Charles Stross, Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) and Ann Leckie — all nominees for this year’s Hugo Awards — have issued a joint statement blaming their publisher Orbit (a division of French giant Hachette) to withhold their nominated novels from a packet of ebooks sent to Hugo Award voters. This packet was originated by former Science Fiction Writers of America president John Scalzi, and for years, it has afforded all Hugo voters the opportunity to review the full slate of nominated works prior to voting. Hachette — long known in the industry as the most reactionary and technophobic of the major publishers when it came to electronic publishing and DRM — has taken the unprecedented step of undermining their own authors’ chances at winning the most prestigious award in the field in order to conform to its business-wide doctrinal terror of piracy and ebooks substituting for print books.
Hachette has insisted that it took this step because it believes that authors should have control over their copyrights, but it’s clear that these Hachette authors’ wish is for their copyrights to be exercised in this specific way.
We feel your disappointment keenly and regret any misunderstandings that may have arisen about the availability of our work to Hugo voters, but we are bound by the terms of our publishing contracts. The decision to give away free copies of our novels is simply not ours to take. However, we are discussing the matter with other interested parties, and working towards finding a solution that will satisfy the needs of the WSFS voters and our publishers in future years.
Some news about the Hugo voters packet
(Thanks, Charlie!)