No Prize for You!

Last night, while looking over the list of nominees for the 2009 Anthony Awards, I noticed that there was no shortlist of candidates for the Best Web Site Award. This struck me as peculiar, since I distinctly remember that category being on the official ballot I sent in to the Bouchercon 2009 folks a while back. So I dashed off an e-note this morning, inquiring about this matter.

I received the following response:

Hi Jeff,

The way the Anthony Awards work is that there are required awards each year (Best Novel, First Novel, etc.) and then there are open slots for that year’s BoucherCon to decide. We wanted to have Best Cover Art and Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel. Other BoucherCons in the past have had Best Web Site, but it was just something we decided not to do. Thanks for being active with this year’s Anthonys.

Austin Lugar
Anthony Awards Chair
BoucherCon 2009

I understand, and commend, the effort to cover a diversity of prize categories; and there are an awful lot of high-quality crime-fiction book jackets being produced nowadays, deserving of recognition. It’s only too bad that, with so many good crime-fiction-related blogs and other Web sites sprouting up, the Anthonys (and the Edgars, even) can’t regularly acknowledge the folks who put their energy and mostly unpaid time into making those sites worth reading. It makes me grateful to the Spinetingler Awards and other smaller-scale prize programs that make up the difference.

Let’s hope that the organizers of Bouchercon 2010 in San Francisco will once more prioritize the Best Web Site Award. Even making it an every-other-year commendation would be welcome.