As you may remember, I was trying to get people to add one of my stories to their Hugo nomination lists. I only needed 10 votes to get on the final list for consideration and 23 votes to make it all the way to the ballot. This is an incredibly low number and I could have bought a nomination (as L. Ron Hubbard’s crew once did), for about $1,725. This would have been money well spent, but I held back due to some barely detectable twinges of ethics.
I did not get even 10 votes and I will never know how many people nominated my story, even though at least a dozen promised to do so.
I might try again, but I haven’t written anything that is very good lately. My stories, Wishes, about a Down’s syndrome girl, and Construct, about a dead murderer who has his personality reconstructed in a simulation, have not gone well. When I get a chance to write, I have been rewriting older stories trying to get them into shape for the anthology.
I need a long vacation with access to a computer with a good keyboard and no distractions if I am going to shoot for the 2011 Hugo.
2 Comments
yeah – I checked and no dice. I did fulfill my promise tho.
Oh well. Nice thing about the awards is they DO happen every year.
Both Short Stories and Fan writers have very long tails, in other words there are a great many votes for a great many sites or stories averaging one or two votes. My wife and I voted for Steve and Steve voted for my story. I would not be surprised if that was all that I got and all that Steve got.
The cost was $75 for a supporting membership in order to vote. This is too high a cost for most people.
Entry point for fan writer was 25. Graphic novel was only 19 votes. Short story is still one of the cheapest points of entry at 23 votes to get on the ballot. If I was more social (I reject most facebook friend requests and have dropped twitter) I might be able to convince 23 people to vote for me. That, of course, means that I’d have to write and sell a good story, which is unlikely between now and Jan 1.