BSFA Nominations and Eligibility Changes

Members of the British Science Fiction Association may nominate works for the 2018 BSFA Awards until December 31, 2018. Nominations may be made online here.

BSFA has changed the rules for the Best Novel category:

To bring it into line with all the other awards, we are dropping the publication location requirement for novels. Previously novels were only eligible if they were published for the first time in the UK or Ireland (or solely in e-book format). From this year, novels are eligible in the year of their first publication, regardless of where they were published.

Since “occasionally a book can still be hard to find in the UK when it’s only been published elsewhere,” the administrators can choose to allow books to be nominated in the year of their first UK/Ireland publication at their discretion. They’re making the change “to keep awards eligibility in line with the books that British fans are reading and talking about,” in recognition of the fact that works published in the US are more readily available in the UK now than they were when the eligibility rule was originally written. “Publishing models are also changing, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell what ‘counts’ as UK publication.” Queries may be directed to <awards@bsfa.co.uk>.

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