By Bill: Paul Weimer in his guest post of July 7 (“Be the Change: For the Future of the Hugos”) said “[T]he Hugo Awards DO matter. Careers and publishing lives were harmed by what happened in Chengdu.” OTOH, Trish Matson in her guest post in the same series (July 6, “Changes Needed for the Hugo Awards Process”) said “The Hugo Awards are not actually very well known throughout the entire speculative fiction community. Out of a world of fans, only a few thousand people each year vote for them.” Over the years, there have been posts speculating about just how important being awarded a Hugo is to the success of the work, and to the writers who win them. Are they simply egoboo? Or do they represent money in the bank through additional sales?
I suppose one could hire a polling company to ask random people “Do you know what the Hugo Awards are? Do they influence your decisions about what to read and buy?”, but that would be expensive. Publishers of SF should have some hard data about what happens to sales of a book when it wins a Hugo, but that information is likely proprietary, and we probably will never see it.
One thing that is easily (and cheaply) measurable, however, is how often the awards are mentioned in the news media. Perhaps this is a useful proxy for how well-known they are to the general public.
The ProQuest company sells access to databases of the articles of newspapers and other media. They market primarily to libraries. Their search interface and the data they report allow us to ask the question, “How often do the Hugos get mentioned, compared to other prominent literary and entertainment awards?”
The table below shows the answer(s) to that question. I searched ProQuest in three calendar years (2003, 2013, 2023) for the number of articles in which the phrases “Hugo Award” or “Hugo Awards” appear, in four separate publications: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. And I did the same searches for the Edgar Awards (from the Mystery Writers of America), the Academy Awards (for movies), and the Tony Awards (for Broadway plays).
To pick a random entry in the table, the data should be read as “Between Jan 1 2023 and Dec 31 2023, there were 6 articles in the Los Angeles Times that contained either the phrase “Edgar Award” or “Edgar Awards”.”
| New York Times | Washington Post | Los Angeles Times | USA Today | |||
| 2023 | ||||||
| Hugo | 13 | 5 | 3 | 0 | ||
| Edgar | 7 | 2 | 6 | 3 | ||
| Academy | 381 | 174 | 410 | 207 | ||
| Tony | 323 | 51 | 95 | 65 | ||
| 2013 | ||||||
| Hugo | 2 | 5 | 4 | 0 | ||
| Edgar | 7 | 7 | 5 | 0 | ||
| Academy | 593 | 636 | 888 | 157 | ||
| Tony | 789 | 266 | 238 | 58 | ||
| 2003 | ||||||
| Hugo | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||
| Edgar | 14 | 5 | 6 | 2 | ||
| Academy | 905 | 1398 | 592 | 188 | ||
| Tony | 865 | 529 | 156 | 39 |
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a) Most sf&f readers know of the Hugo. Nominating? Only if you support or attend Worldcon, and that is under 10k. Then there’s the issue of so many freakin’ books published per year… it looks like you need something in the neighborhood of 100 nominations to get to finalist. (Please read and nominate Becoming Terran…)
b) Bookstores used to feature Hugo winners, more so before they were eaten by giant chains.
c) From the numbers above… it certainly seems as though the Hugo’s gaining recognition. Not long ago, I was looking for literary awards, and once you get past the first three or five, the Hugo shows up.
A minor data point: I am a bit of a serial collector of library cards. I’m signed up to six or seven in Libby and several more in BorrowBox which I use less
I don’t think any of these libraries (mainly English) has ebook or audiobook versions of any Best Novel winners of the last ten years. Indeed, I don’t think any of them have any works by Scalzi, MRK or NKJ. The only Hifi winners I can reliably find are world by T. Kingfisher and Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series – nothing else by her.
My currently active BorrowBox login is good for Adrian Tchaikovsky though, perhaps because it’s his local library, and the possibility of his doing library events might make them look on him favourably.
It proves nothing, but it does suggest winning a Hugo doesn’t mean anyone’s rushing to add the works to the library.
Re: the table above, I wonder to what degree the Chengdu shenanigans distorted the 2024 figures. While article about the controversy didn’t really spike until early 2024 with the release of the made up nomination figures, they were a factor earlier.
Minor award for ahead as planning isn’t need to the degree that award fiddled is.
As I think I mentioned on the previous thread The Guardian does feature news about The Hugo.
On to Nick’s point about libraries not having the books. I have just looked at my local library’s online catalogue and it does somewhat better. It has 3 books by MRK, 7 by NRK, and 6 fiction titles by Scalzi. Ann Leckie does rather better – although not the current book. I didn’t check what media (paper, ebook, audio) these holdings were. However it isn’t perfect – nothing by Tamsyn Muir for example. I guess with libraries you are at the mercy of whoever is in charge of acquisitions.
As a former Hugo Admin and WSFS division head, I have a few Hugos. (There are usually extras, because you don’t know when you commission the bases how many winners there will be). Mine live on a shelving unit in our guest bathroom and guests visiting the house comment on them with amazement and recognition all the time. Most of those guests are not SF congoers or members of organized fandom, but they absolutely have heard of the Hugo Award.
A single point of anec-data.
I’ve been reading (and preferring) genre fiction for my entire reading life. While I was vaguely aware of the Hugo Awards, I didn’t know I had an opportunity to influence the process via nomination and voting until the Larry Correia imbroglio. Publishers slap “{insert award name here} Award Winner!” on most any book that wins most any sort of award.
I don’t think it is a terrible stretch to suggest that readers might give a slight advantage to an Award Winning Book when perusing the stacks at a bookstore or library. Winning an award is probably more useful with librarians who need helpful filters. I don’t think it is a terrible stretch to suggest that readers will give a stronger advantage to an author whose works they have previously enjoyed.
