Award Rules

Below are the rules for the Cóyotl Awards as of January 17th 2023:

  1. The Cóyotl Awards year shall begin on January 1 and end on December 31 of the year for which awards will be presented.
  2. Award Categories:
    1. The Cóyotl Awards shall be made in the following categories:
      1. Short Story: less than 20,000 words
      2. Novella: between 20,000 and 50,000 words
      3. Novel: more than 50,000 words
      4. Anthology (single author anthologies included, see eligibility below)
  3. Award Eligibility:
    1. All works first published in English during the calendar year, substantially featuring and/or focusing on anthropomorphic figures, may be eligible for the Cóyotl Awards:
      1. Other works such as but not included to graphic novels, video games, podcasts, and interactive fiction shall be accepted in a separate category; however, depending on the number of such submissions, they may be placed into an existing category as deemed appropriate by the Cóyotl Awards Chair, based primarily on their word count.
      2. The Cóyotl Awards Chair is empowered to determine the eligibility of a questionable work.
    2. A work may be eligible whether or not its authors are members of the FWG.
    3. A work that was previously self-published that has been published through an FWG-qualifying venue is eligible, so long as the following are true:
      1. It was not nominated when originally posted
      2. It is now being published in an FWG-qualifying venue for the first time.
    4. Single-author anthologies may be submitted. Such an anthology will be considered not eligible if it contains only reprints. A mixture of reprints with new stories is eligible.
    5. If a story is reprinted in an anthology, the anthology itself will still be eligible if it follows the rules above. However, the reprinted story itself will not be eligible for individual awards.
    6. The author of any eligible work may withdraw it from consideration by contacting the Cóyotl Awards Chair.
    7. Works generated or produced through any AI generator, algorithm, or program are not eligible.
  4. Award Nominations:
    1. All members of the FWG are eligible to make nominations during the nomination period. However, works may not be nominated by their authors, editors, publishers, or agents, by spouses or domestic partners of their authors, or by any other party with a monetary interest in the work. Individuals engaged with the act of distributing the work for resale who are not the author, author's spouce or domestic partner, publisher, or agent are eligible to make nominations.
    2. The nomination period will be determined and announced by the Awards Chair.
    3. Nominations will be accepted through an online nominations form.
    4. Nominations shall be treated as confidential information; only the names of nominated works and numbers of nominations will be available for viewing by other members or the general public.
    5. Each eligible member may nominate no more than three different works per category and may not nominate any work more than once.
    6. The nominations will be reviewed by the Awards Chair who shall compose the final ballot.
  5. Award Judging:
    1. The Final Ballot for a calendar year shall be comprised of the four works with the most nominations in each category.
      1. In the event that zero works are nominated in a given category, then no award shall be given in that category.
      2. In the event that fewer than four works are nominated in a given category, then all works will be listed on the final ballot.
      3. In the event of a tie for the last place on the ballot in a given category, the size of the ballot may be expanded to include the tied works.
      4. The Awards Chair shall make the final ballot viewable and determine a window during which votes will be accepted not shorter than two weeks. Votes will be accepted by email or online voting form.
    2. All members of the FWG in good standing will be eligible to vote.
    3. No more than one vote may be cast per category, per member. In the event of multiple votes being received, the most recent one will be used.
    4. All votes will be tallied after the voting window closes.
    5. The work in each category that receives the most votes will be declared the winner.
    6. In the event of a tie after voting on the final ballot, the number of nominations received by each work will determine the winner. If the number of nominations is also tied, then the tie shall stand, and all such tied works shall receive the award.
    7. The winners of the Cóyotl Awards shall be announced at an annual Cóyotl Awards ceremony.
  6. Interpretation of these rules, and all questions regarding eligibility, withdrawals, nominations, ballots, etc. shall be decided by the Cóyotl Awards Chair

Updates

  • January 17, 2023 - Added ruling around works produced via or using AI creation tools.
  • January 5, 2021 - Clarified that individuals who work for distributors of potentially eligible works are eligible to make nominations, as they do not have a financial interest specifically in any one particular book (and are likely to wind up distributing the winner regardless of whether or not they nominated it).
  • December 17, 2020 - Added rulings around "Other works"