ENnies: Publisher feedback and suggestions sought on the future of the ENnies

[BryonD]

If the ENnies had marketting value there wouldn't be all this discussion. Books sell in the first 3 months they are out. How many books that won ENnies are within that 3 month window still? Who besides people who already come to ENWorld know who won the ENnies this year? There wasn't even a sign in the ENnies booth at GenCon.

I see "ENnies nominated" and "ENnies winner" on websites all the time, including ads for future products. So I disagree with your assessment.
The actual winning product may or may not get a sales bump (there is one winner I am trying to track down now myself), but the overall company gets advertising value from winning.

And besides, the company is ALREADY spending money on the product and 1 bulk shipping. Why are they doing that if there is no value in it? Whatever that exact value may be (added sales, future product sales, simple gratification and ego, whatever).

In addition to the money, it requires that the publisher followup with all 5 judges separately to ensure they got the goods. As I said, the cost shifts from a purely monetary cost that Morrus needs to find a way to defer to a purely logistical cost on the publishers' burden. Frankly, a one-off cost, never-think-about-it-again way to get the publishers into the running works a lot better than a time-eating,hidden-cost way of getting the publishers into the running. Having to spend one lump sum to send products to one address means the publisher spends 1 moment entering the contest. Having to followup and spread that moment among 5 contacts and added shipping costs makes it a hassle.

Additionally, the judges' time will also be eaten up having to tell every publisher yes I got products X and Y. No, I haven't yet received product Z. No you can use UPS to my house they don't deliver. Use Fed Ex. You don't use fedex? oh, how about the post office? No DHL doesn't know how to find me either. Did I get your product, I don't know I have 6 did not deliver tickets I can't follow up till the weekend when I have time to drive 16 miles to nearest UPS depot. etc. etc.

Man, you just spent 2 paragraphs trying to convince me of something I openly acknowledged in the first post.
I already said that the easiest way would be to use the same logistic procedure as before. Just include a fee for covering shipping costs.

This is easier?

The other way, the judges receive one shipment with everything in it. Far easier.

Please go back and read my post. I said exactly that.

 

[kingpaul]

judges auctioning off submitted books?

Now, before past judges jump down my throat, I'm not talking about auctioning off every item you get. I realize one of the perqs of being a judge is getting the products.

I know in past years, some judges get products that they don't have any use for. IIRC, Teflon Billy has run contests, with the winners getting his excess books. So, those products that the judges don't want, for whatever reason: how about having an auction, with the proceeds to feed the next year's awards?

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

The intent is sound but the logistics are a nightmare. Again, echoing much of what Joe had to say, right now we only have to worry about a single package arriving to a single destination. If you split that into 5 different destinations, the costs incurred by the publishers jump significantly. Not only is the publisher eating the cost of the product itself (usually around $10-15 or more per book), but also a handling fee his fulfillment house charges to ship along with the actual shipping costs. This can quickly total up to be nearly $20 per book (more if the package has to go overseas). Dividing up the packages means higher costs to the publisher because the fulfillment house is going to charge for each separate package prepared rather than a single package as before. This also means the publisher has to make sure that each judge is contacted for confirmation of the package being received and that the contents are there. In all, this is a much more significant hassle to the publisher and could very well dissuade one from entering, especially if that publisher has a lot of stuff going on at the time, such as trying to beat a publication/printer deadline. The ENnies shouldn't be a bookkeeping nightmare for publishers. It should have a system where publishers are encouraged to enter because of its simplicity.

I have a hard time thinking that a few extra dollars for shipping is going to really keep a publisher from entering their books. They might not enter as many books (some publishers sent everything they released to us this year, which even I, as a judge, though was excessive in some cases), only entering what they consider to be their best work.

Speaking from personal experience, I worked for several years as the Assistant Editor at HarperPrism (now Eos), the SF/Fantasy imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. When we received notification of the call for entries for the major awards (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, World Horror, etc) we ALWAYS were required to send a package of entries to the judges individually. It didn't matter if they were going to New York, Texas, Canada, India, or Japan. All the judges were sent their packages individually. Now I'll admit that HarperCollins is a much bigger company than any RPG company, but all the publishers-large, small, and in between, followed the same rules for entry that we did. The guy publishing his novels in the basement, the small publishers like Cemetary Dance Publications, the medium size companies like Baen Books or Tor Books, and the big companies like HarperCollins and Random House all mailed all their entries individually. If we wanted our books to be considered, we paid the few extra dollars to do it. It's not really that much more to send six 5 pound packages than to send one 30 pound package, is it? If you need to, think of the extra expense as a little donation towards the ENnies, so Russ or Joe don't have to pay for the shipping out of pocket with no reimbursement. We're not asking for the world.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

CL,
If you don't think that a few extra dollars for shipping isn't going to keep some people out of the awards, you have another thing coming. It has already been pointed out that not only does this add expense in terms of $, it also adds expense in terms of time and effort.

The awards and publishers you list as an example are not valid on several levels.

