GWA Awards

**"* S* <a*@amystewart.com>**

Saxon--as for a  people's choice award, if it was promoted by GWA and other
media partners (Sunset magazine? Fine Gardening? Amazon.com?), readers would
come vote regardless of what effort individual authors put in.  And if I
encourage people to go vote, and you also encourage your people to go vote,
they might not vote for us!  They might see something there they like
better.

Travel budget--I've been a judge for a pretty major award with generous
corporate sponsorship, and we didn't travel to meet and discuss winners.
There's so much good technology out there--videoconferencing, conference
calls, etc--even the local Kinko's often has a videoconference facility for
rent if people don't have the technology at home.  For the award I was a
part of, we got it done by email and phone calls.

As for sending out 50-100 books, I'm not sure which part of this is hard.  I
own a bookstore and we have to buy, sell, ship, and store odd quantities of
books for odd timeframes (and odd customers!)  Whether it's the gathering of
addresses, the making of shipping labels, the compiling, stacking, and
storing of books until shipping day, or choosing a carrier and getting them
boxed and out the door--there is no part of this that is unsurmountable or
really all that costly.  For the prize I judged, the books came to us in a
few batches--I think I got about 50 books in all, shipped in maybe 4
different batches, each time with an efficient email to the judges letting
them know what they should be receiving, what was still coming, etc.

Putting more money into promoting the awards and raising the public profile
will encourage more people to enter and thereby increase the overall budget.
I'm not sure that flying the judges to a location and putting them up for
the weekend adds the same value. (Maybe giving the judges free admission to
the symposium so they'll be more likely to attend the awards would be a good
idea that isn't as significant a cost!)

Amy
www.amystewart.com

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