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Lawrence:
As one of the people busily at work on the Stoker Award re-vamp (pardon the pun), I assure you we have been discussing digital media and how to deal with it. The dialogue kind of got interrupted by some other stuff but MY two cents was as follows:

The craft of writing does not change simply because the eventual product will be digital as opposed to print. Moreover, many authors send Reader Copies to HWA voters in digital format so, I fail to see how the mere fact of not being in print makes a difference.

HOWEVER, HWA is a professional organization and we currently have inadequate guidelines for when something published ONLY in digital form meets the professional standards that HWA has laid out. Certainly, some yokel plopping a 25,750 page Great American Horror Novel onto his webpage is NOT something we want to support Stoker-wise! But, even some of the "good" digital publishing companies don't pay their authors in accordance with the standards HWA has set out for printed media -- and that has NOTHING to do with the professionalism of the work, but rather with the way the digital industry functions at the moment.

I suspect we'll eventually get around this by qualifying the PUBLISHER of digital media, small press and so-called "vanity" presses insofar as to whether or not they meet HWA srtandards. If so, most of the work they produce would then be eligible.

But, for the moment, the matter is still VERY much under discussion, debate, argument and general pulling-out-of-hair!