Quote:
Originally Posted by murg
I'm sure that ultimately it's all Amazon's fault.
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Apparently, the moderation team thinks that this is a nonsensical post.
In fact, it is a very serious comment on the whole fiasco that the Hugos have become.
We are all pretty much agreed that Amazon has changed the publishing landscape. Before Amazon, Science Fiction was written, was submitted to publishers and for the most part, middle-aged white guys pondered on these and bought what they thought they could sell to the SF audience (primary white straight males). What they could sell in those four bays of shelves that B&N or Borders allocated to SF. So, pretty much established authors and relatively benign newcomers were getting contracts, and frankly boring stuff was happening.
Then along came Amazon, and two things happened. Firstly, any published book could be bought, anywhere. So, a small press that was willing to take a risk on a non-benign author found that they could actually sell their product globally, far beyond the reach of the bookstores that would carry their offerings. And without the dreaded returns to deal with! Oh, joy!
Secondly, anyone could publish anything. Well, pretty much anything.
What this lead to was a flood of alternative SF. Well, a flood of alternative everything for that matter. With the flood, the visibility of this alternative SF increased, and as the visibility increased, so did the nominations for awards, such as the Hugos.
These nominations of alternative stories lead to what always happens when the middle-ages white guys feel threatened, it lead to a push-back. In this case, the rabid puppies.
So there you have it. The current Hugos fiasco is all Amazon's fault.
As I wrote this post, I found an example of this in my notes file. From a previous thread on MR, I started building a ridiculous genre title. With the new publishing landscape now that that Amazon has changed things, it is now possible to publish a book in the Gay Christian Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Military Prison Time-Traveling Romance genre. Not only publish a book, but to get enough books published in this genre to constitute a genre.