Eligibility and Rules for the Nommo Awards

Rules for the Nommo Awards and Nominations

The Nommo Awards are administered by the African Speculative Fiction Society who will ensure they are run fairly, and achieve their aims (see core document).

For that reason the African Speculative Fiction Society lays down these rules for eligibility, nomination, selection and acceptance of the Nommo Awards.  These rules will be revisited every year in light of changes to the awards or experience of the previous year.

Eligibility

To be eligible to win a Nommo Award, the work must to a significant degree be authored by at least one African. This would allow stories that are co-authored with non-Africans.  

The work must be nominated by Members of the African Speculative Fiction society (ASFS).   Authors or publishers do not submit works as part of the process.

An African is a person who fits into one or more of these categories.

• citizens of African countries,

• people born on the continent and raised there for substantial periods of time,

• citizens or people born on the continent who live abroad

• people who have at least one African parent or

• Africans without papers, and

• some migrants to African countries.

AlSO

• The author does NOT have to be a Member of the ASFS.

• Authors and publishers are allowed to remind Members that their works were published, but campaigns especially those that spam Members are discouraged and may result in the work being disqualified.

• The work can be published in a professional online or print anthology, journal, as a printed book as an online publication or online publication.  It may be published on someone else’s blog.  It may be published by the author themselves bearing in mind that it must be nominated by other Members.

• The database of published work being set up on the ASFS can be used as a reminder of works published, but its criteria may differ from those of the Award in order to limit the size of the task of listing publications.

• The author of the work must sign a legally binding agreement on nomination guaranteeing the following.

• • • • That the author is an African by one or more of the criteria listed.

      • That in the case of co-authorship, Africans contributed to a significant extent

      • That the work is their own work, and is not plagiarized in any way

      • That the story does not contain defamatory or libellous material (thus protecting the ASFS when distributing reading copies)

      • That the author/s agrees that should they win and these conditions are found to have been violated that the prize money will be returned to the ASFS Nommo Award budget.

• The location or nationality of the publisher is not an issue or a qualification for the Award.  A story by an African writer published in an American journal is eligible.   A story by a Canadian in Omenana would not be eligible.

• Nor is a story eligible or not eligible on the strength of African subject matter or locale.   A story set in Bosnia by an African is eligible.  A story by a Canadian based on Yoruba beliefs and set in Lagos is not eligible.

• Any inducement, gift, or offer intended to encourage either nomination or selection as winner offered by publisher or the author will disqualify the work and may violate the conditions of Membership in the ASFS

Nominations

The ASFS has a duty to guarantee that nominations are collected fairly and without prejudice.  An automatic system of identifying Members and recording nominations is envisaged.

• Only Members of the ASFS may nominate works.

• A Member may nominate up to a maximum of five works in any one category.

• Each nomination counts as one equal vote for that work to appear in the shortlist.

• These nomination votes will be tallied automatically, and the top five or more nominated works will be the shortlist in that category.

• Short-listed works will not be ranked in order of number of numbers of nominations, nor will these figures be revealed.   This is to avoid prejudicing votes for winners.

• There will be ties. The number of works in a short list can be expanded to include all tied works.  If eight stories all tie, they can all be listed.

• Members cannot nominate their own work, nor can they nominate works they have published, edited or produced.  Doing so will violate their Conditions of Membership.

• The organization of slates also violates the Conditions of Membership.  A slate is a list of recommended nominations that people are asked to nominate as a set in order to skew the process in favour of any aesthetic, political, ideological, religious, gender, racial, ethnic or national movement or group.

• We will attempt to identify slate behaviour patterns in nominations, most especially the nominations being repeated as sets.

• Only the ASFS or appointed agents can gather or accept nominations.  An automatic process via the website is envisaged.

• Information about the nominations made by an individual Member is, with the exception of examination to verify conditions, a private matter and may under no circumstances be released, except by that Member.

• The nominations, their counting, and the selection of the shortlist will be independently verified.

Reading copies

The shortlist will be announced three months before the Awards, in order to give people time to read all the nominees.

• It is envisaged that Members will receive copies of or protected links to short stories and novellas to encourage informed voting for winners.  

• It is envisaged that excerpts only of novels and graphic novels will be provided, to protect the profitability of publishing.

• It is one of the Conditions of Membership that anyone found distributing their reading copies for profit could lose their ASFS membership.

• Nominees must sign that their stories do not contain libelous or defamatory material.  They must also agree to the distribution of reading copies

Promotion of shortlist

During that that three months of nomination, the ASFS will attempt to fulfill its aim of promotion African Speculative Fiction as a whole by announcing and publicising the nominations and the individual works. Quotation from the works is part of the process under fair use.

Selection of winners

Only Members of the AFSF have the right to vote on the shortlist for winner.

• Members will have one vote only in each category.  They select the story they want to be the winner.

• These votes will be tallied, it is envisaged, automatically via the ASFS website.

• Information about what works individual Members selected to win is, with exception of necessary investigation of fairness, a private matter for that Member and cannot be released without their permission.

Announcement of winners and prize giving

Votes will be tallied at the end of the three-month nomination period. 

The identity of the winning works will be kept secret until the announcement of the awards, which is envisaged as a ceremony in the autumn as part of relevant events in Africa.  The secrecy is there to assist in the promotion of the works and African SF.

• Prize money will be sent where possible by bank transfer, PayPal, or some other low cost, secure and appropriate manner that suits the needs of the winner.  Nominees will be asked to select a preferred manner of payment as part of the nomination process.

• The ASFS has a duty to ensure that prize money is securely sent and received.  Where it can be proven that the ASFS was negligent in delivering prize money, the prize will be sent a second time.

• Prizes must NOT take the form of cash.  They are given as US$.

• The prize will promote African speculative fiction as whole by promoting and publicizing the winners and the individual works.  So works will be publicized and quoted from under fair use.

• Nominees will be asked to name a person who will be attending the ceremony to collect the award and speak on their behalf and to collect any tokens or certificates confirming the prize.

• Nominees will be asked to prepare short, 200 word speeches of acceptance for the ceremony.