How Do We Get Ready For The British Fantasy Awards?

Paul Yates, official administrator of the British Fantasy Awards, shares more about what’s gone on behind the scenes in preparation for tonight’s big reveals.

Number of entries on suggestion list: This year after removing ineligible works and duplicates—and duplicates with slightly different spellings!!—the list was 640 items long, which was an increase from last year and shows the great state of genre fiction.

Number of votes in first round: We received a total of 2344 votes across all the categories, from 154 voters. The Best Fantasy Novel receiving the most votes, and Best Non-Fiction the fewest.

What does it take to get the British Fantasy Awards out and awarded? What happens behind the scenes as the administrator?

The checking of legibility can be quite time consuming—we need to check different sources, and whether a title has been released in Hardback, Paperback or Audiobook, and check whether short stories are reprints.

The counting of the votes is quite easy: luckily I am quite good with spreadsheets so the summing of votes is automatic, then I do a check for different spellings, etc, and then a final manual double-check.

At the same time as checking the voting, we have to form the juries. This year we had 90 people interested; we asked 68 people and ended up with 64 jurors. We need to finalise the jurors once we have the shortlists, but before they have been announced, just to make sure there are no conflicts of interest. 

Once the shortlists are announced, I then set about contacting the publishers and finalists to organise getting the works to the jurors. This can be the difficult part of the role; some very big publishers are not so responsive!

I always leave the jurors to decide themselves how to make decisions, only giving help when asked. Some jurors setup Discord groups, others just use email, whatever works for them. I will check on them occasionally to make sure they’ve received all of the shortlisted titles, and chase them up a few weeks before the results deadline. It is then always exciting and a pleasure to receive the result decision email from the jurors. 

Once I have all the results I send the list off to Morag Hickman, who prepares the details of the award trophies. We then double check the wording and number of awards that need to be produced.

I then try and contact as many finalists as I can to see if they will be attend the awards ceremony or not, and ask for an acceptance speech. Luckily the attendee list for Fantasycon is available on the BFS website, so I can see who should be attending—but if you are a finalist and can’t be at the awards ceremony and I have not contacted you, then feel free to send me an acceptance speech (awards@britishfantasysociety.com). I can tell you I’ve read some wonderful speeches from people that unfortunately didn’t win that no one else will hear.  

Is it now all ready to go? Any final things to settle?

Right now the award cards are in their envelopes, the presenters are chosen, and Morag, who builds them all by hand, is just putting the finishing touches to the awards and then we transport them in armoured car (well actually Parcelforce!) to Glasgow. 

Any snags in this year’s process?

There was a small delay in announcing the shortlist this year; I hadn’t given myself enough time to form the juries and was still chasing a few people while the shortlist was ready. 

Anything that surprised you?

I was not too surprised—but we would love to have, and always encourage, more members to vote each year. It’s worth noting that you do not have to vote in every category, and you do not have give three votes in every category. 

There were couple of new rules this year: only one entry per person per category, and splitting the audio category into fiction and non-fiction. Why? How does this affect the administration of the awards?

This year the audio category was split as there are a great amount of varied works produced each year, and it was felt it would be better to judge works of fiction and non-fiction separately. It is still a difficult category as you have single audio books up against multi-episode podcasts, so we will see how it goes—we need to avoid too much granularity to ensure we have a big enough pool for the long list and enough jurors.

Why did you step up to be the administrator?

I had been a juror a number of years before, and I was friends with the previous administrator, Kat. My wife Chloë encouraged me step up to the role when Kat was ready to step down after many years of great service.  

What do you wish people knew about the awards process that might not necessarily be visible to the wider public?

I want people to remember the awards are driven by you—anyone can add to the suggestion list, everyone who is a member or an attendee of Fantasycon can vote, and anyone can put their name forward to be a juror. To paraphrase that film: “The BFAs is people!”

The winners of the British Fantasy Awards will be announced tonight, 10 October, as part of Fantasycon in Glasgow.