(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Why you won't get a full copy of all the nominated books in his year's Hugo packet

The ENTIRE Wheel Of Time, yes. The other three Best Novel nominees, no.

Comments

[catlin.livejournal.com]

REminds me. When are the packets due out?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Very soon" (http://www.loncon3.org/voter_package.php)

[frith]

quote: Finally, please do not pester our editors: the decision was taken above their level. Edit: Don't pester anyone else, either. The issue is closed.

Ha ha ha! So, if no one gets pestered, they can say, see? Nobody really cared and we didn't lose any revenue! Awesome.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

More, "Charlie Stross will not thank you if you make the person who signs his contracts personally mad at him."

[frith]

Charlie Stross, a man stuck between a rock and a hard place. 8^/

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone voting on the Hugos--I already bought Parasite, I'm already going to buy Ancillary Justice, and I might or might not buy Neptune's Brood. My household has a copy of most-or-all of the WoT books.

If they gave me a full electronic copy of these works, I would probably not look at them. It is possible that I will decide I simply must buy Neptune's Brood based on the excerpt; it is also possible I will be left with a bad taste in my mouth because the writing style does not suit how I read ebooks[1] and it will quietly slip off my radar and never get bought.

If you're comfortable with e-reading novels anyway, it is not unreasonable to see yourself as having already paid for the books, and thus not buy them. If you're not comfortable with e-reading novels, full copies are not going to motivate you to buy the books any more than samples would--you will either read a few chapters and think "okay, this is worth getting on paper" or read a few chapters and think "thank god I didn't pay money for this".

There are (currently) 7386 people who can vote at this year's WorldCon (that includes supporting memberships, but not children's memberships). Run with 7500, since there's still room for people to buy membrships... Hell, let's run with a ballpark of 8000 people eligible to get the Hugo's voter's packet.

I know there are going to be some people who shell out for a WorldCon membership and have not already read, heard of, or bought these books. I realize it is possible that there are going to be some people who have meant to look at these books, and have not had the chance, and that seeing the sample in front of them may motivate them to buy. I hear this works sometimes.

But I think that out of eight thousand people, the number of people who haven't already read/bought the books they were interested in, who were already open to the idea of buying the books, who take a look at the electronic sample of the books, and who then say "what? this is only a partial sample! well because of that I'm not buying this book!" is not likely to put a huge dent in the book sales. You know?
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[1] I won a cute, charming steampunk/Egyptology/spy/urban fantasy novella (I think--would need to double-check the length) for my ereader. And I nearly stopped reading three chapters in because e-readers are not well-designed to let you flip back a few pages and see what the date at the start of the last "sometime in the past" segment was. I am glad I didn't stop, but it was a deliberate and conscious decision that I would probably not make in most cases.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I mean, just looking at the comments on the linked post: by the time I hit the 16th comment, three people have said they own all three anyway, one person has said they're "probably all available for free in the usual places"[1], one person has said that they've usually already read two or three of the nominees anyway by the time the nominees are announced, and one person has specifically said that they've already read two of the nominees and aren't moved to check out the third.

I am, overwhelmingly, not getting the impression that Hugo-voting fandom was holding back on buying these books until they could get free and complete copies in the voter's packet, at which point they would shell out monies for them.
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[1] I choose to believe they mean "libraries". >.>

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The real advantage of "free, full in the voter packet" is to get you the copy of the one you don't own and that you can't get from the library because it's nominated for Best Novel and the waiting list got big.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

A point! Although I will note that locally, the library currently has 20 holds on 6 copies of Parasite (plus an ebook and an audiobook copy), 16 holds on 5 copies of Ancillary Justice, and 4 holds on 4 copies of Neptune's Brood. (Also 9 holds on 3 copies of Warbound, which I think is the non-Orbit book.)

This is low enough to remind me exactly how niche the Hugos are--for comparison, Gone Girl currently has 743 holds (on 99 copies! Jesus! and 167 holds on 8 large-print copies!)--and is honestly the kind of thing you can expect to clear up in a few weeks at most.

I'm not saying the library thing is always going to be the same as here, or that it wouldn't be awesome to give people a chance to read them all ETA: in time to vote--that's a really good point. Just saying that I don't think sales loss as a result of this decision is likely to be significant or relevant to the publishers.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

We also live in a place with a large, well-supplied library.

(Yes, I know those adjectives applied to OUR library will likely make you weep for the species. The species needs some weeping! But we still have a strong specimin of it.)

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Weeping SO HARD.

[j. c. salomon (from livejournal.com)]

Slight correction: There are four Best Novel nominees other than The Wheel of Time, not three; and one of those four will be available in the voters’ packet.

ETA: I didn’t realize the omission was deliberate until I read the linked-to post. Never mind.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I was indeed snarking about the presence of a protest-vote.