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Message: <blockquote data-quote="malladin" data-source="post: 1744878" data-attributes="member: 8230">Firstly, I must appologise for coming to this discussion late.  I only tuned in after Morrus' rant and have taken all this time just to try and catch up with what's going on. Okay, I'd like to start by making a few points about the principles of the issue.   Firstly there seems to be a major chicken and egg situation here; publishers feel that the awards are too low profile, whereas the awards need to get bigger publishers involved to develop their profile.  From the point of view of principle, surely this is something we all ned to work on.  As publishers and fans we need to promote ENWorld and the Ennies to attract more attention to them - its as much our responsibility as it is Morrus'.  Secondly, I think *in principle* the burden of any costs should be with the publisher.  I believe this because the benefit (in theory if not in reality) is to the publisher rather than to ENWorld.  If publishers only link back to ENWorld when they have a nominated product I think the benefit to ENWorld is much less than it is to the publisher.  Even when a publisher links directly through to ENWorld from their homepage (or any community site for that matter) I think its more likely to interest people who already know about ENWorld than to bring new people to ENWorld (having said that, I found out about ENWorld from Mystic Eye's website) and therefore is aw much if not more an advantage tothe publisher still than it is to ENWorld. I also think that in principle all gamers should be supporting the sites that they make use of, and publishers perhaps even moreso - just by virtue of the fact that sites like these help to generate and maintain an interest in the hobby that we all need to keep selling books. Another point - maybe this is just me being too small a publisher to matter, but if we were really in this for the money, surely we'd be looking to be the next Bob Salvatore, not the next Gary Gygax?!? RPG publishing is never going to make anyone rich, so why do we do it? Surely it must be for the love of the hobby, which is what the Ennies, and Enworld, support. Now onto some practical matters of how to make the Ennies more viable.  One thing thats clear from this discussion is that there is a problem with the Ennies' viability.  Therefore we need to do something to make them start paying for themselves.  As with anything in business there are always two ways to make something become more financially viable; to make them generate more money and to make them cost less.   Firstly, then, there are issues of income. Generating money by having some sort of auction seems an idea worthy of some merit, but this would mean unguaranteed income.  Surely the community would be better served with perhaps a give away to encourage people to join in the voting process, thus helping to enthuse more people in the longterm future of the Ennies and, through them, ENworld.   So then, what about cutting down the costs.  The big costs, and the biggest gripe over who is responsible for them, seems to be the shipping.  So how can we cut this down?  Id say have less judges for a start.  Shipping 6 copies as was requested for this year's awards (although I was stupid enough to not read the instructions prioperly and so only send one - doh!) is (obviously) twice as expensive as shipping three.  I also think that (possibly - I don't know as I've not had the pleasure of doing this yet) shipping throughout the year at the time of publication would help to lessen some such costs.  Shipping electronically is another way to cut costs significantly.   This leads me to a new approach I've thought up.  Perhaps the publisher could ship the electronic copy to the judges as they send it to the printers, then the juding pannel could review at that point and say whether it was worthy of shortlisting or not, that way publsihers could even put an 'Ennie Shortlisted' logo at the time of release.  Then as the anual awards approach the shortlisted products (may be 10 to 15 in each category) could either be directly voted upon or narrowed down further into 'nominations' by the judges.  If having the physical products is a necesity over an electronic form, perhaps the shortlisted candidates could be asked to ship their shortlisted books, that way people aren't shipping with little hope of an award, or if there are a good number of strong contenders in the category they could choose to simply cut their losses and not bother.  I also think that announcing monthoy, weekly or even as they are released what products have been shortlisted it would bring a great benefit to both the publisher, and to ENWorld as people log in to get the latest news.  Could this also be a benefit to ENWorld if the shortlisted product were accompanied by a short review posted on the front page..? Anyway, thats about all I've got to say for now. I have a small child who is getting rather bored at me typing this up and has just started platying with my mouse!  Time for some daddy-playtime methinks! Cheerio, Ben, Malladin's Gate Press</blockquote>

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