Hugo Awards Fan vs. Semipro 2008

Recently (yesterday?) a writer (Jennifer Pelland for those too lazybusy to click) I know posted that because people she knew had received e-mails confirming their Hugo ballot status and that she had not received said e-mail, she had not made the ballot. Of course, after reading that, I realized that I had not received any such e-mail either, so I am not on the Hugo ballot.

I sent her an e-mail asking if she was trying to depress me. :)* After a few messages back and forth, she said that she had nominated me for Best Semiprozine. I had to break to her that I was not eligible for semiprozine. I was only eligible for fanzine. She had thought, and it's really a thought that makes sense, that since I pay my authors, I was not a fanzine. As someone who worked on fanzines, Jen thought she knew what one was and what one wasn't.

True in a definition sense. However, when taken in consideration of the Hugo rules for semiprozine eligibility:

(1) had an average press run of at least one thousand (1000) copies per issue,
(2) paid its contributors and/or staff in other than copies of the publication,
(3) provided at least half the income of any one person,
(4) had at least fifteen percent (15%) of its total space occupied by advertising,
(5) announced itself to be a semiprozine.

The only criteria I meet is #2. I am perilously close to meeting #4. And yes, I could do #5 and clear up the whole mess. But I've always felt that if I should actually get nominated for a Hugo, I had a better shot against four fanzine nominees than against Locus. Not to diminish the quality of work of fanzines, but since the semiprozine award was created in 1984 (in part as a reaction to Locus winning the fanzine too many times in a row) Locus has only lost the award three times. In that same stretch of time, 10 different publications have won the Best Fanzine Award.

I realize that 10 unique winners in 24 years of awards is not great either, but it's better than four unique winners in 24 years, with one of the four taking more than 20 of the awards. And it's strange because I really like Locus. I subscribe. I vote in the poll. They review my zine. I actually get really good coverage in Locus for how small I am. However, I suspect these types of posts (stop-giving-Locus-awards posts, for the less quick among us) are part of what keeps me from getting mentioned in the Locus Blinks.**

The argument is pedantic, however. It's unlikely I would ever get nominated for a Hugo, and once there, it's even less likely that I would win one.
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*The smiley is to let all of your folks know that I was kidding around. And the asterix is not meant to be thought of as some awful smiley goatee.

**That and the fact that I don't mail anything to Mark Kelly and I expect him to find stuff via magic.