The story so far, for those who’ve missed it: The Hugo Awards are coming to Australia courtesy of Aussiecon 4. Here’s our chance to help some of our best authors get their best work recognised by getting them nominated for an award.

It’s a pretty simple idea - get out there and nominate your favourite Aussie, writers, works, editors and fans.

But the numbers remain stacked against us.

As of January 1, there were 352 Australians registered and eligible to nominate for the Hugos. A healthy number, yes. But a very small one when compared to the 856 Americans eligible to nominate. And breaking those numbers down further says a bit more about why it’s important we get out there and nominate. Of those 856 Americans, 388 are “supporting” members - ie people who are unlikely to attend the convention but have paid a fee to get regular updates and to be eligible to vote in the Hugos. On top of that, add all the members of last year’s Worldcon, held in Montreal, who are also eligible to nominate and vote in the awards this year.

It’s perfectly understandable that US readers have less exposure than locals to great Australian speculative fiction. But if you think local works and authors deserve recognition; if you think it’s possible to make a difference and if you think it’s important to try then check out the Aussiecon 4 website for nomination details. And if you’re Facebook inclined, log in and join the conversation here.

People, it’s time we made the John W Campbell Award into more than just award for new writing talent from North America.

The John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer has been awarded 37 times since it started in 1973. Of those 37 awards, 36 have been awarded to authors from North America. One has gone to an author from the UK - Jeff Noon. Not once has it gone to an Australian, a Kiwi, a South African, a Japanese writer or anyone else. It has only ever been awarded to residents of three countries - the USA, Canada, and England.

Think of the great Australian genre authors starting their careers that we missed out on recognising: Margo Lanagan, Garth Nix, Sean Williams, Greg Egan, Isobelle Carmody and heaps of others.

This is not the fault of the organisers. They run a good award that has drawn attention to some great new talent. It’s our responsibility as a local community.

This photo, from Patick Nielsen Hayden, isn’t a picture of the award. It shows Jay Lake holding a pin Jay is distributing to all previous nominees. At a quick glance it looks like there’s only one (for Kirsten Bishop) of these exquisite creations in Australian hands (or on lapels).

Local writers aren’t even getting nominated. But with Worldcon coming to Melbourne, we’ve got a chance to make amends and focus some attention on some of our best new local writers.

My list of nominations for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer will include:

• Angela Slatter
• Peter M. Ball
• Lezli Robyn
• Jason Fischer

I’ve read a heap of work from each of these writers and I’m very confident they’ll all go a long way.

Nominations close March 13. You can find out more at the Aussiecon 4 website.

Photo by Patrick Nielsen Hayden used under Creative Commons licence.

Interviews and recommendations will be appearing on these blogs from tomorrow:
http://random-alex.livejournal.com/
http://girliejones.livejournal.com/
http://kathrynlinge.livejournal.com/
http://www.mechanicalcat.net/rachel
http://tansyrr.com/
http://editormum.livejournal.com/

Looking forward to seeing further discussion of what we should be nominating. Don’t forget, nominations close in a month.

For those who are still catching up the campaign is designed to get more recognition for great Australian writers and great Australian stories by getting people to think about which local works are worth nominating for a Hugo award.

Most of the discussion is on the Facebook group. Log in and check it out here. There’s also some discussion at the Vision Writers Yahoo group if you’re a member.

Some other useful recommendations and pimpage can be found here:

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Alisa Krasnostein

Peter M Ball

Deborah Biancotti

Rachel Swirsky

Paul Haines 

Go read, enjoy and nominate.

Well you can’t buy a device, there are no e-books on sale through the app store and it was only announced three days ago but as predicted Apple’s iPad has already shaken up digital publishing.

On Friday Amazon removed all books by publisher Macmillan - physical and digital - in a move industry insiders say is the culmination of an ongoing dispute over the price the retailing giant was charging customers for e-books on the Kindle. Macmillan wanted to set its own price (around $15) for e-books but Amazon had them locked in at a maximum of $9.99. That disagreement means you can’t currently buy any books from one of the world’s biggest publishers directly from Amazon.

Funnily enough Macmillan is one of the big publishers signing up to the Apple e-book store right from the start. And what’s the price Apple is letting Macmillan charge for an e-book? The magical $15.

While the New York Times rightly says there may be some anti-trust issues if Macmillan’s books went on sale through one of the stores and not the other, there’s still a bit over a month before Apple’s e-book store opens for business. My guess is that it’s Macmillan flexing its muscle now there’s another giant player in the market. Plenty of time for further negotiations.

I’m even more convinced now that the iPad as an e-book reader is a fifth order issue when it comes to digital publishing. All the uber-geeks are complaining because it doesn’t do this or it doesn’t do that. But this device is not designed to replace your laptop. It’s a device to let you consume digital media easily. And it does that well. I’m sure it will make a very good e-book reader but we’ve got plenty of them already.

While it could be months (or years) before Australians will be able to buy e-books from Apple, the impact across the digital publishing industry is likely to be felt much sooner.

But with the 2010 Worldcon being held here our community has a great chance to internationally recognise the best work from Australia’s best authors.

Here’s how we can do it together.

Nominations for the Hugo Awards are open until March 13. You can help by nominating your favourite Australian work, writers or artists from 2009.

