Ledgers and the Wash

Following on from yesterday-

I think that creators should put together more anthologies just for the sake of sharing costs and producing work quicker. More books menas more visibility, more visibility hopefully means more sales and recognition. Probably a simple 'build it and they will come' marketing model but you know better then a kick in the head.

So when it comes to the Ledgers, i think 2 categories should exist to recognise anthologies.

Anthology of the year
and
Story of the Year

In terms of definitions; I'd say an Anthology is anything that has 3 stories or more, none of which is more than 16 pages per issue. (If its just 2 stories then its essentially a main feature and a back up.) Number of creators is probably not an issue.

Anthologies shouldn't be included in either the Small Press or Indy Press categories due to the unfair advantage they have. Anthologies, besides the work of Ben Hutchings and the Glittershy dude, have more than one creator - usually 3 or 4 so when its time to nominate, there are 3 or 4 votes going for the anthology over the 1 or possibly 2 votes from the creators from a normal small/indy press title.
This of course assumes that people will nominate themselves, I know that would be unheard of but I'm pretty sure it happens.

If more categories were to be turfed out i'd say "Single Story" would have to be next on the chopping block. But I think it would be nice if parts of anthologies were recognised. I'd probably add the criteria that nominees for single story were self contained - since its hard to really appreciate a story when you only have a small part of it.

In terms of overall eligibility, if the awards are going to be held at the same time, ie early january, i think the eligibility of books should be December to November. A book released in Decemeber 2004 (like tonia's latest book - (latin)work is hell(/latin)) is not going to have the same chance or visibility as something that was released at Supanova. So books released in december 2004 will be eligibe for the 2005 awards. Of course John Law and Gary Chaloner's sweep makes a mockery of this theory but whatever.