Sorry, couldn’t help it after Crystal’s post and the Big Awards this weekend.
Here are the answers to last week’s Dirty Minds clues:
1. A boxer.
2. An egg.
3. Breakfast.
4. Dust.
5. Easter eggs.
So our winner is Jeanette J! She’s won a download of Shelli’s Silk Hauntings. Congratulations, Jeanette! If you’ll email Shelli, she can get that out to you.
Continuing on with the awards notion (don’t you love how we all piggy-back on other people’s topics?), I’m curious about awards in general. Not writing contest awards, as those take a whole different sort of criteria to judge, but the poll type awards.
I’m never quite sure how I feel about them. Flattered to be nominated if and when that happens? Of course! But then, I wonder whether it’s kosher to make mention of that fact on blogs and mailing lists, particularly if I intend to ask my readers or fans or friends to vote for me. Shouldn’t it be up to them whether they vote or not? Is it fair to campaign?
If I don’t campaign and other people do, does it skew the results? If I have fewer friends online than the next author, does that necessarily mean that my writing is any less worthy of winning?
When the results are announced, if I’m not at the top of the list, does that mean that I’ll lose readers? Do readers even really care about those sort of awards, or is it mostly the writer who watches votes roll in neurotically? Does someone winning a poll-type award make a reader rush out and buy their book when they wouldn’t have before?
Is this all just a part of the never-ending promotion machine that comes part and parcel with signing a publishing contract? Am I asking too many questions?
I can answer that last one for myself. I’m done. 
February 28th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
There tends to be a lot of polls and awards out there. The industry is pretty saturated with them and so I don’t pay much attention to them personally. Maybe the bigger ones.
Oh and Jeanette can email me at shellistevens@aol.com .
Congrats, Jeanette!
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:10 am
Congratulations Jeanette!!!!
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Yknow, Sara, recently I was up on the Preditor and Editor poll for an award for editor of the year. (I think I finalled around 20th place?) Anyway. If I’d gotten all my friends to vote for me, maybe I’d have placed higher…but…I only wanted people to vote who I’d edited for. And there aren’t enough of them to move me past 20th place
I was, honestly, just happy to be nominated. It meant someone thought enough of me to put my name on the list. I had no interest in winning.
I know other people don’t feel that way, and will ask people to vote for them, but the farthest I can go is to say ‘here’s where to vote’. Yeah, as a result I’ll never have ‘Favorite new author’ tagged to my name, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay, I guess. Though it WOULD be nice…”They like me, they really like me…”
March 5th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Congrats, Jeanette!