To understand why high sales and awards don't always go hand in hand you
first have to get out of your head the idiot notion that literary quality
and quantity of sales have any necessary relationship. The lowest common
denominator is often popular--see baloney and macaroni and cheese-- but
that's because it's simple enough to appeal to any yahoo with five bucks--see
Independence Day the late works of L. Ron Hubbard or Married with Children,
for further examples. Once in a while a talented writer will also have the
knack of writing on a level where s/he can be produced quality work and still
be understood and appreciated by millions--Dean Koontz is a good example,
as are Stephen King and Sara Paretsky, as were Heinlein and Asimov--but this
is rare.
Awards reflect the opinions of the people who vote on them. The Hugo is
voted on by serious science fiction fans, people who as a rule know the
field very well. This is a small subset of the much larger number of
people who occasionally read sf but don't know much about it. The Nebula
is voted on by professional sf writers who are members of the SFFWA,
people who are ocassionally less knowledgeable about the field as a whole
than are the serious fans who vote for the Hugo, but who know more than fans
generally do about good writing. Other awards are chosen by other groups
and in various ways. Some, like the Homer, reflect the opinions of a
broad spectrum of voters. Others, like the Tiptree or the Philip K. Dick
Award reflect the opinions of a small jury of at most a half dozen people who
have taken it as their duty to read just about everything eligible for the
award. There's no reason to expect their generally (although not always) well
informed choices to reflect the opinions of the tens of thousand of people who
read a handful of lightweight sf novels or a few fantasy trilogies a year
and know almost nothing about the field as a whole.
Some award winners do sell very well, as Mike Resnick has suggested. I
would point out that one of these is Lois McMaster Bujold. Although none
of her books, to the best of my knowledge, has ever made the NY Times
Best Seller list, she still sells better than just about anyone else
around. LeGuin also makes a very good living from her books, as do such
award winning sf writers as C.J.Cherryh, Greg Bear, David Brin, William
Gibson, etc. etc.
Mike Levy
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