Hands up everyone who saw THAT coming!

[neadods]

Only Big Finish is surprised by this.

Big Finish has just announced the results of their competition, which was for un(professionally)published authors to send in a "How the Doctor Changed My Life" story. The grand prize is to be published in a Short Trips anthology.

The grand prize winner is indeed in that anthology, and his story will appear among those of established authors.

However, in the 1,000 entries they received were enough excellent stories that they have basically announced that there will also be a Short Trips anthology that consists entirely of the 25 closest runners-up.

Comments

[sizequeen.livejournal.com]

What's surprizing to me about that list is that there is only one woman winner. I mean, 90% of fanifc is written by women. I wonder how many women contestants entered the contest.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Is there? I hadn't looked at the list of the runners up. Since the anthologies are fairly distributed sex-wise, I don't think that BF did gender discrimination.

So now I'm wondering what you're wondering.

[sizequeen.livejournal.com]

No, not gender discrimination. I'm wondering how many women actually submitted stories. Did they keep them all in a drawer? Or are stories that suit women's tastes, not to the tastes of the editors?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I don't know, because I don't think that stories are that gendered to begin with - after all, there are plenty of women in Who fandom. And Big Finish has come up with some really amazing and popular storylines... including a couple that have been adapted for New Who. (Utopia takes some major plot points from Big Finish audio #49. Which was, admittedly, written by a guy.)

Past Big Finish anthologies have had introspective character shorts, action bits, and some very broad humor, so it's not all wham-bam-action-guy stuff. (And it doesn't hurt that my absolute favorite of the licensed tie-in novelists is a woman.)

Looking at the BF list of also-wons, I see two definately female names, two that sound male but could be shortened female names [Dann(ielle) and Chris(tine)] and three sets of initials, which are gender-neutral (as JK Rowling proved... and I would not be shocked if they were some women hiding their identity as she did.) So the gender blend may not be too horribly skewed.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm one of the initials. So there's at least three women there, yes.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the initials.

I thought there were women among the initials! Go YOU! That is so frickin' cool that you're in! (I'm going to have to find a more flattering phrase than "also won" aren't I?) Congrats on being so good they *had* to take your story too!

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Heh, thank you. It's terribly exciting, yes.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

As well it ought to be!

[museclio]

I see two names that look female, Violet and Anna, and a few that are ambigious.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

It doesn't surprise me. UK DW fandom has been traditionally male and it tends to be males who enter these sorts of competitions (SFX magazine, which is mainly DW wank, runs fiction competition which is also predominantly entered by males.) This sort of demographic reasearch may have been behind the FanLib publicity debacls.

There is also the fact that a large number of female fanwriters, having honed their craft on fanfic, are also professionally published authors so are debarred from entering...

[inamac.livejournal.com]

And yes, I should have spellchucked that. research. debacle...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

There's also the part where a lot of the fandom here, particularly the new Who fans, don't know what Big Finish is. I think the next time they run a contest - this is the second, so I feel safe in predicting a third - word of mouth advertising on this side of the pond will bring in more American women.

[cryptile.livejournal.com]

That Anna is actually, ah, me. Though calapine is a girl and I think she said she was on the list, too. So that's two females, at least . . .

[neadods.livejournal.com]

CONGRATULATIONS! Oh, how wonderful!

I'm glad they had the sense to realize that they should do a book of all the best stories.

(Forgive my rudeness and curiosity - they *are* paying you, aren't they? This is being treated as a fully professional pub, isn't it?)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed. We're getting the same contract terms as they give to all their authors.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Good.

(Although, cashing that check in pounds sterling can be amusing...)

[fyrdrakken]

Never mind, I should have finished reading the thread before commenting. Everything I said was covered, only more so and better.

[--kali--.livejournal.com]

A thousand? yay Fandom!

[terri-osborne.livejournal.com]

What surprises me more is that there were only 1,000 entries, to be quite honest.

[lagilman]

Maybe only a thousand who actually followed the submission guidelines and weren't disqualified?

(not that I'm bitter and cynical about slush and wannabees...oh wait, no, I am.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think that's because a lot of New Who fans don't know about Big Finish yet. My panel at Media*West was a ballroomful, of whom only about 3 walked in knowing what I was talking about.

(It's my understanding that the first time they ran a contest, they expected maybe 30 entries and got 100. They should have learned then. It's only going to get worse!)

[riverchild.livejournal.com]

Hee! Silly BF people. I wonder which of those stories RTD is going to option for episode 4x10. XD