What is the Hugo Worth?
A private conversation with a well placed and influential editor in the New York publishing house was rather eye opening to me. It seems the Hugo, at one time, predictably bumped up sales for a work that won by a thousand books sold. Now, thirty.
Hmm. Let us say you get the normal cut of the profit after selling through, for a $20 cover price of a hardback, this nets you roughly 2.50 per unit, or 75 bucks all told.
I spent more on tickets to take my children to see THE LAST AIRBENDER in 3D, which was a terrible movie in any dimension, and the reason why I pray daily to the Erinyes to punish M. Night Shyamalan with emerods.
Think of that. The Hugo might, might, give you extra money enough for an evening at the cinema, if that. No one is buying a replacement washing machine by selling thirty extra books.
For short works, the financial benefit is zero.
The financial benefit is small (in the case of novels) or zero (in the case of short works) because and only because the fans no longer regard the Hugo as a sign of worthwhile work. It used to be a trustworthy trumpet calling lovers of science fiction toward books and stories guaranteed to quicken the imagination, open casements to new worlds, throw wide the shining gates of the future.
It used to be the award that paid homage, for example, to Frank Herbert for DUNE. To this day, many if not most, science fiction fans regard as this as the best SF novel ever penned. Look at the sales for DUNE just this year. Look at the Amazon rating.
Now the Hugo Award has become a leper’s bell telling the wary to stay away from stories about nonbinary genderless nonheteronormative were-seals, murderous priests, and political statements of dreary leftwing dreck.
The fans do not know about the Hugo Awards or do not care, save for a small and ever more irrelevant cadre.
This means the Hugos mean nothing, represent nothing, and are no longer a sign of read-worthy work.
Until this year.
My fellow gentleman, shuggoths, dark lords, masterminds, countesses, impalers, sith, and beautiful but wicked queens of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, delightful as it is to go all Death Star on the Hugos and blow it into asteroids (and what true science fiction fan does not delight in seeing cities nuked and worlds fried like eggs?) more delightful, to me, at least, would be to rip the award from the greasy pale fingers of the Morlocks, give a good spit shine, and make it mean again what it once meant.
I feel I owe Frank Herbert the attempt.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
28 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 11:12 am |
I’m suspicious of that number. It seems too small to be detectable or result in any degree of statistical significance. At that level, you just say zero books, because 30 is noise.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 12:08 pm |
While it is possible that I misremembered the number, I must ask: Are you a New York editor and publisher of the largest SF firm in the world who has been in the business for many decades dealing with SF book sales on a daily basis?
If not, why should I believe you rather than he? What is your ground for your statement?
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 12:47 pm |
I just have my experience running statistical analysis. I don’t think it’s mathematically possible to peg a 30-unit movement on a dummy variable if you’re dealing with sales of a thousand books; you’re in margin of error territory, and it will just get worse as sales increase from there.
So at first blush, I’m very suspicious of that number. If he had said “it had no impact,” I would be surprised, but my spidey-sense wouldn’t be all a-tingle as it is with “30.”
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 1:16 pm |
And if we are not dealing with sales of thousands, but, in the modern day, only of hundreds? The editor did not give me his baseline, or tell me how he was controlling for variables, or give me anything but a ballpark figure, and, more to the point, you were not in on the conversation. So you are bringing a number of assumptions to bear here which may or may not apply.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 1:52 pm |
I didn’t say thousands. I said thousand. Singular.
You are correct: I was not in on the conversation. The number just strikes me as suspicious and I am not known for taking the word of authority figures as Gospel. Naturally, I want to look under the hood and kick the tires before I contemplate admitting this to my knowledge base. I’m surprised that you don’t seem to share that.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 3:47 pm |
Well, why don’t you hold your suspicions in check when you do not know the facts, were not there, do not know what the variables are, what the time frame is, or even how the question was phrased.
I don’t not mind people questioning expert opinion when they have grounds for it, but to question it when you are ignorant is folly. To refuse correction on the point is arrogance.