The works I’m highlighting and recommend nominating are:

Best Novella: Horn by Peter M. Ball

Best Novelette (two recommendations):
“Sister, Sister” by Angela Slatter in Strange Tales III
“Inevitable” by Sean Williams in The New Space Opera 2

Best Fan Writer:  Bill Wright

The John W Campbell Award for best new writer (two recommendations):
Peter M. Ball
Lezli Robyn

I think Jonathan Strahan will receive another nod for Best Editor (short form) and I encourage people to nominate him. I will be.

If you haven’t already read works by these people track them down and see if you think they deserve a nomination.

There are lots of other categories too. Check them out and see if you’ve got other favourite works worth nominating as well. It’s nominations I’m interested in and I won’t be campaigning like this to get particular people particular awards once the nominations are in. But let’s get some of our best authors out there on the international awards stage.

While nominations don’t close until March 13, you need to be a member (supporting or attending) of Aussiecon 4 by January 31 to be eligible to nominate works.

Spread the word.

About Aussiecon 4 and nominating: www.aussiecon4.org.au/
About the Hugo Awards: www.thehugoawards.org/

But the interesting news is what it means for the e-book market.

The iPad introduces a new app called iBooks which links with a dedicated e-bookstore called iBookstore (enough with the “i”s already). It supports ePub as its native format! Apple adopting an industry standard is almost unheard of and it will be interesting to see if Apple allows access to ePub books bought for Stanza (or someone adds this functionality through a hack). They already have in place agreements with major publishers such as Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette.

But the device is not the issue - Apple entering the e-book trade is. These developments - support for e-Pub and Apple having a dedicated e-bookstore will mean a lot for the business. If only we could convince them to open the store up to non-Apple devices. 

What it will mean for the Kindle, who knows at this stage. But it’s 2.5 times heavier, thicker and larger, has a shorter battery life and there’s still that backlit LCD screen. I don’t think it’s a Kindle-killer. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a big leap for e-publishing.

There’s not a lot of great data on this out there but I suspect some of the under-representation problem - though far from all - is a flow-through issue. Part of the reason female writers are under-represented in various anthologies and magazines may be that they are under-represented in the number of submissions.

And this is where I’m mostly interested in - and supportive of - the move from Realms. Announcing the issue so far in advance should encourage more female writers to submit. Hopefully that might go beyond just one issue but only time will tell.

Plenty of people are dissing the move and it’s also being conflated with a poor choice of language (which has been apologised for) when the announcement was made. But I think there’s value in it. Unlike a one-off antho, a magazine can address issues like this over time. And if this move helps redress an imbalance and encourage more submissions from a broader range of writers, all the better.

It would be an interesting data-set if Realms tracked their submissions on a gender basis this year and next year and see if the announcement has an impact on submissions. Either way, Shawna McCarthy is a great fiction editor and I’m keen to see what she’ll produce.

There’s one thing I don’t quite get about the people who believe the Apollo missions to the moon were faked. There are plenty of other - smarter - people who have discredited the claims that Hollywood had more to do with Neil Armstrrong, Buzz Aldrin et al going to the moon than Houston. And I’m not going to work through those claims one by one.

But here’s the thing I don’t get. If the moon landing was faked, why hasn’t anyone faked a Mars landing yet?

Surely the Soviets had plenty of motivation. They needed to restore pride in their technological superiority. And what about Nixon, during the dark days of Watergate? Or Ronald Reagan as part of a death blow to Communism? No one tried. The technology to fake a trip is better. People have more skills. But no one even thought about faking a Mars landing?

So while thousands of people in the 60s apparently lied about the US space program and pretty much got away with it, no one has ever bothered faking a trip to Mars. Makes you wonder.

Photo: h.koppdelaney

He thinks that because you’re a hostage you’ll happily fork over funds to read content on his website (this is despite the fact you’re already contributing through the advertising he puts there) that you used to get for free.

His announcement today that News Ltd’s announcement will start charging people to access content on all its website is an interesting one. As others have already pointed out, it’s not paying readers leaving News Ltd papers in droves that are causing so much of the problem, it’s paying advertisers - especially classified advertisers.

Fine, Rupert, it’s your content. Charge for it if you want. But I’m not sure if your model will work. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. RSS - I already get my news feeds dumped onto one page for easy access. Now I’ll have one feed less.
2. abc.net.au, brisbanetimes.com.au, cnn.com, ninemsn.com.au, Crikey (okay I do subscribe but it has a lot of free content as well), the Huffington Post, Twitter…
3. Finding a model that works for mobile devices, not just desktops.

I might pay for some News Ltd content - a new feature from Trent Dalton or a column from Kathleen Noonan. But their general news reporting is often so atrocious that it’s almost worthless in the marketplace. And that’s why I found this quote from Murdoch so amusing:

“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”

Except, you’re generally not giving us quality reporting. Some of it’s outstanding. But most of it’s not. And people won’t pay for it.

If they understood the web better they might aready have signed up to AdSense and been done with it. You can read the whole story over at the news website (while it’s still free) if you’re keen. But for some reason, they’ve switched off comments on this particular story. Sure these people get the web enough to make this work. Sure they do.