I recently wrote about my excitement to be participating in the Hugo nominating process for the first time. The Hugo Awards are open to anyone who wishes to participate, provided you are at least a Supporting member of World Con.
The annual Locus Awards are genre fiction awards that you also have a voice in, with one exception being that anyone can vote regardless of willingness/ability to invest your hard-earned cash. If you are a subscriber, or want to become one, your vote counts double, so there is an option to participate financially and receive an extra benefit from so doing.
The online ballot for nominations is now live and the staff at Locus have pre-seeded the ballot with works from their Recommended Reading list. However, you have write-in options for each category and do not have to pick from the list. The categories are: Best SF Novel, Best Fantasy Novel, Best YA Book, Best First Novel, Best Collection, Best Anthology, Best Nonfiction Book, Best Art Book, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Magazine or Fanzine, Best Book Publisher, Best Editor (Pro or Fan), and Best Artist (Pro or Fan).
You can nominate in any or all categories and can nominate up to 5 works/people in each category, ranking them 1-5. Nominations are live until April 15th, with voting from the short list to come sometime after nominations are closed.
As the image included in this post indicates, the Year in Review issue of Locus Magazine is now available in digital and print format. I can tell you from personal experience that this is a dangerously delightful must-buy if you are a fan of genre fiction and enjoy the annual “best of” lists that crop up on blogs and websites at year end. I promise you that no matter how much you are in touch with the genre, there will be works here that you haven’t heard of. The “dangerous” part of the delight is that the issue will undoubtedly add to your to-read list.
I encourage you to get out there and nominate. Any work released in 2013 world-wide is eligible. Take advantage of the opportunity, and let your voice be heard.
I will do this this year. This is the first time I feel I have read enough of the new releases to bother, so I am kinda excited to see how the process goes start to finish.
I’m in that same place, Nathan. I feel like I’ve read enough to be able to at least nominate some works I feel are worthy.
I won’t vote for anything I have not read (as opposed to some who just vote for names) and I’ve read no 2013 SF-F, so I’m out. Thanks for posting this, though, as awareness is vital.
I agree with that, no voting should be done without having at least read what one is voting for.
I’m with Richard, that I won’t vote for a title I haven’t read. . . which means I’ll probably only vote for one or two per category.
But thank you for posting this Carl, I didn’t know that non-subscribers were even allowed to vote!
It looks a little confusing when you pop over there because there is a subscriber number box but reading the fine print is where it says anyone can vote, but subscribers get more voting bang for their buck by being counted twice.
That one or two votes could be what puts a good book over the edge. 🙂
It may be a year or two until I nominate again, but I can tell you that I absolutely enjoyed being part of the nominating and voting process – feeling so engaged by the whole thing. It was worth the money at the time, but also just being such a part of that conversation about the awards. Good stuff.
I’m only just now re-engaging with what’s going on, so I’m not really in a position to be able to do anything with it right now, but I’m excited to see the nominees come out in a couple of months.