Annie Bellet Criticizes 20Booksto50K Slate and Members of the Group Respond

Annie Bellet says she was livid when she read about “The Nebulas & 20booksto50, not-a-nudge-nudge-slate” on Camestros Felapton.

She’s brought to bear on this 2019 Nebulas slate her experience with the Sad/Rabid Puppies Hugo slates of 2015, when she took her Hugo-nominated story out of contention (see “Two Hugo Nominees Withdraw Their Stories” from April 2015). Twitter thread starts here.

She also showed the characteristics that distinguished this slate from a mere recommendation list.

Marko Kloos was the other 2015 Hugo nominee named in the story linked above, and he added his support today:

Marshall Ryan Maresca commented on the differences between authors asking for consideration and a slate.

People involved with 20Booksto50K, the creator of the slate, and the author of one of the listed works, have also weighed in.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, co-author with R.R. Virdi of “Messenger,” a work on the list that is now a Nebula finalist, had this to say:

The disproportionate influence of a slate may also be due to the small numbers of nominations needed to make the Nebula ballot, according to this exchange:

Whether something is a recommendation list or a slate is a question:

Bellet said this about recognizing the difference between slates and recommendations:

Incidentally, there is support for Wijeratne’s nominated story.

Michael Cooper responded on Facebook by essentially arguing no one can show anybody was influenced by the list:

Recently the Nebula Award finalists were announced, and there’s been some flak because of the number of independent authors on the ballot.

Honestly, so far as I’m concerned, I don’t think there are enough.

I think that the ratio of indies to trad pubs on the ballot is backwards from what it should be. Why do I think this? Well…sales. Indies sell more books than traditionally published authors by a wide margin. Granted, this is as a whole and there are individual trad pub authors who do very well, but if you look at the top SF authors on Amazon, the list is dominated by indies.

…If you’re a SF reader, then you probably know this statement: Correlation does not equal causation. Just because a list of books to vote for was posted in the 20Books FB group, does not meant that that list got the indies who are on the ballot up there. It’s not a smoking gun.

To say that the indie authors in SWFA (the organization that produces the Nebula awards) voted as a bloc because of that list is to call into question the character of all those people and to say that they did not evaluate the books they voted for.

That sort of statement is: irrational, a baseless accusation, and irresponsible. Now, I know that a lot of people didn’t come out and *say* that members of the 20books FB group voted as a bloc, but they implied it. For the sake of intellectual honesty, they should make it clear that they did not imply such a thing, and that to the best of their knowledge, every SFWA member that nominated a book or story, did so after careful consideration and review.

Because they have no evidence to the contrary (that they’ve presented, at least).

Lastly, to say that because a person is a member of an FB group means that they adhere to all the core tenets of that group is frankly stupid and lazy thinking. To then denigrate them because you don’t like an aspect of a group in which they are members is the sort of thinking that belies a lack of clear logic and reasoning.

Craig Martelle, who runs the 20Booksto50K Facebook group, added a comment on Cooper’s post:

It’s hard not take negative comments about 20Booksto50k® personally since I run that group, but taking a step back, we did nothing untoward. Indies read indies. We support each other by reading and buying each other’s stuff, often promoting it as well with our own hard-acquired email lists. The ignorance is appalling about what we do. I think ethically making money isn’t dirty and that’s part of the allusions. People contact me if they find a typo in one of my books – I fix them and reupload. The books with the most typos are my trad pub books. Trad does not necessarily equal higher quality. I think my latest books are as high in the quality department as any trad book out there. But I digress – this isn’t about me. It’s about a system that promotes ebooks that cost more than a hardback. It’s about the old guard who are slowly changing yet having a hard time giving ground. It’s about the industry of middle men who stand to lose their jobs from the indie revolution. Of course they don’t want to change. I can’t begrudge them a long career that ends on a whimper. But adapt and overcome. That’s what has made indies a force to be reckoned with. I demonstrate that with The Expanding Universe anthologies, now a two-time Nebula finalist publication. I support indies taking charge of their own careers through 20Books. I support all authors taking responsibility for their career decisions. I don’t support those who need to denigrate others. It won’t make them feel better and it definitely won’t stop the indie train. That baby is already well down the tracks and picking up speed.

