86 thoughts on “What’s In The 2019 Hugo Voter Packet?”

1. Great roundup of a great packet.

   (The entry for the Thomases is missing a description)

2. Thanks, Mark-kitteh. That is fixed now. 🙂

3. Thanks! You reminded me to get this year’s registration done, which I just did!

4. Grrrr — to Pro Artists putting in non-2018 stuff when one of the Fan Artists was prevented from including one of her 2018 works. (And also to Long Form Editors listing non-qualifying stuff.)

5. Unfortunately, you can’t download the Related Work packet without the 2400MB Hobbit video. They really should have split that one out on its own, especially since it’s available online.

6. Aaaaaaa SO MUCH to read!!!

7. @JJ: Oh dear me. Yes they should have.

8. I noticed that there are more whole novels and fewer excerpts of books. Instead, some publishers seem to be doing watermarked pdfs which I feel is a great compromise.

9. That’s quite a haul. A generous set of novels.

10. Watermarked PDFs are not good for people with visual disabilities, generally. But this is still a very impressive packet, and I’m pleased that publishers have found a way to let most people read the books without endangering their revenue too much.

11. In Series, the Atrocity Archives download includes the introduction and first three chapters of the novel, plus the entirety of “The Concrete Jungle”. (For anyone unfamiliar, the original publication included the novel The Atrocity Archive, pp. 5-183, plus the aforementioned novella, pp. 187-252.)

12. Thanks, Goobergunch, correction made.

13. Samuel Lubell: I noticed that there are more whole novels and fewer excerpts of books. Instead, some publishers seem to be doing watermarked pdfs which I feel is a great compromise.

    It’s actually about the same as previous years (2018) (2017). It just seems better because none of the novels are from Orbit this year (Orbit only gives excerpts).

    And yes, the watermarks are a serious problem for people with vision impairment. Also, the PDF-only galley proof works are an issue, because they include huge whitespace borders which cause the words to appear really small on e-readers, which don’t adjust for margins on PDFs.

14. you can’t download the Related Work packet without the 2400MB Hobbit video.

    I was wondering why that took so long to download. I thought it was because everybody is on the site today, but that must be the reason.

15. Very impressed with the art book packet. I really didn’t know what we’d see. All of D&D and all the art from Earthsea. Generous excepts from Tolkien and Spider-man. And it’s very understandable that the remaining two declined: self-published and small press with hundreds of artists’ work in there.

16. I note that, although On a Sunbeam isn’t in the packet, this graphic story was originally a webcomic, and the original site seems to be just fine.

17. On the subject of watermarks, I’d like to give a shout-out to Hodder & Stoughton for moving from just providing a watermarked PDF in 2017 to providing multiple formats with no watermarks this year.

18. @Steve Wright

    Yes, Hugo admin Nicholas Whyte said that the webcomic was updated to match the 2018 print edition when I emailed asking about its eligibilty earlier. And there is a link in the graphic story TOC.

19. Have downloaded all of this packet but not looked at the Retro Hugos packet yet.

    Lots and lots…

20. I didn’t see a Retro packet when I looked today.

21. Unless I was very confused, which given my recent health is all too possible, it was a separate link directly under the Hugo packet link.

22. @JJ: Thanks for the detailed write-up, wow!

    @Creators & Publishers: Thank you so much! I look forward to exploring the finalists through your generosity!

    @Various: I don’t see the point of including large podcasts and giant video that’s freely available online. But yay, internet at my parents’ retirement community is much faster than it used to be.

    ::cracks knuckles:: Time to start reading/watching/admiring! 😀

23. If, like me, you like to clean up redundant files in your downloads, be aware that similarly-named files may not be the same, or may have problems, so check first. (I prefer EPUB, so my examples are with EPUB issues in the packet.) NOTE: I mention this just as a heads up; these aren’t a big deal. 🙂 And thanks again to the creators and publishers!

