You’re assuming that Best Fan Writer and Best Novel are equally valuable awards. This is not even close to true.
I have twice already pointed out that possibility.
If anyone can track down number of votes in the different categories, it would be a way of checking on my opinion.
It would be good information, yes. As far as I can tell, there may be some very recent records of recommendations by the Nebula members (and also claims of considerable politicking, so an appeal by Eliezer to fans would be far from unprecedented nor especially effective).
The Hugo voting system is pretty complicated, but apparently they’ve released detailed statistics since the 1980s—one of the first quotes in that 1997 analysis is
...This idea that hardly anyone votes on the fan Hugos is perhaps the most widespread of the misconceptions I alluded to...
The most recent data is for 2011. Best Novel took 1813 ballots, with 779 vs 753 for #1 vs #2 (as I said, complicated—it’s IRV).
The fan categories are fanzine, fan artist, and fan writer; the last had 323 ballots, with 70 vs 40. So in other words, just to get within spitting distance of Best Novel #2, you would need almost twice as many ballots as were cast for the entire category of Best Fan Writer.
You see why I would give MoR for Best Novel 0-5%, and EY for Best Fan Writer 50+%?
I can’t find your mentions that the Best Novel Hugo might be worth more than the Best Fan Writer. This doesn’t mean I think you’re lying or mistaken, but where are they? Were they in some other thread or sub-thread?
I’m not sure if my point that just getting nominated for Best Novel is a huge win in terms of readership has registered. For these purposes, there is no difference I can see between coming in second and coming in last.
I agree that HPMOR doesn’t have a great chance of winning Best Novel. It depends tremendously on what the competition is, and I’m assuming we’re talking about at least two years from now, so what novels it would be up against are hard to predict. I don’t think there are any predictable blockbusters in the immediate pipeline.
I’m not sure if my point that just getting nominated for Best Novel is a huge win in terms of readership has registered. For these purposes, there is no difference I can see between coming in second and coming in last.
As I suggested, it may be a good idea—but Eliezer did not present that as a reason, has not presented it as a reason, and has not justified it. What makes you think the nomination is better than winning a fan Hugo, besides anecdotes about peoples’ reading lists including nominees?
I’m assuming that the purpose of going for a Hugo is to get publicity and increased readership for HPMOR. If I’m mistaken—possibly the point is that having a Hugo award is Really Cool—then going for the win in a less important category would make sense.
I’ve been in fandom since the early seventies, and it seems to me that people talk about the Best Novel a lot more than Best Fan Writer.
I may be biased, but I think Fan Writing is very much a sub-culture within the sub-culture.
To be fair, even print sf is minuscule compared to tv, movies, and comics. From yet another angle, fanfic has become a huge thing by fannish standards, but I think it’s something of a separate branch compared to the sort of fan writing (typically essays, I think, rather than fiction) which gets a Hugo.
If I’m mistaken—possibly the point is that having a Hugo award is Really Cool—then going for the win in a less important category would make sense.
I suspect the real logic is: having a Hugo award is Really Cool, having a Hugo for best novel is Even More Really Cool, and Eliezer isn’t the type of person to settle for Really Cool in that situation.
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.
I have twice already pointed out that possibility.
It would be good information, yes. As far as I can tell, there may be some very recent records of recommendations by the Nebula members (and also claims of considerable politicking, so an appeal by Eliezer to fans would be far from unprecedented nor especially effective).
The Hugo voting system is pretty complicated, but apparently they’ve released detailed statistics since the 1980s—one of the first quotes in that 1997 analysis is
The most recent data is for 2011. Best Novel took 1813 ballots, with 779 vs 753 for #1 vs #2 (as I said, complicated—it’s IRV).
The fan categories are fanzine, fan artist, and fan writer; the last had 323 ballots, with 70 vs 40. So in other words, just to get within spitting distance of Best Novel #2, you would need almost twice as many ballots as were cast for the entire category of Best Fan Writer.
You see why I would give MoR for Best Novel 0-5%, and EY for Best Fan Writer 50+%?
I can’t find your mentions that the Best Novel Hugo might be worth more than the Best Fan Writer. This doesn’t mean I think you’re lying or mistaken, but where are they? Were they in some other thread or sub-thread?
I’m not sure if my point that just getting nominated for Best Novel is a huge win in terms of readership has registered. For these purposes, there is no difference I can see between coming in second and coming in last.
I agree that HPMOR doesn’t have a great chance of winning Best Novel. It depends tremendously on what the competition is, and I’m assuming we’re talking about at least two years from now, so what novels it would be up against are hard to predict. I don’t think there are any predictable blockbusters in the immediate pipeline.
Subthread.
As I suggested, it may be a good idea—but Eliezer did not present that as a reason, has not presented it as a reason, and has not justified it. What makes you think the nomination is better than winning a fan Hugo, besides anecdotes about peoples’ reading lists including nominees?
I’m assuming that the purpose of going for a Hugo is to get publicity and increased readership for HPMOR. If I’m mistaken—possibly the point is that having a Hugo award is Really Cool—then going for the win in a less important category would make sense.
I’ve been in fandom since the early seventies, and it seems to me that people talk about the Best Novel a lot more than Best Fan Writer.
I may be biased, but I think Fan Writing is very much a sub-culture within the sub-culture.
To be fair, even print sf is minuscule compared to tv, movies, and comics. From yet another angle, fanfic has become a huge thing by fannish standards, but I think it’s something of a separate branch compared to the sort of fan writing (typically essays, I think, rather than fiction) which gets a Hugo.
I suspect the real logic is: having a Hugo award is Really Cool, having a Hugo for best novel is Even More Really Cool, and Eliezer isn’t the type of person to settle for Really Cool in that situation.
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.