Martelle also waved the threat of a SLAPP suit against offenders:

We simply asked people to read our stuff with their limited time because full-time indie authors are busy as hell. I’m watching the blogs and stuff. If anyone crosses the line into libel, I’ll drop a C&D on them and then follow with a lawsuit. As they say, put your money where your mouth is. I’m willing to because I know for a fact that we didn’t do a slate. Let’s see how the keyboard warriors respond to real world consequences.

Jonathan Brazee continues to claim SFWA itself okayed the list:

I didn’t respond to any of the blogs or Reddit, but just as an aside, the indie FB list was cleared with the SFWA staff before it was ever posted.

I have asked Brazee for the name of the person he spoke to. Who knows what really happened anyway? If somebody asked me “How about if I put up a reading list” I wouldn’t think anything of it, unless I knew that person was the representative of a large group, and was going to preface his list with an encouragement for the group to nominate those works for the Nebula Award.

J A Sutherland has added perspective in this Twitter thread:

96 thoughts on “Annie Bellet Criticizes 20Booksto50K Slate and Members of the Group Respond

  1. @rcade–

    Bellet had to work through a process after she was nominated and it became controversial. She got upset with me on her blog after I made a comment to her in 2015 that’s similar to what she told Wijeratne this year. She told me, “I feel good about my nomination and my story. Everyone else voting can make their own damn decisions.”

    So it was initially difficult for her too, though she may have handled it a little better than he did.

    And by “handled it a little better than he did” you mean, didn’t call you a petulant child, or suggest that you’re so ignorant you wouldn’t know Asia is a big place, or that math is beyond you.

    Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a dickhead, and a condescending asshat, and it seems to me this is not the first time you’ve expended energy in defending condescending dickheads.

  2. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a dickhead, and a condescending asshat, and it seems to me this is not the first time you’ve expended energy in defending condescending dickheads.

    And this is probably not the first time you’ve viewed a person in more black-and-white terms than someone else here. If you have problems with any of my past comments here, feel free to elaborate on your point. I love a good File 770 ass-whipping even when I’m the ass.

  3. Hampus Eckerman on February 26, 2019 at 10:58 pm said:
    “? Well…sales. Indies sell more books than traditionally published authors by a wide margin.”

    That might be true. I do not know. But that is nit very interesting. As all of the books nominated are from the 20BooksTo50K-slate, the real question is if the authors in that group outsell the traditionally published authors. I find that very hard to believe.

    Cautionary Note in Advance: I am NOT accusing any of the authors in the current flap of personally engaging in any of these practices!

    But when we talk of indie readership versus that of traditional publishers, of necessity we face the impossibility of accurately counting ebook sales, that being the medium chosen by the vast majority of indie authors.
    And attempting to reckon up ebook sales opens a can of worms.
    The same fraudulent procedures that create the fake sales ranking and allow the looting of Kindle Unlimited also screw up sales data beyond the point of rescue.
    Sales numbers largely generated by the current horror that is Amazon cannot be relied upon, and there’s no way to clean up the data.
    Click farms and bots aren’t readers, but they generate enough “sales” to support an entire ecosystem of literary crooks.
    How many indie sales are there – no one has the slightest idea.

  4. On the question of what makes a list a slate, I think the key thing is that a slate is a sample ballot that urges people to vote on grounds other than the quality of the works. Slates are about telling people how to vote; recommendation lists are about suggesting things for people to read. In the extreme form, slates urge people to vote for works without reading them. A list much bigger than a ballot can’t be a slate regardless of how the works were selected because the factors that give slates an unfair advantage disappear quickly when the list becomes much bigger than the ballot.

    So, for example, if I published a list that recommended stories by gay writers, it wouldn’t be a slate if it had (say) 20 or so stories on it, even though it’s using identity to suggest stories rather than quality. (A reasonable exception would be to agree that an author promoting his/her own work isn’t creating a slate.)

    On the other hand, a simple list promoted as “here’s what I’m nominating this year” also wouldn’t be a slate, since the stories are (presumably) recommended based on quality, even though the list is exactly the size of the ballot.

    Anyway, that’s my best shot at defining it, but I think it works without any unintended consequences.

    In the case in question, the list is a slate because people were told to vote in order to promote independent writers, not because the books were particularly good.

