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Several years back, when I was still a SFWA member, there was a huge panic over the "Threat" of electronic publishing.

Think about that. In an organization of writers of speculative fiction, there were a large number of people who wanted to shovel back the tide.  The smart ones got into it on the ground floor and are making money. Some of them fought it for years and didn't.

The second part of the discussion was a writer complaining about "pixel-stained, technopeasant wretches" giving work away for free online, thus watering down the paying market for "real" writers.

I had a very polite discussion with Piers Anthony, who expressed the opinion that while online presence was probably marketable, he didn't see how it could compare to a "well-run ad campaign."

Of course, an ad campaign costs money for either publisher or author, and if the publisher, it cuts into their margin for other matters, including paying the writers, which is why it's generally reserved for well-known, big-selling authors.

At the time, I'd written five books in two years, but was still largely unknown.  I pointed out that one of my free satirical pieces had been Farked, and gotten a half million hits in under 24 hours.  There's no way I could have bought publicity like that.  It was off the cuff snark that took me perhaps two hours, for which I might have eventually been paid $200.  Which would you rather have, $200 now, or half a million prospective readers for the future?

Piers was absolutely correct, but he was also speaking from a zone of comfort in an established position.

I attended SFWA functions at Torcon, where I tended bar, Loscon, and then Philcon.  The staff of SFWA knew who I was.  They greeted me on sight by first name. When I pulled out cover sheets of my next book ("The Hero"), one of the officers said, "Oh, a collaboration. Who's John Ringo?"

At that point, John had about ten more books than I did, including three NYT bestsellers with David Weber.

But the in-crowd hadn't heard of him.

And thus it often still is.  The in-crowd goes to the meetings, to the literary conventions, the writer that goes with them gets known, and then gets mentioned by friends, blogged about, and eventually, gifted with suggestions of awards.

Think about winners the last few years.  Are they good?  Generally. Popular? Within a small subsect always.  Not always among SF fans overall.  Can you think of any winners, where you'd think, "This other book that came out that year was better. Why didn't it win?"

George RR Martin laments the "marketing" that has come to the Hugos, that the Old Way is no longer respected. 

That's because an NYT bestseller with 13 books out was unknown to the people who promote the award.

And this is not their fault. When Piers and George started selling, there was no internet, and bookstores, quite common, if they sold SF, had a section with most of the current releases and staff who knew what they were.

It is no longer that time.  There are works that were promoted for the ballot this year that are good works, two of them from friends, and I never knew these works existed.  There's just no way to track the huge disbursement of SF.  We won.  Nerds won the culture war. We're everywhere.

We're so everywhere we don't even know who each other is anymore.

It used to be that the World Science Fiction Convention was THE place in the industry, and everyone knew everyone through no more than two connections.

Now, though, the comic cons, GenCon and DragonCon get more writers, and more readers, than Worldcon.

The only reason the internet wasn't used as a huge pimping and platform tool until now is because so many of the younger fen had no idea what the Hugo was, or how it was decided.

Once they discovered it, these young kids, in our thirties and forties (!) realized the only way to get seen was to make use of technology.

Piers laments free content (or did. That was some years ago).  George laments internet marketing. But both are here to stay, and I doubt most younger fen have any objection at all.

There are rumblings, proposals, and I fully expect that next year, there will be a dozen slates on major blogs promoting works for the Hugos.

So how is that bad?  Works you've not heard of will be mentioned, where you can easily see them. This translates as more sales for the authors. (My piece, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QZV08SW?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmichaelzwi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00QZV08SW, when promoted, shot back into the Amazon top ten for Political Humor.  It had been #1.  Most of you have never heard of it until now, of course.)  It translates into more visibility for the award, more participation, more works proposed, more slated.

This is not the end of the Hugos. It is the rebirth.

Let us not rally the old guard to protect it from the future.  Let us celebrate it.