Hey guys,
As you probably know (but it bears repeating!), nominations will close
on June 30, at 11:59 PM GMT. Authors will have another week after that
to tie up any loose ends, which means that if you nominate something
and the author never accepts the nomination, the story may not be
withdrawn until July 7 - too late for you to nominate something else
in its place.
To help fight against this, a few years ago we developed something
called the two week rule. Liaisons would try to contact authors for
two weeks, after which time the nominator would be contacted. The
nominator could choose to withdraw the nomination and replace it with
another nomination for another story if they wanted. (The nominator
can also choose to leave the nomination in if she prefers.) Authors
don't have to *complete* the nomination process by this date, but they
do have to give us some sign that they've at least heard that they've
been nominated. Begin the form, email the liaison to say they're
thinking about it, something like that. The point is that if an author
doesn't reply, we will assume they can't be contacted and so will give
the nominator a chance to use the nomination on another piece. The
withdrawn story will still be eligible to compete, but someone will
have to nominate it again.
I'm bringing all this up now because there are about three weeks left
in the nomination season. Starting next week, the two weeks rule won't
help you because two weeks will be after nominations have closed. You
can still nominate after that point, but you would only be able to
replace a nomination if the author got in touch and said she didn't
want to be nominated.
So: if you have any nominations you'd like to make, particularly if
this is the first time that author has been nominated this year,
please make them sooner rather than later. It usually takes our
liaisons a day or two to make sure a story is eligible and send out a
nomination letter, and that's when the clock starts ticking for the
two weeks rule. To be safe, you should try to nominate a story by next
Sunday if you think we may have a hard time reaching the author;
otherwise, you risk losing the nomination if they never get in touch.
Of course we welcome nominations up until June 30, but nominating now
is the smart thing to do. Happy nominating! :-)
Marta