The 2024 Dragon Awards Ballot came out yesterday and collectively the nominees are keeping up the trend of the past five years — many of them are books that have been widely talked about, and up for other awards in the field — an impressive accomplishment in the face of award instructions that encourage writers to campaign (i.e., “it is perfectly acceptable for you to encourage your fans to vote for you.”) However, the works on the bottom rungs of the book categories say something about the award, too.
SUPPORT FOR THE FINALISTS. The Dragon Awards never publish detailed voting statistics. Therefore, since the award was launched File 770 has looked at the number of Goodreads ratings received by the finalists as a means of exploring how extensive their fan bases might be. Some are massive; a few are slight.
Here’s a year-by-year summary of the Dragon Award book finalists with fewer than 100 ratings as of the time the ballot came out:
2017 – 24
2018 – 11
2019 – 8
2021 – 3
2022 – 0
2023 — 2
2024 — 2
(I didn’t research the numbers in 2020.)
On the other hand, the number of finalists with less than 500 ratings has climbed since last year.
2023 – 8
2024 — 11
THE INSIDE STATS. Here are the 2024 Dragon Awards finalists in the book categories with their dates of publication and the number of Goodreads ratings as of August 5.
2024 BALLOT
BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
| RATINGS | TITLE |
| 49,653 | Starter Villain by John Scalzi (9/23) |
| 42,685 | System Collapse by Martha Wells (11/23) |
| 2,885 | The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (7/23) |
| 2,321 | These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs (10/23) |
| 1,283 | The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu (10/23) |
| 559 | Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen (11/23) |
| 293 | Beyond the Ranges by John Ringo, James Aidee (5/24) |
BEST FANTASY NOVEL (INCLUDING PARANORMAL)
| RATINGS | TITLE |
| 1,220,418 | Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (11/23) |
| 8,902 | He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan (8/23) |
| 2,875 | Three Kinds of Lucky by Kim Harrison (3/24) |
| 2,722 | The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang (8/23) |
| 1,495 | House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky (12/23) |
| 379 | My Brother’s Keeper by Tim Powers (9/23) |
BEST YOUNG ADULT / MIDDLE GRADE NOVEL
| RATINGS | TITLE |
| 8,348 | The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (9/23) |
| 4,016 | So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole (1/24) |
| 1,239 | Midnight at the Houdini by Delilah S. Dawson (9/23) |
| 304 | Death Lord Arcanist by Shami Stovall (3/24) |
| 136 | Homecoming in Black by J.M. Anjewierden (8/23) |
| 67 | Hideki Smith, Demon Queller by A.J. Hartley, Hisako Osako, Kuma Hartley (8/23) |
BEST ALTERNATE HISTORY NOVEL
| RATINGS | TITLE |
| 3,559 | All the Dead Shall Weep by Charlaine Harris (9/23) |
| 2,009 | Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (10/23) |
| 256 | Devil’s Battle by Taylor Anderson (9/23) |
| 216 | 1638: The Sovereign States by Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett, Gorg Huff (9/23) |
| 176 | The Wages of Sin by Harry Turtledove (12/23) |
| 51 | Dirty Water by Tom Kratman (11/23) |
BEST HORROR NOVEL
| RATINGS | TITLE |
| 19,422 | The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (10/23) |
| 5,527 | Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig (9/23) |
| 4,315 | The Dead Take the A Train by Richard Kadrey, Cassandra Khaw (10/23) |
| 1,701 | The Hollow Dead by Darcy Coates (2/24) |
| 285 | Dead Storm Rising by Shane Gries (9/23) |
| 147 | Double Dose by F. Paul Wilson (9/23) |
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Did a count of nominated novels by publication dates:
7/23 – 1
8/23 – 4
9/23 – 10
10/23 – 5
11/23 – 4
12/23 – 2
1/24 – 1
2/24 – 1
3/24 – 2
4/24 – 0
5/24 – 1
Looks like the sweet spot for a Dragon Award nomination is a September publication. (I suspect results for other awards might be similar, adjusted for nomination periods, but this is enough number-crunching for me today.)
Enough time to build a larger reader/voter base is probably a major factor here. Plus if a book is going to build significant buzz or word of mouth at all, that also takes a certain amount of time.
(Less likely is that publishers save their best books for September, but… maybe to have them fresh and available for Christmas season?)
So imo, Goodreads reviews don’t paint the best picture of fanbases, because they are so gamed for ARCs. Any book with a ton of Goodreads reviews, and much fewer Amazon reviews, demonstrates not a huge fanbase, but an effective marketing campaign, with ARCs distributed through Netgalley, the publishers themselves, Goodreads giveaways, etc.
So including the Amazon reviews, which largely filters for people who purchased copies, is also a useful metric. The scifi finalists (because that’s the category I care about!) sorted by Amazon reviews:
System Collapse | 42,685 (Goodreads) | 12,838 (Amazon)
Starter Villain | 49,653 (Goodreads) | 8,582 (Amazon)
Theft of Fire | 559 (Goodreads) | 768 (Amazon)
Beyond the Ranges | 293 (Goodreads) | 563 (Amazon)
These Burning Stars | 2,321 (Goodreads) | 552 (Amazon)
The Saint of Bright Doors | 2,885 (Goodreads) | 457 (Amazon)
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport | 1,283 (Goodreads) | 216 (Amazon)
Looking at this, I think my money is either on Wells, Ringo, or Eriksen. Wells has a huge fan base that may come through. Ringo is part of Baen, which is great at herding cats to vote, plus he has a very dedicated fan base. Eriksen is the surprising underdog that I believe in because he’s my husband and his book Theft of Fire is one of the best scifi novels of the decade <3
Only time will tell!!