You did not kick the tires or look under the hood in this case, did you? Do you have any facts to bring to the table?
How many books does Tor sell a year, for example? What is the average rate of sales for a midlist author between 1990 and 2010? Do sales go up or down in summer? Do you know?
You are not entitled to an opinion in this case. I do not share the opinion that a know-nothing is equal to a man in the trenches, no.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 12:57 pm |
I am not a New York editor, just as I am not a climate scientist, nor am I a nutritionist, nor am I a lawn care expert. Fortunately, reason was bestowed on me by God, and is not limited by a degree.
Beyond that, what I do have is experience running regression analysis. If you’re dealing with books that sell around a thousand units each, trying to peg a 30-unit movement to a dummy variable is pretty much impossible: you’re in margin of error territory, and it will only get worse as more books are sold. So, we need to be looking at Hugo winners that have only sold a few hundred copies. That strikes me as very low.
If your friend has said “it had no impact,” I would be surprised, but it wouldn’t trigger my spidey-sense like thirty does.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 1:46 pm |
It used to be the award that paid homage, for example, to Frank Herbert for DUNE. To this day, many if not most, science fiction fans regard as this as the best SF novel ever penned.
For decades I’ve told people over and over again that if they only read one science fiction novel in their entire lives, it should be Dune.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 3:16 pm |
I tell them a Canticle for Liebowitz.
Actually, if it someone who really hasn’t read any SF before, I tell them a Heinlein juvenile, Madeline L’Engle, or John Christopher’s Tripods. in the hopes that they’ll have a pleasant, easy experience and get hooked.
Otherwise, a Canticle for Liebowitz.
Which won the Hugo for best novel in 1961.
We’ve come a long way, baby.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 2:39 pm |
Mr Shuler is making a valid observation. Consider the temperature on the surface of earth. This varies over time and over location from -89.9 C (Vostok Station, Antarctica) to +56.7 C (Furnace Creek, Death Valley). So, there is no universally accepted average temperature of Earth. There are plausible amalgamation of multiple observations and interpolations over sparsely measured areas.
I’m sure that measuring book sales is subject to similar error and estimating the average change due to a Hugo award must be very sketchy indeed. 30 books over the lifetime of a book seems uncomfortably close to “undetectable” – which is really your point. But this also means you cannot claim any financial injury, if a clubby group of scifi insiders arranged to exclude outsiders.
Could the publisher have possibly meant “30 per month”?
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 3:41 pm |
Who said “over the lifetime of the book”? Like Jschuler, you are simply making an assumption about the fact pattern.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 3:56 pm |
No one here claimed any financial injury to being denied a Hugo.
“I’m sure that measuring book sales is subject to similar error and estimating the average change due to a Hugo award must be very sketchy indeed”
Have you ever measured book sales? If not, what is the source of your confidence? Why should I assume that measuring global temperature is anything at all like measuring book sales? Because they both involve numbers? A publisher can, if he wishes, put the same book out in the same market, one labeled HUGO AWARD WINNING and one not so labeled, and count the difference in sales. Or he could gain experience over a decades of time, having seen the impact of the award announcements on the market year in and year out, long enough to damp down on any statistical white noise.
More to the point, why should I trust your judgment over that of a man who has successfully been measuring book sales his whole adult life?
“Could the publisher have possibly meant “30 per month”?”
Sure, possibly. Or thirty a year, or thirty a quarter. He did not specify, nor did I. You and Mr Schuler are presuming facts not in evidence. I would think I do not need to say it four times.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 4:56 pm |
Nielsen BookScan monitors bookstore sales, but does not cover all outlets and does not include e-book sales. According to Jason Sandford, Book Scan reports –
• Skin Game by Jim Butcher (Roc), 94,000 copies
• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie, (Orbit US; Orbit UK), 8,000 copies
I suggest that the three zeroes in these figures indicate that the precise number is not known. An error in the hundreds is implied, when sales of 94,000 are given.
