Get your ham-sized fist here
Filed under Market Report on June 9, 2009
Tagged: awards, fantasy fiction
Awards serve two primary purposes: to stroke the ego of the award-winner and attempt to raise awareness. There are three major awards for fantasy fiction: the World Fantasy award, the Hugo, and the Nebula.
Both the Hugo and the Nebula do not differentiate between science fiction and fantasy in their categories. Nominations and voting are restricted to the members of the WorldCon and the SFWA, respectively. The World Fantasy award is strictly for fantasy works, and candidates are nominated and voted on by a panel of judges (nominees for the two “fan” categories are selected by members of the World Fantasy Convention).
All this is to say that while I think these awards have the ego-stroke covered, I question their ability to raise awareness. The methodology of the nominating and voting makes them insular by nature. I remember as a young reader seeing “Winner of the Nebula” or “Winner of the Hugo” on the cover of some of the books I checked out of the library, but I had no idea what that meant.
I’m not even sure if I’ve seen the tagline on anything I’ve read recently. More often, I see “New York Times bestseller.” That speaks volumes about the relevance of the awards, in my opinion.
Fantasy fiction is in dire need of some new awards dedicated solely to the genre. I would love to see awards broken into subgenre categories as well as formats. This strategy would go a long way to raising awareness that all fantasy is not the same.
The recently announced Ham-Sized Fist award is a step in that direction. The award focuses on heroic fantasy and sword-and-sorcery short stories or novellas (the qualifier is the publishing venue as opposed to a word count, though the stories must be at least 500 words long).
Awards like the Ham-Sized Fist that are dedicated to specific genres are better suited to raising awareness because they are not swayed by fickle editorial trends. You won’t see the categories dominated by the new hotness of the moment. You will see the best of the genre displayed prominently for all to see, and more visibility generally equates to a higher standard in the market.
Open nominations will also prevent “flavor of the month” syndrome. That’s right, the general public can nominate a story for the award. I’m not aware of any other fantasy literature award that does that.
The Ham-Sized Fist award has another weapon in its arsenal of genre promotion. It offers a monetary award to both the author and the publisher. Money is a wonderful motivator for businesses worried about their bottom line, and small press publishers, who comprise a significant share of the market, are driven hard by that line. You won’t find a much better way to promote the spread of a genre than paying someone to publish it. The HSF offers a sum to both parties equal to what most professional markets pay for a 6,000 word manuscript, and they are seeking additional sponsorship in order to bump that number up.
I applaud the sponsors of the Ham-Sized Fist award and look forward to seeing what gets nominated, and of course the ultimate winners. What is your opinion of literary awards? Do they influence what you read? What would you like to see from an award in terms of nominations, judging, and promotion?
June 9th, 2009 at 7:05 am
I think the main value of the awards is that it influences the bookstore salespeople and the librarians, who stock the shelves that we get to browse.
For most readers, awards have no impact.
I do remember that we read Nebula books in elementary school. So, that was another 30 copies of the book sold per class.
June 18th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Thanks. You pretty much summed up my thoughts when I came up with the idea for the award. Originally I was just going to do a monetary award for the author, but then I thought, rewarding the author isn’t going to help get more of this genre published. But reward the publisher, and something might happen!
So far I’ve only had one nomination – published in Asimov’s, of all places. Please help spread the word. I’ll be searching for stories on my own, but there’s no way I can catch everything, or even some of what is published, and I don’t want to miss out on a good one.
Jeff Crook
Jeff´s last blog ..Nominate a Story