Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Full revitalization of the Coyotl Awards - in progress

Publishing and Marketing
#1

Hello everyone,

I’ve talked about the Coyotl Awards recently and my plans for them. Well, here’s a more detailed list of things that I’m working on:

  • Let me first say that, after much research, I like the way the nomination and voting process are setup. I apologize to those that aren’t FWG members, but awards that are open to anyone that can send a form with no reason for why they are nominating a story other than “it’s the author I know” tend to get bogged down and unjustified. I’m sure everyone knows this by now, but Kyell Gold withdrew himself from the Ursa Major awards in his main categories last year and for the coming years. It became a pattern that he won every year he had an eligible item. Is he a fantastic writer that deserved at least most of those awards? Sure and you won’t hear me say anything otherwise. Were a lot of other items of equal or greater caliber overlooked because Kyell is the name everyone knows?
    (I’ve personally expressed my kudos to Kyell for stepping up and doing what he did in the past, but this is me doing it again. Takes a person of high quality to do such a thing.)

  • I will soon be in the process of looking for people for the Awards Council. If anybody would like to take on this task, please let me know.

  • This point right here is a new addition I’m working on; an emblem to be placed on the covers of books by the winner. This is something that major book awards have done for a long time (Pulitzer Prize, Newbery Awards, etc.) and I believe it to be a great tool to increase readership to work that truly deserves it. Anyone who is a publisher or associated with a publisher that does furry work, please feel free to talk to me about this. This task is something that I hope to be universal across all that may have published a winner of ours.

  • This is another addition (actually one I thought of as writing this post) that I’d like to propose. During nominations, I’d like to have an open forum for all guild and non-guild members combined to post links to stories that they want to win and why. We all have busy lives and there are several stories that I’m sure are great and most of us haven’t heard of. This give an opportunity for those untapped stories to be realized and read by those who makes the decisions.

I will be looking over every ounce of the nomination and submission process in detail over the coming few weeks so that I may better understand exactly how everything works and has worked.

Please give me feedback; I’d love to incorporate every bit of it as I can into this process.

#2

This all sounds great, especially the emblem idea and the forum - good stories are worth the effort of writing something in their praise.

As for the purpose of the council…making sure everything’s fair and even, I guess. If everything’s in control of one person, it’s easier for them to rig the ballot :stuck_out_tongue:

#3

My understanding was that the council existed largely for making sure that works were sorted into the right categories, especially in the cases of self-published works that were borderline as to whether they belonged in the mature or general category. Though, I could be mistaken.

#4

Thanks! The forum idea I think will be great. The biggest pro and con both of the Coyotl Awards is the exclusive voting and nominating. It gives stories that actually are better a good shot at winning (even if the author is unknown) but it also leaves a lot of writers and readers feeling left out. I think this might be able to bridge that gap and make many more people happy.

This makes a lot of sense and didn’t occur to me before. Thanks for clarifying!

#5

Please talk with Electric Keet (electrickeet@electrickeet.com) about this; I believe this work has already been done and I would like our graphic resources to be consistent. If we want to redesign all of our graphics to match a new design, I’m fine with that, but I would very much like to make sure that look-and-feel are managed as much as content.

Contacting FurPlanet, SofaWolf, and RabbitValley should be fairly straightforward, and we should be reaching out to them to manage this. I would also recommend contacting past winners for copies of the short stories and possibly the novellas for collection in a future anthology of winning works.

buni

#6

No problem. I haven’t started working on any graphics (my graphical skills leave many things left to be desired); just shot an email over to her.

That was the first thing I did. One publisher is already on board, but I’m waiting for the other two. This first publisher also posted a list of other venues that would be good to contact as well.

Agreed, though I figure this will go on the back burner until everything else comes together.

#7
I'd like to have an open forum for all guild and non-guild members combined to post stories that they want to win and why.

Good idea, though I’m assuming by “post stories” you mean people would be posting links and such, not the stories themselves? (The authors could post full stories if they wanted to, but for anyone else it would be a violation of copyright to repost work without the author’s permission.)

#8

I do indeed mean to post links.

#9

I just wanted to throw in my support in regards to this topic. It’s an amazing thing your doing and if it’s possible for me to be a part of it. I would love to help out Everything sound great and I look forward to your next move.

Warnndog.

#10

Announcements and a new subforum coming soon…