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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PatrickLawinger" data-source="post: 1736937" data-attributes="member: 2735">Okay, continuing on …Problem: value of winning an Ennie. Obviously, some of us have different views on this. Until the awards become more established and more well-known they aren’t going to have a market impact. This means that right now they would be considered “vanity awards” (I do NOT mean this to have a negative connotation). They provide recognition to people that have done a good job in fields of work that are relatively low-paid (if paid at all in some cases) without providing a tangible financial benefit. This helps encourage people to try harder and strive to do better. For that alone, the Ennies have great value. A number of publishers would like to see the “muscle” of the award increase so they can use it to help in marketing. It does cost us money to enter, we’d like to turn that into a  benefit for us as well. I don’t think an increase in costs/entry fees is going to keep the majority of publishers already involved from entering again next year. I do know of some that say they wouldn’t, but I think that if you keep enough others involved they’ll stick around.The more publishers you have entering and backing the awards, the better off you’ll be. Things that might help.Advertising the awards: this was proposed above, unfortunately, this is very expensive. About the only way you can do this is if companies do this for you when advertising a product that won an Ennie. If you try to do magazine advertisements you really will blow your budget in no time.Get WotC involved: get WotC to promote d20 more, and ask them to help promote the Ennies more. Approach them from a marketing view point, d20 products do support their core rules products. I honestly don’t think people controlling the purse strings at WotC right now are going to go for this very easily.Ask Paizo to do an article on the winners (even a short one page or half page bit would help). Dungeon and Dragon reach far more gamers than ENWorld does. I think Eric Mona would be up for something like this, the only way to find out is for you to ask.Keep the Ennies page updated, list previous years’ winners and nominees, provide links to the publishers, even links to their online stores if they have them. Even if this only sells 1-2 books the publisher can list this as a benefit. Ask publishers that have received awards to mention not only that they did receive an award on their website but also to link to the Ennies website (providing the graphic award symbol and link to make it easier would help).Award Ceremony: plan your award ceremony around the other “major” events at the convention. Don’t compete with the White Wolf party, or whatever WotC party is thrown. Having the awards before one of these parties is fine. You want as many of the “major players” to be present at your awards as possible. Don’t force them to choose between the Ennies Award Ceremony and any sort of party/meeting/celebration involving people that actually make them money, write them checks, or that they want to negotiate a contract with.One major point I have about this, the Ennies are still a “fledgling” award. The growth and recognition of the award is going to require time. Most awards like this die out within 3-6 years. This award is close to a “break point” if you can maintain it the recognition of the award will increase.</blockquote>

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