  5. About who is and is not a dick:

    Margaret’s explanation, which I liked better, was that you had to learn a culture until you knew whether the person on the other side of the table was following a cultural norm different from yours, or just an a$$h°1e.

  6. @Greg Hullender: I think it’s also worth mentioning that there can be gray areas even with the lists that have more items than the ballot allows. For example, a longlist with asterisked items that are equal to or less than the available ballot slots. In those cases, it all comes down to what the asterisk means. Or, for instance, a longlist put out without enough time to read any of the items on the list.

    I can remember examples of both approaches that were legitimately not-slates, but I can also remember examples of both approaches there were definitely slates.

    And I think the gray areas really need to be acknowledged in any definition of what constitutes a slate. Although I think trying to define what is a slate is not a worthwhile attempt at all. Bad actors excel at finding loopholes in definitions.

  7. Or, for instance, a longlist put out without enough time to read any of the items on the list.

    Don’t forget that longlists also serve the purpose of reminding people what stories they’re already read are eligible. In that case, it doesn’t matter if there wasn’t time to read them all.

    A good definition is useful even if it has gray areas, provided the gray areas are less harmful.

    For example, in my definition, a longlist that was just twice as big as the ballot would be a “gray slate.” However, cutting its impact in half might be enough to keep it from being a problem.

    Or the “recommendation list” which is really a slate but the author just doesn’t talk about how he/she really selected the stories. In that case, it’s likely to get lower participation simply because people won’t know about it or won’t know what it’s for.

    Lacking definitions, how do you know whom to criticize? Doing it on the basis of the person’s reputation seems really wrong.

  8. John A Arkansawyer: About who is and is not a dick: “Margaret’s explanation, which I liked better, was that you had to learn a culture until you knew whether the person on the other side of the table was following a cultural norm different from yours, or just an a$$h°1e.”

    And that’s really the crux of it. The 20BooksTo50K group aren’t really a part of SFF Author Culture. They’re part of their own Book Hustler Author Culture, and in their culture, “quality” is whatever you can get people to buy, and anything you can do to increase your sales and income is good; for them, there’s no such thing as unethical marketing. (Note that this is the group behind authors’ attempts to get copyright on certain words like “cocky”.) They don’t see anything wrong with this attempted takeover of the Nebula Awards, because in their culture, this is acceptable behavior. In their world, all that matters is making money. And the Nebula Awards, to them, are just another thing they can use to increase their sales.

    Conversely, in the SFF Author Culture, ideas and quality of writing are hugely important. Certainly these authors strive for popularity and sales, but most of them also also have a sense of ethics and the self-respect to not to stoop to underhanded behavior in order to get the popularity and sales. To most of them, the Nebula Awards are their way of recognizing their peers for outstanding work, not a marketing tool to be co-opted in any way possible for personal gain.

    What the 20BooksTo50K people have done is try to move in on something owned by a culture that they don’t understand or subscribe to. The current mess sure as hell is their fault for not taking the time to do that first. And all of the doubling-down by the authors of the slated works certainly puts them into asshole territory.

  9. I don’t know where you got that idea, but it’s not true.

    Thanks for the correction. I misinterpreted what he said about 20BooksTo50K as I was reading about the controversy on Twitter.

    As to whether he’s an “innocent” party, he’s not a creator of the slate nor (by his account) a member of SFWA. The slate voting concern could be something he just found out about this week.

    Does anybody know if 20BooksTo50K’s slate was called a slate by anybody before the Nebula nominee announcement?

  10. @Greg Hullender: We are very close in opinion here. My reading of your post felt it did not present recommendation longlists as ‘gray slates’ but as not-slates tout a fait and I wanted to point out the times when they could be slates. I did not mean to imply that they are always slates. Your example of recommendation longlists as reminder lists is well taken. I had actually edited out a mention of reminder lists from my post which I clearly should have left in.

    We also agree that criticizing recommendation lists based on personal reputation would be wholly wrong.

    However, I still feel that there is no need to try to define what is a slate. Approaching each example case-by-case seems the better approach to me. That way we are asking in each case, what was the purpose behind this list? How was it put together, etc.?

