Wait, 800 votes is sufficient to win Best Novel? I think I’m with Eliezer on this now. That may actually be attainable with this fan base(if only because it’s vastly easier to mobilize for online works than for paper ones, due to logistical issues)
Edit: I was unclear on the voting process, and am retracting the above.
What kind of expectations about the voting for a Hugo did you have that when told it’s 800 (rather than 8, 80, 8000, 80000...) strikes you as fantastic? And do you think that there are 800 dedicated MoR readers who would go to Worldcon and rank it #1 in the vote? Remember the infamous 1% rule: for every reader, there’s 1% who will leave a comment or review, and out of those, 1% will do something additional. Going to Worldcon and voting is quite something additional.
(Well, one way to answer this would be to put up a poll on hpmor.com asking how many readers attended Worldcon 2011, Worldcon 2012, etc. Liars will inflate the numbers, but it would help get an upper bound.)
Oh, you can only vote in person? I knew part of the Hugo process was online, and assumed that the whole thing was. 800 votes for an online poll is “small-town newspaper sidebar survey” range, winning a major award with that kind of number would be absurd. It makes far more sense if it’s embedded in a con.
Correction to my above: Trying to win Best Novel is unbelievable hubris, and it’ll be first off the ballot in the rather unlikely case that it makes it on at all.
No no, see my other comments—you can vote without being physically present… if you don’t mind paying $60 by January 31 for the membership which comes with few other benefits than being able to vote. You see the problem.
Keep in mind that “this fan base” would probably vote Methods (or EY, I suppose) in for Best Fan Writer pretty much uniformly, but is likely to be fragmented for Best Novel.
Wait, 800 votes is sufficient to win Best Novel? I think I’m with Eliezer on this now. That may actually be attainable with this fan base(if only because it’s vastly easier to mobilize for online works than for paper ones, due to logistical issues)
Edit: I was unclear on the voting process, and am retracting the above.
What kind of expectations about the voting for a Hugo did you have that when told it’s 800 (rather than 8, 80, 8000, 80000...) strikes you as fantastic? And do you think that there are 800 dedicated MoR readers who would go to Worldcon and rank it #1 in the vote? Remember the infamous 1% rule: for every reader, there’s 1% who will leave a comment or review, and out of those, 1% will do something additional. Going to Worldcon and voting is quite something additional.
(Well, one way to answer this would be to put up a poll on hpmor.com asking how many readers attended Worldcon 2011, Worldcon 2012, etc. Liars will inflate the numbers, but it would help get an upper bound.)
Oh, you can only vote in person? I knew part of the Hugo process was online, and assumed that the whole thing was. 800 votes for an online poll is “small-town newspaper sidebar survey” range, winning a major award with that kind of number would be absurd. It makes far more sense if it’s embedded in a con.
Correction to my above: Trying to win Best Novel is unbelievable hubris, and it’ll be first off the ballot in the rather unlikely case that it makes it on at all.
No no, see my other comments—you can vote without being physically present… if you don’t mind paying $60 by January 31 for the membership which comes with few other benefits than being able to vote. You see the problem.
Keep in mind that “this fan base” would probably vote Methods (or EY, I suppose) in for Best Fan Writer pretty much uniformly, but is likely to be fragmented for Best Novel.