First, scale. The publishers AND awards are much larger. Entering the Ennies is not a marketing tool for game publishers (at least not those I know of). Necromancer Games, for example, uses them as is a means to achieve some recognition for authors, artists, and cartographers working in a low-paying field of work. Science fiction and fantasy novels are very different, the contests you name have the potential to have profound market influence, the Ennies have virtually no market influence at all. How many times to you see the Hugo award used to advertise a book? Now how many times have you seen the Ennies used in a full color print advertisement? On a cardboard book stand in your bookstore? Posted over a row of books in your airport?

Second, the award itself. I just mentioned the fact that the Ennies have virtually no market influence. Other publishers have said this, and people are saying, “oh, but I see it all over websites.” Distributors don’t care if you won an Ennie in the past, and the book you won an Ennie for has most likely already sold 90% of what it is going to sell. If you are a .pdf publisher on ENWorld you might see additional sales. Print publishers aren’t going to see a sales increase significant enough to cover the costs of shipping books to you. Despite the fact that the majority of active gamers has internet access, only a minor percentage of them use the internet for anything game-related.

Before you can start swinging your weight around and telling publishers they have to spend the time, effort and money to ship directly to the judges, you need to have some weight to swing. Sure, on ENWorld everyone knows about the Ennies, but ENWorld is the merest fraction of the total number of gamers few others know about the awards, or even the website.

Right now I see several things being discussed that are simply going to lead publishers to completely blow off entering the Ennies at all. This is the exact opposite of what you want to have happen.

I have a hard time thinking that a few extra dollars for shipping is going to really keep a publisher from entering their books. They might not enter as many books (some publishers sent everything they released to us this year, which even I, as a judge, though was excessive in some cases), only entering what they consider to be their best work.

Speaking from personal experience, I worked for several years as the Assistant Editor at HarperPrism (now Eos), the SF/Fantasy imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. When we received notification of the call for entries for the major awards (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, World Horror, etc) we ALWAYS were required to send a package of entries to the judges individually. It didn't matter if they were going to New York, Texas, Canada, India, or Japan. All the judges were sent their packages individually. Now I'll admit that HarperCollins is a much bigger company than any RPG company, but all the publishers-large, small, and in between, followed the same rules for entry that we did. The guy publishing his novels in the basement, the small publishers like Cemetary Dance Publications, the medium size companies like Baen Books or Tor Books, and the big companies like HarperCollins and Random House all mailed all their entries individually. If we wanted our books to be considered, we paid the few extra dollars to do it. It's not really that much more to send six 5 pound packages than to send one 30 pound package, is it? If you need to, think of the extra expense as a little donation towards the ENnies, so Russ or Joe don't have to pay for the shipping out of pocket with no reimbursement. We're not asking for the world.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Oops! The dreaded double post!

 

[PatrickLawinger]

I posted some of this in the original thread, but I am posting some of it again.

Funding: Okay, funding can't come from the companies/people submitting products. Sorry, it just can't. Even if you make it "voluntary" people won't feel that it is voluntary and any large donor that wins is going to spark discussion of corruption. Even if such charges are completely false, the taint on an award is something that should be avoided at all costs. To have a truly respected award the even the APPEARANCE of impropriety must be avoided. If you want to ask for fan donations, fine. If you are going to be the GenCon awards, then by all means make Peter pay for all of it.

Shipping to Judges: (already discussed above, but here is what I posted before) I don’t know what others are going to say, but I am saying, um, no. Shipping costs can be very high, I admit that, and boxing individual sets of books, etc. takes time. It takes time from the publisher too. Most of the publishers submitting are going to be small, asking a small print publisher to ship 5-6 individual shipments instead of 1 per product is asking for a significant increase in the amount they need to spend to take part in the contest. Overseas and Canadian publishers might even choose to not to enter. If you want as many publishers as possible entered, make it as easy as possible for them to submit their products, don’t add additional steps.

The award itself: I am about to say things here that are sure to get me flamed. So be it. Some of the EnWorld members I saw at GenCon admitted to being surprised at just how huge the convention was, and how few people had even heard of EnWorld. I know people hate to hear it on these message boards, but in the overall rpg market, ENWorld is hardly a speck on the windshield. While a .pdf publisher with a following here might receive extra sales from a nomination or an award, print publishers hardly see a blip in sales. While most gamers use the internet, especially in this day and age, only a small percentage of those use it for gaming related questions, reviews, discussions, or even purchases. Avoid marginalizing the award by keeping it focused on DnD and related products, the further you expand the more you will be ignored, either because you are a DnD site voting on things you "don't know" or as an award that is simply overly broad.

Improving the Awards: the biggest improvement I see as being required is getting more publishers to take part, particularly WotC. Remember, big companies essentially have nothing to gain by winning a nomination or an award, but can certainly lose face if they miss out. Sure, nobody wants to compete with the “big dog” but if the “big dog” isn’t there what does the award really mean? Maximize the number of companies entered in whatever way you can. If the big guys don't participate, the awards mean very little. I think you should also work on timing, find out when the big parties are and make sure the awards don’t conflict with them. The White Wolf party was the same night and time as the Ennies award ceremony.