And therefore, an increase of 30 is undetectable by Nielsen’s Book Scan.
If your informant meant 30 units per month then the additional 360 sales would still be hard to detect. If he meant “per week” then there are an additional 1,500 sales for a Hugo. If he meant “per day” the Hugo would more than double Mrs Leckie’s sales. Or give Mr Butcher a nice 12% increase. The Hugo effect would now be detectable. So, which is it?
Yes. I would say, we are making very plausible inferences from the “fact pattern”, if “fact pattern” means the necessarily statistical nature of the data.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 5:31 pm |
At this point, I can only assume your assumptions are invisible to you. You did not give any dates for your sample, did not establish whether Book Scan is what my editor was using, do not know if he has other sources of information, nothing. You suggest that the precise number is not known: is that true for the publishers and bookstores as well? Do they only round their inventory numbers?
No, your inferences are not plausible. You are making stuff up. You were not present at the conversation, during which I did not quiz the man to discover the variables he was taking into account when making the statement, nor have you asked him since.
Now, considering again that you do not even know if he meant a bump of 8300 versus 8030, for you to assert that the magnitude of a number whose province you do not know is below detectable thresholds is unsupportable.
He may have been lying to me, or exaggerating, or I may have misremembered the figures, but far more likely that you, random amateur who looked up something on the internet for four minutes, and he, who has been doing his job for forty years, knows his job better than you.
Surely you see the irony of some random Internet stranger saying, “Do not believe your friend and coworker whom you have known for years, and whom you know from personal experience is the most skill editor at the largest SF house in the field — for one should not take such things on authority! Instead, believe me. On authority.”
you seem to be utterly unaware of the fact that you don’t know what you are talking about touching a conversation you did not overhear about an estimation you did not read involving variables of which you know nothing whatsoever.
I will ask you a second time:
More to the point, why should I trust your judgment over that of a man who has successfully been measuring book sales his whole adult life?
If you cannot answer, all I can say it: Thank you for your concern. I would rather be deceived by him than believe you. You have not established your credentials sufficiently to overcome the presumption of innocence.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 2:44 pm |
The list of things I won’t do for Frank Herbert would fit on one of those little slips of paper they put inside fortune cookies–written in Courier 10 pitch.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 3:19 pm |
It’s been around 15 years where I’ve used the Hugo as a good sign that book wasn’t worth reading.
I just sprung for a supporting membership this year because the slate of nominees looked actually interesting. $40 seemed like a reasonable price for a good collection of good fiction.
I used the Puppies’ suggested slate as a recommendation list and was pleasantly surprised. SF hasn’t gone as far down hill as I thought.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 4:44 pm |
Just out of curiosity, can you give examples of Hugo winners that you don’t think belong?
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 4:57 pm |
Don’t you think that would be a little rude to my fellow writers? Read the books and stories, make your own decision.
Here. I will start you out. As a test of almost scientific precision, I wrote a story using the same theme and tropes as an award-winning chick-lit story of moderate (but not overwhelming) craftsmanship, but mine is science fiction, containing speculative elements, whereas hers is not, and does not:
http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/“>http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/”>http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/
http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/11/the-queen-of-the-tyrant-lizards/“>
http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/11/the-queen-of-the-tyrant-lizards/“>http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/11/the-queen-of-the-tyrant-lizards/
Saturday, April 11th 2015 at 11:28 am |
I read that already! I’m reading Feasts and Seasons right now, and it made me laugh. I was like “wow, he did the dino thing but made it good!” I think you are far too kind to “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.” I haven’t read every Hugo-nominated story ever, but it has to be in the running for the Special Award for “Worst Story Ever to Be Nominated For a Hugo.” It’s dreadful!
But one data point does not a trend make.
And it didn’t win the Hugo, even if it was nominated.
I understand your unwillingness to single out fellow authors, but you and the Lord of Hate have made a specific claim: that the recent Hugo Award winners aren’t good. By implication, you already have criticized your fellow authors; you just haven’t singled them out.
