Sean CW Korsgaard, Assistant Editor & Media Relations for Baen Books, recently cast suspicion on SFWA’s 58th Nebula Awards finalists after zero works published by Baen Books made the ballot, offering as support what he claimed was a near-deadline screencap of the Nebula nomination voting tally for Novel showing a Baen author out in front.
Korsgaard expressed his doubts about the results in comments on a Facebook post by author M.A. Rothman who had written, “Well, one might ask, when was the last time any author published by Baen won this so-called award?”
However, Korsgaard’s screencap so strongly resembled the Nebula Awards Suggested Reading list compiled from members’ recommendations that File 770 asked SFWA if that’s what it really is. The Nebula Reading List has been public-facing since 2015 – with a parallel version visible only to members that also contains a tally of how many recommendations works have received.
Rebecca Gomez Farrell, SFWA Communications Director, confirmed the observation.
“The screenshot is from the member-facing version of the Nebula Suggested Reading List, which still shares the number of recommendations with SFWA members. We ask our members not to share internal information/discussions that take place in our online spaces. The screenshot is missing the language at the very top of the page (which is on our public-facing and internal lists) that reads in bold, ‘Please note this list is not the preliminary ballot or nomination tally and does not affect the Nebula Award nominations or final results in any way.’
“The numbers you are seeing on the ‘Total’ column only reflect the number of SFWA members who had recommended (not officially nominated) a work to their fellow members at the given time this internal screenshot was taken. The reading list and the nomination and final ballots are completely different systems.”
To recap, there are:
- The reading recommendations, which anyone can see.
- The reading recommendation list with a tally of how many members have recommended a work, which is only accessible to members. The screencap Korsgaard presented is from this members-only recommendations list.
- Another completely separate system used to track members’ nominating votes.
If Korsgaard is really looking for “a piece I’m missing”, he can find it here.
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Interesting, and I’ll say no more than that.
Well that clears up that mystery. 🙂
Oh, as usual, dear.
Reminds me of the Nebula nominee (non-finalist), Richard Paolinelli.
So Sean CW Korsgaard, despite being an employee of a major SFF publisher, does not understand the difference between the SFWA public “Recommended Works” list and the utterly private “Nebula Nomination Ballot”?
Paging David Dunning and Justin Kruger to the front desk, please.
Clicking
On a semi-related note, I had a brief interaction with Joelle Prisby on Twitter a couple of days ago. Nothing to do with books. I checked her profile and found a link to The Debare Snake Launcher. Read the summary. Bought the book. Expecting good things!
Regards,
Dann
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians. – George Orwell
facepalm
That whole thread is … something else entirely. Just … cringe-worthy. And I say that as a fan who used to seek out Baen Books at the store and then look at stuff from other publishers.
Oh it’s a reading list. Wow. Who could’ve guessed?
The folks who work at Baen Books are so lacking in self-esteem that they take every slight as a deep, personal injury to them. Sort of like a certain Other Group that I shall not name here.
@JJ So Sean CW Korsgaard, despite being an employee of a major SFF publisher, does not understand the difference between the SFWA public “Recommended Works” list and the utterly private “Nebula Nomination Ballot”?
It looks as though the mistake was made by his “trusted source” within SFWA (who sent him the non-public recommendations list, with figures). Unless the trusted source was deliberately setting him up for public embarrassment.
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@Cat Eldridge–
A certain Other Group they have some affiliation with, perhaps?
Hey now, the “trusted source” could have also not understood the difference. Maybe a lot of them didn’t, and thus they “voted” on the recommendation list and not the actual, you know, voting.
Marshall Ryan Maresca: Is this one of those “Men can’t be expected to read the directions” jokes? Because Korsgaard’s “trusted source” left off the screencap the immediately adjacent clear explanation that it’s NOT Nebula voting info. For whatever reason he or she have might have had. It certainly would have been equally visible to any other member adding a recommendation.
Lis Carey asks me A certain Other Group they have some affiliation with, perhaps?
You think?
Look the fact is that the fiction of The Group That Shall Not Be Named and Baen Books (which of course they are published in part on) is as nowhere near as popular with the group of fans that vote for Awards as they need to be in order for them to win those Awards, or even be nominated for those Awards. That’s not going to change, period.
Cat Eldridge: they’re the same group.
Lie down with f ….
Jebus, some of those comments.
@Cat Eldridge–
This is so very, very true.
I think they should choose to enjoy the apparently very good sales they have with people who don’t vote for these Awards, and not worry about it, but they’re certainly not going to listen to me.
Hmm.
(and that is all I am going to say myself)
Lis Carey states This is so very, very true.
I think they should choose to enjoy the apparently very good sales they have with people who don’t vote for these Awards, and not worry about it, but they’re certainly not going to listen to me.
Or anybody else.
A big part of the problem is that they fervently believe that they deserve every major Award there is because they are So Damn Great. Indeed they are always better than everyone else always. So the fact that they are not winning Awards must mean it’s a conspiracy against them. A vast conspiracy.
@ Chris R
Yup. I told myself I shouldn’t read the comments. I should know better. But I went ahead and clicked the link anyway…
Back when I used to be on Baen’s Bar, I would come across Baen fans who shrugged off other publishers, turned up their noses at SFF awards, didn’t care about review zines because they “never” reviewed Baen authors, etc. But IIRC at that time, it wasn’t the prevailing view on the board.
I mean, I’m not making generalizations, but there are many people that if it’s between “pay attention to details” and “stampede through because I know what I’m doing”, they’re gonna choose the latter.
Looks like the Facebook post has now been deleted, presumably to reduce embarrassment.
MA Rothman’s FB post is still live/active.
Regards,
Dann
When there is no such thing as truth, you can’t define reality. & when you can’t define reality, the only thing that matters is power. – Maajid Nawaz
Bill Burns says Looks like the Facebook post has now been deleted, presumably to reduce embarrassment.
Eh? Rothman’s Facebook post is still up there. I’ve reloaded it several times and it refuses to go away. Even threatening it with pixels doesn’t scare it into doing so,
Rothman’s post was still live when I looked a little while ago. Did you click through the link in this post? Might you be blocked?
I got this:
But then, I was neither friend nor follower of Rothman.
I’m neither friend nor follower and I can see it.
I can still see the M.A.Rothman post and the comments
Yup, I can still see the post and the lovely comments directed at Cam and all the people they think he is.
I have absolutely no idea of why they are complaining about the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. Lois McMaster Bujold, William Gibson, Mercedes Lackey, Peter S. Beagle Robin McKinley and more. All solid choices.
Was able to read the post and comments (mostly) when I was logged out of Facebook. Something to do with my FB settings, no doubt.
Doesn’t seem like that circlejerk there ever acknowledged they were enthusiastically misleading themselves about some ‘trusted source” maliciously shit-stirring.
Jayn: It’s important to them to utter things that identify themselves as part of a group. Whether they’re true has no priority so long as the malicious comment is aimed at an agreed target.
These kinds of pile-ons always remind me of the sound of five or six sparrows in a bush cheeping the equivalent of “I’m here! I’m here!” And then they go back to eating bugs.
You might even say that they were signaling. Signaling the possession of qualities admired by their group. What other word for such qualities could there be? Hmmm…
If I’m understanding the screenshot correctly, I think an obvious sign they should’ve picked up on that they weren’t looking at what they thought they were looking at would be the number 20. It seems very unlikely to me that the top number of nominations for Best Novel of all categories would be that low and I would have been wary of the claim after that.
Good investigative work confirming it, Mike.
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