    This Nebula situation is a good example of that. Someone noticed a pattern in the finalists and wondered about it. Someone noticed the correlation between the pattern and a specific group. Digging in, it was noticed that the recommendation longlist contained only members of the group, and moreover, highlighted (asterisked) a few in each category for special emphasis by the group when nominating. These questions and resulting research resulted in members of the group coming out to defend their actions, and in doing so, showed that the intent was not to celebrate individual works, but to advance a cause. Which makes it very clear to all that this was indeed a slate.

    That way the conversation is centered on why something was done, rather than nit-picking over a definition.

  11. What the Nebula and Hugo Awards seem to have in common is that they are voted on by readers who like to read the finalists and discuss them, including in the discussion what they like and don’t like about them.

    These are not the sandboxes to play in by authors who are easily outraged or hurt by criticism. Or who want to do anything other than have the work judged.

  12. rcade: Does anybody know if 20BooksTo50K’s slate was called a slate by anybody before the Nebula nominee announcement?

    Does anyone know whether anyone from SFWA who is not part of 20BooksTo50K — or anyone else who is not part of the group — actually saw the list before the Nebula announcement?

    Mike asked Brazee for confirmation of who in SFWA supposedly “cleared” their list. Brazee never responded. That certainly speaks volumes: he’s not naming that person, because if he actually did ask someone for an okay, what that person would say they were asked about would no doubt be very different from what Brazee actually posted.

  13. The 20BooksTo50K group is not new to controversy. Does anyone remember the CockeyGate fiasco? 20BooksTo50K was very supportive of Faleena Hopkins, the author who filed th lawsuit (and gave other authors similar ideas).

    Also, isn’t one of their members known for putting together Kindle Unlimited boxed sets where authors pay to be part of the set? (They do so because those sets often hit the bestseller lists, so the authors can then call themselves “USA Today Bestselling Author” or whatever.) She is also known for threatening people with lawsuits if they dare criticize her in public, of course.

    There is more to be unearthed I’m sure… :-/

  14. When the not-a-slate was first brought to light, I thought these authors were just clueless about how this would be viewed. But then they responded with more and more determination to remain clueless as to why this is viewed unfavorably. They chalk it up to resistance to indies. They also don’t understand that money is the only reward you are entitled to for good sales. Not literary awards. You can, of course, have both. But this isn’t a good start toward that.

  15. @Anne Marble
    I know that Faleena Hopkins of Cockygate infamy used to be a member and even gave the keynote at one of their conferences, but I didn’t know that they were involved with the boxset maker who shall not be named as well.

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  17. I know that Faleena Hopkins of Cockygate infamy used to be a member and even gave the keynote at one of their conferences, but I didn’t know that they were involved with the boxset maker who shall not be named as well.

    It has been a while since I joined, and I didn’t read the posts often, so I can’t remember if “Boxemort” actually posted a lot, etc. At the very least, some of the big names in the group were taught by her. Some had books in her box sets — of course, that doesn’t mean they’re colluding as some authors joined those because they thought it was the best way to market theiir books. Some used one of her promotional newsletter service thingies. Others are published by her new company (established earlier this year I believe).

    FWIW it was recently reported that apparently #copypastecris got her USA Today Bestseller status from one of those boxed sets. https://twitter.com/davidgaughran/status/1097896392427794438?s=21

    Don’t get me started on those free and bargain ebook thingies Boxemort was running… I got an annoying amount of author spam from those.

  18. Anne Marble: it was recently reported that apparently #copypastecris got her USA Today Bestseller status from one of those boxed sets.

    Oh, is that how Rhett C. Bruno scammed himself into the “USA Today Bestselling Author” status he keeps bragging about?

    🙄 <– This is my “surprised” face.

  19. Lets remember that being a slate is only one problem with the 20BooksTo50K-list. The other is the devaluation of quality for the purpose of marketing. From the accompanying email:

    “The more recommendations each work gets, the better the visibility. My feeling is that if a work is generally good, I’ll give it my thumbs up. For the nominations themselves, I will nominate the five stories I liked the best from the list.”

    Brazee states that he is going to nominate five items from a list of “generally good” SF books. But that isn’t how it should be. You should nominate works of excellence. Award-worthy stuff.

    What you thought was outstanding.

  20. Please indulge me when I think out loud.

    I was initially willing to see the not-a-slate as more a line-pushing antic. The subsequent reaction or some of the authors was less than endearing but that’s a different episode of Authors Behaving Badly.