I don’t love every book to win the Hugo, but so what? For any ten year Hugo period, even the first ten years, I could name books that I didn’t think should have won that did.
I do find the attempt to make Ann Leckie out to be some sort of Gender Pioneer pretty ridiculous. After Ursula LeGuin, and Connie Willis, and Lois McMaster Bujold, and CJ Cherryh, winning the Hugo is still great, but it hardly makes her Marie Currie. And the whole gender thing in the book was a bit of an affectation. But Ancillary Justice is actually a pretty well-executed SF adventure story. It’s not the best novel ever to win a Hugo, but it’s far from the worst.
Saturday, April 11th 2015 at 10:10 pm |
Ah, not quite. They said that fan favorites were being snubbed by Ideologues, and good works were being blacklisted. At least some of the Ideologues in question have admitted that, so your attempt to be “even handed” fails before it starts…….
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 4:59 pm |
Really? Huh. I actually went to see that movie on your recommendation. I remembered you saying this about it:
http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/07/the-trashed-airbender/
Why the changed opinion? Does the film not hold up to further reflection?
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 5:20 pm |
At this point: None of the live action characters are smiling. Also the scene I did not mention in my review, where the Earthbenders are not imprisoned in an ocean derrick but in a work camp where there is plenty of earth to bend.
But my opinion of the movie has darkened considerably since then, sorry.
Friday, April 10th 2015 at 9:23 pm |
[…] What is the Hugo Worth? – April 10 […]
Saturday, April 11th 2015 at 1:26 pm |
“Now the Hugo Award has become a leper’s bell telling the wary to stay away from stories about nonbinary genderless nonheteronormative were-seals, murderous priests, and political statements of dreary leftwing dreck.”
I’m sorry, John, but I don’t agree.
I get how a lot of people seem to have Rage Hatred for Rachel Swirsky’s story. I didn’t vote for it, it wasn’t my thing.
But beyond that, looking at just the novels of the last few years…I don’t see what you and yours are seeing. Is there a general Progressive slant to the nominees? By and large, yes. But Leftwing dreck? No.
2014’s Ancillary Justice is about a character seeking to overthrow a tyranny.
2013’s Redshirts is a satire of Star Trek
2012’s Among Others is a book about a character who learns to love genre literature in the 1980’s
2011’s Blackout/All Clear is about time travelers trapped in WWII
2010’s (tie) The Windup Girl is rather politically left, about a crappy near future.
2010’s (tie) The City and the City is a weird tale of two cities whose inhabitants don’t see each other.
But maybe I am, to quote james May, a “Rat-faced little git” after all, and just can’t see all the dreck. Maybe he’s right.
Saturday, April 11th 2015 at 10:16 pm |
Alas, some of the Ideologues who were secretly directing the Hugos have admitted to it in public. Mocking the idea of the secret conspiracy is kind of silly at this point. And mentioning that the slate wasn’t all bad is not what was being complained about. The fact that Pratchett never got a Hugo is unarguable evidence the process was broken.
Sunday, April 12th 2015 at 8:07 pm |
Do you have links to this public admission?
Monday, April 13th 2015 at 1:51 am |
It was covered on this very blog. http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/04/k-tempest-bradford-on-sexual-congress-and-salvific-grace/ Note the anger at “white men” “fighting back” against “Diversity”. At no point does she say anything about the quality of the stories she and hers were pushing….
Monday, April 13th 2015 at 1:57 am |
And of course, from George R.R. Martin, http://grrm.livejournal.com/417521.html Note in particular, these lines, “The Sad Puppies did not invent Hugo campaigning, by any means. But they escalated it, just as that magazine/publisher partnership did way back when. They turned it up to eleven.” and “Their slate was more effective that anyone could ever have dreamed, so effective that they drowned out pretty much all the other voices. They ran the best organized, most focused, and most effective awards campaign in the history of our genre, and showed everyone else how it’s done.”.