    Example #1: Sheila Gilbert’s EPUB is the first three pages of the PDF (her intro & list of works), but the excerpts of the books are only in the PDF – not the EPUB.

    Example #2: I can’t open Navah Wolfe’s EPUB on my laptop, though it may work fine on my iPad (haven’t had time to try yet).

    Example #3: Kuang’s EPUB appears to be a page-by-page conversion or copying of text into an EPUB. So in the middle of the text is a header and/or footer that repeats after each page’s worth of text, or so it appears from looking at several pages. Also, the watermark text is scattered throughout – I didn’t check if it’s really in the middle of every page. This will be unreadable for me, so I recommend the PDF if you can handle that. NOTE: I don’t have a MOBI reader, but in the past, I’ve found the ereader formats like MOBI & EPUB tend to be similar; so I’m guessing the MOBI file has the same issue. But I don’t know. The PDF is just fine, though. 🙂

    Just the few I ran across so far. Again, not a big deal, just a heads up. I’m tired and was, er, um, uh, a bit hasty till I noticed these issues (blush) . . . lesson learned. Time for sleep now.

24. @Kendall: I just checked the MOBI for The Poppy War and it has a similar problem. Unfortunately there also seems to have been an issue with converting the map so there are a couple dozen pages of gibberish before you get to Chapter 1.

    (The actual Kindle edition that you can buy on Amazon has none of these issues, although the map is too small to be useful on my Kindle. That’s a common problem with fantasy book maps though….)

25. @Kendall

    Can I suggest dropping a line to [email protected] with any issues you spot. I reported a small issue with a contents file yesterday and Nicholas Whyte replied within a couple of hours. Mind you, if the issue is with the files as supplied then they may not be able to do any fixing themselves, but at least they’ll know.

26. Steve Wright: I note that, although On a Sunbeam isn’t in the packet, this graphic story was originally a webcomic, and the original site seems to be just fine.

    The TOC has a link to it, and I’ve update this post to reflect that. I’ve also added the link to the Where To Find The 2019 Hugo Award Finalists For Free Online post. Thanks for the correction.

27. Kendall, thanks for the notes; I’ve made updates to the post.

    The EPUB and MOBI formats of The Poppy War are unreadable and appear to be conversions from a PDF (probably done by someone who didn’t know that you can’t make EPUBs and MOBIs from PDFs).

28. I feel a bit sorry for Zen Cho, because Barnes & Noble wouldn’t allow her story to be included in the Hugo Voter Packet (a pretty shitty move on their part, in my opinion), and even though the TOC doc provides a link to it, you know a bunch of voters are going to miss it. 😐

29. There is a link at the bottom of B&N’s page to download Zen Cho’s novelette. It can be a bit of a challenge to get your hands on the actual book file, but it is a free DRM-free epub. So, yeah, I don’t know why they wouldn’t just share it in the packet.

30. @Lis Carey

    Voting is open for the Retro Hugos, but they said it will be a bit before they get the packet ready. Apparently, more of a challenge with rights issues.

31. Laura: I don’t know why they wouldn’t just share it in the packet.

    I’m sure that it was a decision made by some marketing numpty at Barnes & Noble who:
    1) has as their main priority driving traffic to the B&N website,
    2) doesn’t understand what a big deal the Hugo Award is and just how much it would reflect positively on them to have published a Hugo Award-winning story, and
    3) doesn’t realize how it will hurt the story’s chances of winning by it being the only one which is not included in the packet.

    🙄

    I feel bad for the author for being dealt such a shitty hand by B&N, because it’s a really good story.

32. @JJ

    B&N is very talented at shooting itself in the foot. I’m continually amazed that they are still in the ebook business or in business at all.

    I was surprised to see enough people found the story to get it on the ballot, but I suppose B&N’s SFF blog has a following in spite of B&N itself.

33. @Laura: Or, Zen Cho does 😀

34. Laura, I suspect that the story’s presence on the ballot has far more to do with the author’s fanbase, and far less to do with the following of the B&N SF&F blog.

