Hacker News Reader

Comment by zmj | Hacker News Reader

I read a lot of SFF, but the actual Hugo / Nebula winners don't really move up in my reading list compared to the other nominees.

Maybe the "winner" sticker drives some paper book sales?

View on HN

To offer a counter anecdote: for a while I enjoyed reading books from the list of joint winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards[1] - and later from the list of winners for a single award (same, Hugo or Nebula).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_joint_winners_of_the_H...

Some? Not a ton.

https://humanlegion.com/hugo-award-sales-figures/ has some data for one year. "They do have an effect, but probably no more than a few thousand sales for most books, maybe over ten thousand for the luckiest, and then only in exceptional years."

So maybe a dollar a book on the outside.

No Iain M Banks or Peter F Hamilton on the Hugo winners list which says everything to me

Exactly, it says that their publishers did a bad job of marketing in North America.

I think Banks possibly just had the poor planning to die to early, there. Both due to the nationality thing (it has gotten a _bit_ less American-centric), and because it feels like his _style_ fits better with current winners than 90s winners (I was actually quite surprised to discover than Ancillary Justice was _not_ in some way a Culture homage).

Yeah, I've read a couple of more modern Hugo award winners and thought that they sucked. Maybe I just got unlucky, but it certainly didn't inspire confidence that I will enjoy reading the award recipients.

I think I've read a large proportion of recent Hugo winners, and they definitely tend to be better than average. The nominees are normally pretty good in general.

"Better than average" is a pretty low bar. I'd certainly hope that a winner of one of the more recognized SF awards would be somewhere on the upper end of the quality distribution whether or not it's a great indication for

You're expecting too much from a fan award. It's a popularity contest like the People's Choice awards.

Look at juried awards like the Clarke award if you want something that isn't just a popularity contest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com