Awards and how they are structured is something that has really bothered me since I joined SFWA and started seeing the nominations. I was originally an Ichthyologist. That means I am reasonbly competent at understanding the statistics of probabilities...(cough) I think it is necessary to actually ask the hard question: what is the PURPOSE of the award? If it is merely to recognise a piece of writing the nominators thought good, as the best of those nominated... If it has to be politically correct... If has to hit the right modern literary buttons... etc. OR does it have a further purpose - something like putting forward the stories which showcase the genre so that the award may be used by lay-people to point them at stories that will REALLY make the whole genre grow in popularity? And secondly -categories things like short stories, novellas and novelettes... and then one novel category. Does this make sense in the demographic of modern sales and appeal? When the leading US mags were selling 125K copies, they did. But... to be my usual herd of mad buffalo in a china shop, should we drop that to one category 'short' and open up 4 or 5 novel length categories that would mean more to modern readers? Say Humour, Series, Literary Fantasy, Popular Fantasy. Should we not - for retention of the value of the award to the genre as well as for viability start considering commercial viability? The book/story has to add value to the genre and the award as well as the award adding value to the book and genre. It is pretty easy to see that if for example a book - beautifully written -but sadomasochistic and miserable and with a 'natural' market of 1500 copies wins the Pingpong Award, and a number of readers see 'Pingpong Award' on the cover and buy it, toss and burn the book after 20 pages, it's given the author a temporary lift, but has devalued the Pingpong award to the point where in future "Pingpong award" means 'don't buy this book' to a lot of readers (of course if the intention is to showcase literary miserable sado-maschocism - the Pingpong is an outstanding success, and may bring the next Pingpong winner from obscurity to a worldwide 1500 readers). On the other hand a prize for Terry Pratchett - for one of the first diskworlds - would have elevated the Pingpong to being a guideline for 'I want to buy that' to millions. I'm glad that I don't have to judge:-). Speaking personally, Australian awards still seem relatively useful as a guideline to me of what I'd like to read. I enjoyed Garth Nix's 'Sir Hereward and Mr Fitz go to war' enormously, and thought it a typical 1970 style (a compliment;-)) 'don't miss this one' award. Chris McMahon's Alternate Brisbane's winner 'Murtagh's Fury' left me awed and saying "oh God I wish I could write like that." and determined to buy anything the author wrote. I'm a lot less sanguine about American award winners, to the extent of actively avoiding quite a lot of it.

Tracking reading habits would of course have the added side effect of letting the working writer know where the money was. But yes - going to cause a riot. Might be worth it though. We're doing this to get more people to read sf/fantasy, not to keep up traditions that are not really relevant to that goal.

While I agree with your conclusion about promotion, I do think it is time for those who sponsor awards to start thinking about how well they are hitting their mark. For example - if an award winner is not an established major bestseller, given that publishers will have put in considerably toward marketing and distribution, unless there is a substantial increase in sales - say 40% for a major award, and say 10% for a regional award (where the distribution and marketing are probably not affected at all) then the award is not being recognised as a measure of excellence by readers, and the sponsors thereof need to re-evaluate. It is, I appreciate, a complicated issue, and not easy to find suitable judges - who can factor the commercial potential in (it is a hard enough task to find editors able to consistantly accurately guess 'what really will sell'. If it was easy, or just a marketing trick, they'd only buy bestsellers). I suspect the right place to be looking (both for judges and aquisition editors ;-)) would be among small press editors who have managed some success despite the overwhelming odds stacked against them. Being a technophile myself I'd love to see more quality data being collected on reading patterns (Neilsen's data is just straight bad. Collection, categorisation and correction for factors like distribution, re-order status and promotion make it one step from worthless. One step below. Experienced editors gut feel has more going for it.)