If you are going to be a general gaming award, you need to make significant changes to your structure, voting system, etc. You can’t have an award covering all gaming systems with judges and voting based on a DnD/d20 website. Okay, you can, but nobody is going to care. You also need to get all of the big players involved. If you have an award that is supposed to cover all gaming systems but WotC, WW, and Steve Jackson Games don’t even bother to enter, you can simply forget becoming enough of an award to have any broader recognition. Without market influence you are simply a vanity award used to garner recognition for people working in a largely unrecognized area. Up the costs for a publisher to enter, and that publisher is going to decide to recognize their writers and artists with special dinners or perks instead as these are cheaper, and are deductible business expenses (shipping you books isn’t). If you tell WW that they not only need to send you 6 copies of their World of Darkness book for judging, but that they also need to send each individually to one of the judges what are they going to say? (Hey, Steve is a great guy, he might say yes) From a business viewpoint you are asking him to jump through hoops to submit one of the very best selling WW books ever into your contest, a contest that has 0 recognition from WoD fans and won’t do anything to his sales. Hey, I love ENWorld, but if I were him, I’d just laugh and “file” your request.

I have seen several people post in the other thread that publishers shouldn’t be part of setting up the awards, or giving our opinions on how they are run. You do what you want to do, but if you start making it a “pain” to enter the contest, not many companies are going to enter, the fewer companies that enter, the less anyone is going to care. Make it easy to enter and do your best to get the big companies involved, without them, the awards are simply not going to achieve the recognition you desire.

 

[BryonD]

Never Mind

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Patrick,
<snip>
Again, cause I REALLY want to know: why do publishers shoulder ANY cost as it stands?

ByronD,
Right now it doesn't really cost that much to enter the contest. Shipping costs and time are more expensive than the actual books given up for the awards. Shipping the physical books costs more $ than giving up the books themselves. The main proposal I have seen discussed is having publishers ship directly to the judges, this significantly increases the cost of entering. Increasing shipping costs is indeed going to make people drop out. It goes from "oh, it is only a few dollars, not a problem" to "what a pain in the ass, forget it" pretty quickly. This is particularly true of the smaller publishers that have less room to absorb these costs.

It is always "cool" to enter a contest and even cooler to be nominated or even win. Some of us would like to see the Ennies grow into a more well-recognized award and support it on that alone. It is also great to see people working on a project recognized in some way, whether it is authors, artists, editors, cartographers, whatever. Publishers like to participate in active communities such as ENWorld and having products recognized by active, involved gamers and receiving that type of feedback is fantastic.

Right now I believe that many publishers are participating because they would love to win an award, who doesn't, but also because they want to be a part of the community. The "community feel" here goes a long way toward getting publishers to participate. As it is, I know of several publishers that didn't participate and have no intention of participating in the future. Those publishers also don't feel any real link with the ENWorld community.

I personally feel that if ENWorld is going to shift to having broader awards they are going to lose the DnD/d20 (OGL should be tossed in here too I suppose) "community feel." Lose that, and I think you'll lose some of your publisher participation. Nobody wants to be "lumped in with the rest." Asking publishers to go through an added step (and expense) of shipping directly to judges is going to cause more to drop out.

Please don't tell me how important the Ennies are for marketing, or sales. On the ENWorld main page there is a tiny one-line link on the left hand side of the main page for the 2004 Ennies, if you follow it you get to a page mentioning who was nominated. It still hasn't been updated to list the winners, runners-up, etc. It doesn't discuss the history of the awards, or what they are supposed to mean. Even ENWorld isn't promoting the awards, or the award-winners, why would you expect a distributor or a retailer to care about them?
Really, we tried to use the Ennies in the past to help promote certain books, the distributors didn't care. The fans on our own boards, sure, fans here, maybe, but distributors, retailers and the "average" gamer, um, the Ennies don't mean a thing to them.

 

[BryonD]

Patrick,

Thanks for the reponse. As you can see, I decided to retract my comments about 1/2 an hour before you got your response up.

Nothing at all against you in that. I'm happy to try to post some constructive brainstorming towards making things work. But my total lack of involvement makes me feel that it is not appropriate for me to be arguing in this particular thread.

I'm unconviced that this issue is as dark a shade of grey as you demand. But I feel that whether or not the ENnies continue is all or nothing, black and white.

 

[Morrus]

Patrick (and Stephen, and others), what would be really helpful is some constructive suggestions, rather than merely naysaying everything suggested. We've got the idea that you don't like the ideas presented so far; what I think would be great is if you were to suggest some practical alternatives.

It's evident that the ideas presented by some people in this thread (publishers helping with the cost) are not acceptable (in general) to publishers. I need to make it clear that the status quo (my shouldering the cost) is equally not acceptable to me. So a third alternative needs to be found. If we can direct the thread in that direction, that would be great.