Hugos 1980s Completed

For anyone reading my archives, please note that the Hugo Award lenses, except the one for Movies and TV, were replaced by one multi-page lens, Hugo Award Winners: Novels in January 2011. Links to the old lenses in these blog posts no longer work.

Between yesterday and this morning, I've completed the lens for the 1980s Hugo Awards. I got the descriptions for the winners completed yesterday, and finished by adding the links to Amazon today.

As expected, the further back I go, the less certain it is that a book will be available directly from Amazon. So far, going back to 1980, every winner or nominee book has had a listing, but some must be bought through third party sellers. I still link to them, even though I don't get any commission when someone orders from a third party through Amazon. Prices from third party sellers can be as little as a penny, but shipping is usually $3.99. Not hard to figure out where they're making their money. I certainly have no quarrel with third party sellers and have ordered stuff from them in the past and gotten good service. It's just that in my Hugo listings, I've been looking for a link to an edition Amazon sells directly and use that. I'll list the mass market paperback edition if it's available from Amazon, even though there may be higher-priced editions from them. Besides, once a person gets to the Amazon page, s/he will see the availability of other editions in most cases.

I found a rather embarrassing typo in my introduction to the Hugos - something that showed up on all six pages because the intro is the same. I messed up the abbreviation for the World Science Fiction Society as "SWFS." So they all got changed to "WSFS." Fortunately the mistake was only up for three days or less.

I'm hoping to get the descriptions and Amazon links for the rest of the Hugo lenses up in the next 2-3 days. Writing the blurbs, especially for books I haven't read, isn't the easiest thing for me. I recall back in school I often struggled with book reports. These blurbs are shorter, but I am trying to make them useful. Fortunately Amazon usually has several reviews on the pages for each book, although occasionally I've had to resort to reading what others on Amazon have posted and/or check Wikipedia. They take a while, especially when I try to do a decade's worth in one day. Part of the time gets consumed by getting interested in what's written about the books aside from trying to pull together information for a short blurb.