    I really enjoyed Sorcerer to the Crown — far more than I expected to — and have just gotten The True Queen from the library, and am looking forward to reading it.

35. JJ, That’s true. Kameron Hurley also had a story there last year. Haven’t read that one though.

36. In past years, I actually have taken watermarked .pdfs and converted them to readable epubs. It’s a lot of hand-editing, but I’m stubborn. Still, I’m glad to know that for the most part that won’t be necessary this year.

37. Foz Meadows – PDF of 5 selected reviews and essays
    James Davis Nicoll – DOC personal statement with links to 23 selected online reviews as well as all 2018 monthly archives, EPUB and PDF of a 722-page collection of more than 250 reviews and essays
    Charles Payseur – PDF of 8 reviews and essays
    Elsa Sjunneson-Henry – PDF of 3 reviews and essays
    Alasdair Stuart – PDFs of 5 reviews and essays
    Bogi Takács – EPUB, MOBI, and PDF of 11 reviews and essays plus personal statement with links to several online databases and recommendation threads of special-interest focus

    Perhaps I have a small tendency to overdo things.

38. What I usually do for PDFs (particularly PDFs with huge margins) is I use this little application called BRight Snippet Sire, that crops the edges off. It takes a few minutes per file, but really makes the damn things readable on my Kindle.

    (Yes, that’s BRISS for short.
    …it cuts the tips off)

39. Looked at the B&N site and can’t seem to find the Zen Cho story – can someone post a link?

40. “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” by Zen Cho

    It’s also linked here:
    Where To Find The 2019 Hugo Award Finalists For Free Online

41. @Standback: Thanks for the pointer to BRISS. In the past, I too, have converted PDFs with huge margins to epub, and it looks like Spinning Silver is readable on my Kobo Glo HD after cropping.

42. Thanks! I would have really preferred the ePub version, so I could read it away from a computer, but B&N no longer sell to the UK as far as I know so that isn’t going to happen.

43. Marcus Rowland: Thanks! I would have really preferred the ePub version, so I could read it away from a computer

    The way I generally handle situations like this is to copy and paste the text from the webpage into an RTF document, then use Calibre (a fantastic freeware program which I use constantly to manage my ebooks) to create an EPUB or MOBI from the RTF.

    If you don’t have Calibre, there are free online EPUB converters which take the file you give them and spit back out an EPUB. (I can’t guarantee either the safeness of such websites, or the quality of the files they deliver, but it’s an option).

44. I can’t find the link to the Hugo packet anywhere. I have my membership key. How do I find it? The only reason I got a supporting membership was so I could vote on the Hugos. Help, Mr. Wizard!

45. Bernie Phillips Bratman: Each member has a personalized link emailed to them. If you have not received the email, contact [email protected]

46. Berni Phillips Bratman: I can’t find the link to the Hugo packet anywhere.

    Use your special membership link. It will bring you to your member page. Click “Vote for the 2019 Hugo Awards.” The links to download the packets are in the upper right of each category.

    If you can’t find your link, go here and request one.

47. I use the Pocket app to read online stories on my Kobo. Pocket also has Android and iOS apps. If you have a Kindle, there are the Send to Kindle apps. Occasionally the formatting doesn’t work right, but most of the time it works really well.

    (Definitely second JJ’s comment about calibre’s usefulness though.)

48. The Zen Cho story can be read for free at the website page. But if you want to download a copy, you need to have a USA address. Took me a while to work out why I couldn’t download it…

49. When I want to convert a web page to an epub, I like to use the open source epub editor sigil. Usually I can just cut the text, and paste it into sigil, and maybe delete a couple of spots where ads got inserted, and it can also insert images. I’m comfortable looking at the raw formatting, so if something is amiss, I can work either with the formatting or the WYSIWYG display. I don’t read on an Kindle, but it’s pretty straightforward to convert to mobi format with Calibre.

50. Mike and all, I have my personalized link. It doesn’t lead to the ballot.

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