I also don’t think it is a terrible stretch to note that plenty of authors have had productive professional careers writing genre fiction and have never even made the long list for a Hugo Award. In a few cases, that is a literary crime, IMO.
For my last terrible stretch…there is a large and very diverse group of dedicated genre fans who care about seeing the best of genre fiction thrive. For those folks, the Hugos matter a great deal.
I agree with Nickpheas about Chengdu potentially skewing things. A year-by-year graph would be much more informative…but also much more work!
Regards,
Dann
Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government? – Nikolai Lenin
@Nickpheas – so your libraries don’t have many Hugo award winners. Do they have any/many Edgar award winners, as a point of comparison?
” I wonder to what degree the Chengdu shenanigans distorted the 2024 figures.”
I didn’t compile 2024 figures, since the year is not yet complete.
@Dann665 – “A year-by-year graph would be much more informative…but also much more work!”
Yes, it would be more work.
I’d invite anyone whose library includes a Proquest subscription to compile similar data. Or any other quasi-objective way of looking at the issue. To go forward with Nickpheas’s line of thinking, How do the holdings of public libraries in several cities compare with respect to Hugo vs Edgar award winners? What about large university libraries?
This is largely amusing since we already proved that it does result in an uptick in bookstore / library sales, courtesy of bookscan and worldcat. (I did analysis for both the Hugos and Nebulas a few years ago.) It’s not difficult to run reports to see before and after nominating and winning, for either sales channels.
@Sean Wallace
Can you provide a link to where you did this?
It’s not an award I follow so I’d need to spend some time researching it will give it a look tomorrow.
bill: I believe Sean is referring to a subscription service.
Who is “Bill”? Does this piece have an identifiable author?
Worldcat is public but Bookscan is not. I would have to dig around File770 archives to find where I did earlier analysis. I am already in Boston for Readercon, though.
These are two separate facts. Putting them together seems to imply that one can tell how “well known throughout the entire speculative fiction community” (defined how?) by how many people vote on the Award, but that’s, of course, entirely illogical.
How many people vote in the U.S. Electoral College and how many have heard of the Electoral College?
How many people vote in a state legislature, or in various countries, a provincial legislature, compared to how many people have heard of these legislatures?
The two things have next to nothing to do with each other.
Do we really care, one way or another? Why?
In economics we measure ethereal things like value and worth by observing what people do more than what they say (people say that they prefer country life to city life; people pay a premium to live in the city). Publishers put “Hugo Award Winner” on the covers – Hugo has value. Someone tries to cheat to get a Hugo award – Hugo has value.
@Sean Wallace: Excellent. I’ve seen authors mention a bump in their sales, too. Do you have a link to when we’ve gone through this before?
Gary: I would expect that Bill is just a Filer who submitted this to Mike, and did not wish to be identified otherwise than he signs his comments. Still, the numbers are in principle checkable.
I’ve never, of course, had any issues with anyone taking or adopting pseudonyms, including one-word mononyms; fans have been doing this since the days of Tigrina and Pogo, etc.
But I’m still not used to the idea of people only “identifying” themselves in ways that don’t actually identify anyone as being the same person who ever used the name at any other time. Is there a shortage of unique identifiers?
Yes, I’m an old fogey. And, of course, nobody need check in with me as to how to identify themselves, or not identify themselves.
I’d say one driver on the visibility of the Hugo prizes (apart from the greater general visibility of science fiction) has been the scandals. Especially the sad puppies I’d argue served as a real boost for the award. The puppies “proved” that the awards mattered, and then fandom’s response was both principled and strong. Chengdu is more of a mixed bag, but I think the Glasgow team’s response has been good so far.
@Gary Farber
“Who is “Bill”?”
@Jan Vanek Jr.
“Gary: I would expect that Bill is just a Filer who submitted this to Mike, and did not wish to be identified otherwise than he signs his comments.”
Jan is correct. I’m a long-time poster, under the name “bill” (usually, but not always, lower-case). The earliest comment I’ve made that I was able to easily find is from 2017 (and I’ve been commenting here regularly since):
https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-51417-aint-any-ivory-soap-deal/comment-page-1/#comment-635489
but I had been active here a while when I posted it. I’ve been reading SF for about 50 years (I’m 62), and went to my first SF convention about 1975 or so. I could post my whole name, but I doubt it would help you identify me further in that I’m not particularly prominent within SF other than by posting here (I don’t do fanzines, I’m not involved in conrunning or on panels, I don’t write professionally and have no ISFDB entry, etc.) It would just be a name.
@Gary Farber
“Do we really care, one way or another?”
I cared enough to spend a couple hours putting the data together and writing it up, Mike cared enough to post it (thanks, Mike!), and apparently you care enough to comment 3 times. But I’d be the first to admit that in the grand scheme of things, it is simply an internet post by a quasi-anonymous person, of little overall importance. It was an attempt to look at an issue that comes up from time to time in a way that I think is novel. YMMV, which is fine.
@Salmon Rearth
“In economics we measure ethereal things like value and worth by observing what people do”
I would have thought economists measure value by how much people spend. Given how cheap, marginally, it is to add a cover blurb to a new edition of a book, I’m not sure that indicates that labelling it “Hugo Winner” means a great deal to publishers.
And if by “cheating” you were referring to the Sad Puppies, again the marginal cost of what they did was small (blog posts, which get written any way), and what they wanted was not Hugo Awards but the disruption of the system. So it’s hard again to know exactly how much they valued the awards.
@Karl-Johan Norén
Yes, there have been recent events that could have raised the visibility of the award. That’s one reason I put in the other awards — so the measure was not a simple count of year-to-year mentions of the Hugo, but a count relative to other awards (they serve as some sort of control).
The methodology could probably be improved.