    I’ve done more reading since both of some of the not-a-slate nominees who ended up as finalists and some that did not. Now I’m a bit stuck.

    On the one hand SOME (and I stress *some*) of the finalist on the not-a-slate are works that are less than stellar. If I was told ‘this work was nominated by fans of the book series the story connects to and fans of the author in general as part of a popularity contest’, I’d find that plausible. On the other hand, if I was told ‘this work was nominated by fellow writers as an example of writing that they admire or think should be emulated’ then nope, even accounting for the subjectivity of taste I do not find that remotely plausible. The examples I am thinking of were not standout works within their own subgenre or within the milieu of authors who write similar works with similar business models. They were not standouts within anthologies that they appeared in. That makes the fact that they are finalists in a notable award more than curious. The question is not one of taste or quality as such but one of exceptionality: why this story rather than another?

    Now the above sounds like an argument that the not-a-slate really did function as a slate. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work either. For example, “A Galactic Affair” by Craig Martelle was listed for Short Story on the not-a-slate but was NOT a finalist. Yet Martelle is one of the most prominent people in 20booksto50 and the story is, IMHO, better than other listed works that did end up as finalists. If the not-a-slate operated as a de facto slate for a number of 20booksto50 members who were also SWFA members then it’s odd that Martelle’s story didn’t make is a finalist, when a less notable story by a less notable author on the same list DID make it.

    There’s no punchline here other than these are weird outcomes.

  21. Jim C Hines did a comparison among the Nebula nominees for ratings and ownership on goodreads and librarything. Has anyone done the same for all the not-a-slate works?

  22. JJ on February 27, 2019 at 2:19 pm said:

    rcade: Yudhanjaya Wijeratne [is] not involved in 20booksto50K

    I don’t know where you got that idea, but it’s not true.

    He’s not an “innocent” party here.

    “Messenger by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne & R.R. Virdi” appeared in “The Expanding Universe 4: Space Adventure, Alien Contact, & Military Science Fiction” an anthology edited by Craig Martelle published by the publisher run by Michael Anderle.

  23. Aaaah, sorry Nicholas! I really appreciate your work (and that of Hines) and didn’t mean to slight you.

  24. This is all just…so sad. This was my first year eligible to nominate and I put a lot of thought into it, regretful because there was more excellent work than I could fit in. There are pieces I loved in each category, so I can vote confidently on the options presented, but I will continue to wonder who didn’t make the cut. 🙁 It isn’t just the name on a list, but an invitation to be highlighted in programming at the con and celebrated for doing innovative things in the field… So if the work is just “good enough” and the authors subscribe to “minimum viable quality” I’m not much interested in their input on craft OR business practices.

  25. Lower visibility is probably a problem that a lot of indies have. (for a more uncontroversal case look at The Martian)
    I have no doubt that there are indies who could be nominated qualitywise but are not on the radar of nominaters. (the same is probably also true with conservative writers because there are only so much slots)
    It is okay to try to raise the visability of overlooked writers.
    Using slates and you won’t help your case. (I would argue that works need to be even better to be looked favorable upon if they are on a slate.)
    Often slates use works that send the mesage, it is okay to overlook what they claim about is overlooked, at last from their group. So they are actually hurting the standing of the works they are claiming to help.

    Re Annie Bellet: I did read her forumpost after her nomination. She did take some time and was at first thinking she deserved the nom because her story was good. The problems with the slate did take some time to make itself clear. I looked trough the tread. There are no insults against others there. (And if I remember the numbers corectly her shortstory got a lot of nominations from non-puppies)

    For me it is quite simple: Slated, you have a harder job to convince me to take your work serious.
    That will chance if I believe you that you had nothink to do with the slate.
    If personal attacks happen you will have a harder time to make the list of I will ever read anythink of you.

  26. @Camestros Felaptron: that a good work on a recommendation list was not nominated, while a lesser work was, may not exactly suggest a slate, but there’s room for suspicion. Two of the points in this discussion were (a) while the list was long, a nomination-sized subset of the works were asterisked, and (b) the accompanying text specifically encouraged people to support those works. I haven’t read the list(*); are these two points correct, and if so was Martelle’s work not asterisked? Was the work or works that did make the ballot from the list asterisked? If these are both true, I’d suspect the makers of the list got what they intended — and that their intentions were focused on gaming the nominations to their advantage rather than trying to get the best(**) work on the ballot

    (*) the noise around the list suggests I wouldn’t find anything worth reading that I wouldn’t also see elsewhere.

