wear one in your Avatar. I’m sure it would help build your platform, maybe even attract an agent!
Too many cravats, or not enough?
The eternal quandary.
In many cases (there are some exceptions) awards don’t translate into sales. A slight bump, yes. But not major. That validation helps, but, sadly, it’s not a catapult.
Although it would be cool to create an award where the award trophy was a functional catapult.
Loaded with your books…
I think somebody did some math recently showing that winning a Hugo has little or negative net worth in terms of long term sales. Or maybe that was the Nebula. Anyway, I don’t see it being all that helpful, unless the market comprised of “people writing theses on historical SF who must buy and read a lot of old Hugo-winners” gets WAY larger.
How many works on the Hugo ballot are self/indie published? I know Howard Tayler is, but I don’t remember seeing any on the Best Novel or Best Novella categories last time I looked (which, granted, was a while ago).
I used to think the Hugos were important, but now, not so much.
Nominations can be made by those who have purchased memberships to the current, preceding and following Worldcons. Voting is by those who hold a membership to the current Worldcon.
So all the Hugos say is that the works that win are the ones that people who attend Worldcon (and vote) like best. Whether that particular audience is important or not is up to you as an author. But there’s no barrier against indie published work.
When I attended Worldcon in 2011, I was struck by how small (just a few thousand people) and how old the con-going audience was. In contrast, Salt Lake Comic Con draws upwards of 100,000 people from all walks of life, some of them quite surprising. Granted, Comic Con includes a lot more media than just literature, but still, if you polled how many of those people had read a book like Ender’s Game, you’d probably get an overwhelming response.
So yeah, the Hugos don’t strike me as being particularly representative of the sci-fi audience. And when you consider all the political crap surrounding Larry Correia’s nomination and the backlash of voters against him, the awards seem even more skewed and irrelevant.
Although you can buy a voting membership for less than an attending membership for Worldcon, so there may be a lot more folks voting than attending.
And now that Orbit is pulling their books out of the voting packet, how many fewer people are going to buy the supporting membership?
I would be stunned if this year all records for voting supporting memberships are not obliterated thanks to Operation Sad Puppies II. I still don’t think it’ll WIN, or even come close, but I think that as a percentage of memberships purchased and voted, supporting memberships will be WAY up, and ironically, that’s good for the establishment.
I doubt the people who are big enough fans of Correia, Vox Day, and the other members of the Puppies slate can hold a candle to all the Wheel of Time fans who joined either to get all 15 of those books as e-books or to vote for their favorite series. Or both.
Good point. In any event, voted supporting memberships should be at an all-time high.
Howard Taylor isn’t even nominated this year, since he wasn’t eligible.
And Correia asked for the backlash.
Whether he was asking for it or not, it still reflects badly on the SF community that his political views would even be at issue here. It also demonstrates that I would probably never win a Hugo, since 1) I don’t fall in line with the SF community’s political groupthink, and 2) I’m not vocal (or political) enough to gain an outside following large enough to counteract any backlash against me.
Is the proper term “professionally published now”? As opposed to what? Unprofessional?
I tend to prefer “traditionally published,” myself, that being the less loaded word.
He meant corporate authors. At least he didn’t say “traditional.”
Corporate authors??? Sounds like Patterson.
Sure. Authors who sign publication contracts with corporations. Patterson would be one, for sure.
It’s a more precise term than “traditional.” Or, as you called out, “professional.”
I don’t see a problem with “traditional.” The traditional way of getting published is to submit to a publisher, have them edit your work, then have them put it out. That’s the way it’s been done for hundreds of years; it’s a tradition.
Perhaps the phrase “contractually bound” would be most appropriate.
lots and lots of bondage and no safe word.
3 titles X 7,624 memberships = 22,872 free copies that they would be giving away.
That’s a pretty big number. And those with Worldcon memberships will still be receiving excerpts of the novels in the voting packet — just not the full novel.
Of course, if Orbit had chosen to include the full novels, that could have turned into sales of later books in the series for their authors. And it’s generally a good idea to avoid bad publicity. But the numbers are such that I don’t think it’s a slam dunk bad decision on Orbit’s part.
Is it really such a big number? I mean, your average Bookbub download, is 5,400 to 16,600 for a free book in the Science Fiction category. So, the entire voting membership is on the low side of the average bookbub audience who likes the blurb and cover enough to download.
Sure, you’re pushing a bundle instead of a single book, but it’s really just trying to get word of mouth advertising. And Orbit doesn’t even have to pay $120 and vie for a time slot.
With every passing day, the perils of tying your fate go the literal whims of a corporate drone grow larger and the benefits of submitting grow smaller.
Sounds like we need more “why I self publish” testimonials. Or an authors anonymous for those still under the thrall of corporate nurturing.
“The decision to give away free copies of our novels is simply not ours to take.”
Sure it is. You have the choice to not publish any more with these asshats.
Which is easy for people who aren’t in his shoes to say. Much as folks boost it around here, including me, I’d be the first to admit that self-publishing isn’t for everybody. Stross is one of those who are doing all right with traditional publishing, including making his living writing full-time that way rather than having to fit it in between a day job. If he still feels he can do better staying with Orbit, that’s his decision.
I pretty much quit buying titles from Orbit a couple of years ago when I was approved for an electronic arc on NetGalley. The book was much longer than I expected, so I put off reading it for a few weeks to read and review some shorter titles I was already committed to. My access to the title from Orbit was cut off before I could finish reading it. That wouldn’t have happened with a print review copy, so why should it with an electronic? End result, I never reviewed the book and haven’t bought (or requested) anything from Orbit since. Pyr, Solaris, WMG, Privateer Press, Ragnarok, and a host of independent author/publishers put out more great titles than I can keep up with.
I can’t help but think this isn’t going to help Orbit’s PR in the long run.
And on a related note, a question. Since Tor is the original publisher of Wheel of Time, to what extent can Orbit claim bragging rights? (Tor, btw, is providing the entire series in the voting packet.)
Well, they’re the one who sells it in the UK, so they can put “Hugo award” logos on the covers of their next editions to get whatever sales boost out of that they might. That’s all the “bragging rights” any publisher really cares about.
I suspect WoT is probably going to win whether the Orbit books are provided free or not; it’s got the whole last-chance-for-a-dead-author thing going for it, plus a lot of WoT fans who’d pay up just for the e-books and count the chance to vote as a bonus.
I agree that Wheel of Time will most likely win. I won’t be surprised if it gets more votes than all the other nominees combined. I’m sure the Orbit execs are frothing at the mouth over Tor including the whole series in the voter packet.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Tor making it available was meant as a thumb directly in Orbit’s eye.