Filtration Or Net Fishing For Fiction

Alternatively...The Windmill is My God and Cervantes is the Most Holy Prophet.  Lord make me a fisher of books!

Take your pick.

In my series of continuing digressions into fandom, I'd like to add some (hopefully apolitical) thoughts about how readers find books.  I'm not sure if filters or nets are the better analogy.

Filters capture contaminants but allow useful material to flow past.  Contaminants are usually a small percentage of the whole.

Fishing nets capture the relatively smaller volume of desired material (i.e. fish) while letting the vast majority of material (i.e. water) flow through.  The size of the next can influence what you "catch".  Small, tight nets with smaller gaps are tossed off of docks and from the shore to catch small baitfish.  Larger nets with larger gaps are floated in the oceans (or really big lakes) to catch tuna and other larger fish.

Maybe nets are the better analogy.

Not only does the size of the net matter, where you use it matters.  Using a small net in the middle of the ocean probably won't yield as many baitfish compared with tossing it off of a dock.  Using a drift net in the middle of a small river might yield a few large carp, a turtle or two, and maybe some bass, but you won't catch bucketloads of smelt.  Using a net off of the coast of California coast will yield a different catch than the same net in the Caribbean or in the Aral Sea.  [yes...I know...that's the point]

So what are the "nets" of fandom?

I Like That Author's Prior Work - This is an easy one.  An author writes a really good book that deeply affects the reader.  That reader is more likely to make time for any subsequent work from that author thereby precluding the time needed to "cast a net in a different spot".

The [insert publisher here] Mailing List - The Tor mailing list, to name one.  I'm on it.  Periodically they offer a free book that sounds interesting.  Free and interesting fiction is an easy way to attract reader attention.  

Professional Reviews - Sites such as Locus Magazine and Bookbub do a pretty good job of identifying quality fiction.  However, they do not read and review everything.  All professional review sites include internal processes that limit the span of their reviews.

Acquaintances and Friends - Word of mouth is a good means of spreading the news about an author and/or their work.  The only qualifier is that one's range of acquaintances needs to be sufficiently broad to encourage exposure to a diverse range of authors and works.  As much as I enjoyed books out of the Dragonlance mythos, I would not trust a group of friends who focus on reading Dragonlance books to tell me about the best works in the wider science fiction/fantasy genre.

Contests/Awards - Whether juried or based on reader voting, awards can be a great way to find new authors and works.  Currently, my best award-based experiences are with the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off.  I have good experiences with some other contests as well, but this one has provided me with the best results.

Other? - I think the above pretty well covers most of the major "nets".  But who knows.

Why is this important?  Take a look at this year's best novel nominees for the Hugo Awards.

• Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press)
• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
• Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
• Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
• Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
• The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)

I had heard about five of those six books as they were released last year.  I had not heard about Piranesi.  Ironically, that is one of only two books that I am looking forward to reading.  

I read Network Effect because I was plowing through the rest of the Murderbot series at the time.  I was interested in Harrow the Ninth because I thought the prior entry in the series, Gideon the Ninth, was quite good.  I didn't read Harrow last year because I was predicting that it would be a finalist this year.

I didn't bother with reading the rest of those books for the same reason; the relatively small, and quite frankly provincial, group of people nominating works for the Hugo Awards appear to have a rather limited range of "nets" for finding good new books.  They also seem to have a limited number of "fishing spots" in which to ply those "nets".

The lack of diversity among the nominees suggests to me that the group of nominators lacks diversity in their reading habits and expectations.  The quality of the awards will suffer until that changes.