LEDGER AWARDS: help and advice needed...

[Philip Bentley]

Hmmm...My original thought when I read Gary's initial post was that the only honorable way out of this was to offer the books gratis. However, I was loathe to post that publicly as it would seem to me akin to moral blackmail to other publishers. But I'm also a great believer in looking for a compromise solution in any situation. I hadn't thought of the round robin approach and given the economies of scale involved in the current scene it didn't seem that untenable to me. I don't have that many copies left so if it's possible to reduce the number it makes sense to me. I don't really feel that the whole situation has been that heinous to inspire cries of "Shame Shame" and I don't really appreciate ending up being cast as a latter day Scrooge McDuck, but I guess I'll have to wear it. I don't know whether the amount of heat this has generated hasn't soured it for all concerned, but if a conscensus can be reached I'm happy to abide by it.

PHIL

[Anomic]

Gary,

I’ll put my foot in it… how much time do you have before you have to have an announcement?

If the Ledger can be postponed by a month or so I reckon there’s a good chance of getting sponsorship for this event (Corporate sponsorship that is - it’s too late for grants)

If you are interested in this avenue then PM me and I’ll get the ball rolling …

[matt g]

[Laocorn]

[mrdenmac]

[ChrisSequeira]

[mrdenmac]

[Anomic]

[Paul Bedford]

[matt g]

A question for everyone - if someone who had published a half inch thick trade paperback was up for the awards, would you be expecting them to donate 4 of these?

I'm just a tad disturbed at how much emphasis some people are placing on the whole self promotional aspect of this. Is the Ledgers about recognition for excellence from peers and readers, for the sake of excellence alone, or is it a marketing exercise, where creators think of it in terms of "If I invest this much worth of stock, it will translate into this many sales if I win" and everything is on a "pay to play" cost / benefit basis.

I wonder how many of these people would still participate if the Ledgers were conditional on winners and nominees not being able to use them for self-promotion.

Do we want the tagline for the Ledgers to be "recognising the best in Australian comics, who's creators paid to enter competition", or perhaps a motto such as "I believe that if a creator has produced a work of sufficient quality and expense that they cannot afford to give it away, they and their work should be excluded from consideration for recognition of excellence."

Think about it, that is the position some people seem to be advocating, and the implied guilt trip of "I'll do it, why won't you" is just base and unnecessary.

What we risk is that creators who go to the effort to produce lavish works, the kind that can sit easily on a shelf next to the sort of production quality publishers like IDW can muster, are effectively penalised against those who might go a cheaper production route, or have the benefit of greater financial backing / wealth.

How does that advance Australian comics?

To address calls to cancel or indefinitely postpone the awards, beyond our little world here, there are many many people supporting all of us who have taken time out of their days to both nominate, vote and participate in these awards. We owe it to them - the punters who actually buy our stuff - to hold the awards, and most importantly, to keep them informed as to what's happening if there's any delay. I'm surely not the only one getting emails from their readers asking "so whatever happened to the Ledgers?"

Cheers,
matt g.

[mark selan]

[matt g]

[davidjcunning]

[matt g]

[matt g]