Gemmell Awards disallow indie authors?

[Brian G Turner]

Voting has begun on the long list for the 2017 Gemmell Awards:
Award Voting 2017 – The David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy

However, there are no indie titles listed at all.

Additionally, it appears as though the nominations are simply a catalogue of every single fantasy traditionally published over the past year.

This is a problem for 2 reasons:

1. Digital and indie are now big news - by turning their back on this side of the industry, they are failing to properly represent it.

2. There are only 7 debut authors listed from all the traditional publishers over the past year. That should be pretty indicative of just how big a problem there is with the traditional publishing industry, full stop.

There is a reason why so many authors are turning to indie publishing - traditional publishers are failing to take on new writers. Additionally, traditional publishers have a poor record when it comes to paying their writers their royalties.

David Gemmell got little recognition from the industry, and complained of poor treatment by his original publisher. He also made a big point in his stories of standing up for the underdog.

So why have the Gemmell Awards decided to work against David Gemmell's principles, and only consider such a narrow focus of publishing?

Of the seven debut author titles listed, my own Gathering has more reviews than any of them!
Gathering (Chronicles of Empire 1): Amazon.co.uk: Brian G Turner: 9780995625709: Books

I used to argue that the Gemmell Awards were the most in-touch of all the awards bodies. This year they've proved me to be so terribly wrong.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think it might be more that you're just noticing it this year. The same books come up every time for the same awards. I lost interest several years ago as they are rarely reflective of what I read.

The Clarke award this year allows self publishing (I'd have entered Inish Carraig if that had been the case last year!) and the Stabbys are voted for by Reddit members irrespective of how published (although tend to throw up a narrow list imho), I think.

So, yeah, that's awards for you. Reflective of trad publishing mostly and picking up the same books as each other.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I could have sworn I saw a number of indie books up for the long list last year. Maybe I just just confusing TBP ones in there?

Either way, I was under the impression that the Gemmell Awards had previously stated their support for self-published work. Obviously I was quite mistaken in that.

 

[Brian G Turner]

It's also surprising to see such a small list of debut fantasy authors considered as eligible for this award, especially considering how thorough the catalogue is for traditionally published authors.

For the Morningstar award we only have the following:

2 from Angry Robot
2 from Orbit
1 from Del Rey
1 from Titan
1 from Claret Press (whoever they are).

None from Gollancz, HarperCollins, Solaris, Tor UK, etc.

Of course, they are likely to have released books that were considered unsuitable for the Gemmell Awards. But as the Gemmell Awards is pretty much the only dedicated award for the epic fantasy genre, it doesn't inspire confidence that traditional publishing is interested in new authors for this genre.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The ACC is well into their independent press submissions, Tom Hunter made a point of emphasising it last year. Got to be good for the biz.

 

[millymollymo]

I mistakenly thought this was open to indie too, but I was recollecting a few blogs I'd caught elsewhere: Poking at Awards: David Gemmell Legend Awards

According to the organisers there's an excellent reason why they have not yet opened up to SP. The numbers of subs they will have to deal with. The ones that don't qualify but are hoping no one will notice, on top of the legit ones.

The Clarke Award is being very careful about their SP opening, IIRC. You can't really blame these for their caution. No matter how many awesome self published books and reputable authors there are out there, there's always the select few that want to swim against the flow.

 

[chopper]

According to the organisers there's an excellent reason why they have not yet opened up to SP. The numbers of subs they will have to deal with. The ones that don't qualify but are hoping no one will notice, on top of the legit ones.

The Clarke Award is being very careful about their SP opening, IIRC. You can't really blame these for their caution. No matter how many awesome self published books and reputable authors there are out there, there's always the select few that want to swim against the flow.

Witness people trying to nominate Senlin Ascends for the Stabbys this year despite the fact it came out in 2013.

The DGLA has only recently opened up to small presses, which obviously I'm thrilled about as someone published by a small press. No, I don't have much chance of beating the big names onto the shortlist, but the recognition is nice. And while I don't have any bias against self-publishing, small presses always seem to lose out in the "gatekeeper" wars between traditional & self-publishing. It's refreshing to have some way of rewarding small presses that doesn't get lost in the crowd of self-pub titles too.

That may be controversial. But I'm also a great admirer of the recently established Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, which also has big names such as Mark Lawrence, Pornokitsch, and Fantasy Faction actively promoting it. Not a space that small presses are welcome in, I should point out. And it's all done extremely professionally as far as I can tell. Perhaps a way forward would be a joint venture between the DGLA and the SPFBO, one that celebrates the breath of fantasy but that still enables both SP and small presses to shine as brightly as mainstream trad publishing.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

According to the organisers there's an excellent reason why they have not yet opened up to SP. The numbers of subs they will have to deal with. The ones that don't qualify but are hoping no one will notice, on top of the legit ones.

There's an easy fix: Charge an entry fee. Even $25 per entry is enough to dissuade most time-wasters.