    (**) where “best” is based on quality (however arguable) rather than sales numbers (however legitimate).

  27. Sam: I will continue to wonder who didn’t make the cut. It isn’t just the name on a list, but an invitation to be highlighted in programming at the con and celebrated for doing innovative things in the field.

    And that’s the really sad part. There are works which would have had a place on the ballot based on organic populariry, and those authors have been deprived of a nomination and everything that goes with it, because mediocre works* were slated onto the ballot by people whose primary concern is getting publicity and sales in any way they can, regardless of how unethical.

    Wijeratne’s phony offer to give the trophy back if a bunch of people at the conference are willing to tell him to his face that his nomination was unfair (yeah, as if that’s going to happen) is just another slap in the face to the people who actually deserve to be on the ballot.

    * I’ve read all 4 short works, and the novel and novella excerpts, and only Schoen’s story is up-to-snuff

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  29. Given the comments here, I have to lend my support to the Yudhanjaya Wijeratne & R.R. Virdi nomination. This is an awesome story, full of style, imagery, decent characterization and meaning on multiple levels. Plus, Wijeratne is just the kind of diverse author that any awards system should be glad to have in the finalist list. He is Shri Lankan and a hybrid author, with both traditionally published and indie works. I believe he’s recently gotten a four-book deal from HarperCollins. No one should attack the legitimacy of a nomination like that.

  30. Lela E Buis: Wijeratne is just the kind of diverse author that any awards system should be glad to have in the finalist list. He is Shri Lankan and a hybrid author, with both traditionally published and indie works. I believe he’s recently gotten a four-book deal from HarperCollins. No one should attack the legitimacy of a nomination like that.

    None of these things is relevant to a Nebula Award nomination. None of these things makes the nomination of that story “legitimate”.

    Talking about the quality of the story is legitimate. And you are certainly allowed to think that it’s great. I liked the cultural elements of the story, but personally thought that it was a bit muddled, predictable, and did not rise above the level of “okay”.

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  32. Wow, Annie more incensed about asterisks than the puppies were at Sasquan.

  33. No one should attack the legitimacy of a nomination like that.

    It is impossible to criticize the use of slate voting as a tactic without being accused of attacking the works that appeared to benefit from it. But that’s never been the purpose of speaking out in protest. People who vote on (or value) SF awards hate slates.

  34. Wow. I’m relatively new in SFWA. I’ve seen some great things in this organization and some issues too. This seems to be a lack of understanding about how to best represent the diversity of the membership. As a self-published author, I’m thankful there is a portion of SFWA that wants to better represent “indies” (it’s just self-published as far as I’m concerned). I don’t see why Ms. Bellet is so riled up given that most (all?) of the Nebula nominations appear to be traditional publishers, but I’ll listen for now and learn more.

  35. Douglas Phillips: This seems to be a lack of understanding about how to best represent the diversity of the membership.

    The Nebula Awards are about recognizing excellence in SFF fiction. They are not Participation Awards, in which slots on the ballot are apportioned to various subgroups based on the percentage of members in those subgroups.

    They are also not Marketing Prizes to which all authors should have equal access, regardless of the quality of their work.

    As long as you continue to look at it as being about “representing the diversity of the membership”, you are not going to understand why people are angry.

  36. Douglas Phillips on March 2, 2019 at 7:56 pm said:
    Wow. I’m relatively new in SFWA. I’ve seen some great things in this organization and some issues too. This seems to be a lack of understanding about how to best represent the diversity of the membership. As a self-published author, I’m thankful there is a portion of SFWA that wants to better represent “indies” (it’s just self-published as far as I’m concerned). I don’t see why Ms. Bellet is so riled up given that most (all?) of the Nebula nominations appear to be traditional publishers, but I’ll listen for now and learn more.

    You seem to be picking this up from the wrong end here.
    My understanding is that Bellet is herself a self-published author.
    And, further, that she had a lot to do with getting independently published authors into SFWA to begin with.

    No one is concerned with self-published versus traditionally published nominees.
    That’s not the issue.
    The problem is the slating.
    You might google Hugo + slate + Bellet (or Kloos).

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