Talk:Eric Hoffer Award

Legitimacy[edit]

The Eric Hoffer is a legitimate annual literary award that appears with permission from the Eric Hoffer Estate. What proof do you need? Egress13 (talk) 16:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to nominate a book, you have to pay $45. "At the low nomination fee, it is not feasible to provide judge’s [sic] critiques for each entry." And who is the judge (or who are the judges)? Hofferaward.com does not deign to divulge this.

This looks to me like a tidy business. Get lots of people to send you books and $45 dollars, confer awards on the less awful examples.

Of course, I could be wrong. Where's the significant coverage in reliable sources that would enlighten me either way? -- Hoary (talk) 15:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don;t think that's the only way they make their money.The Writers Notes site (the same people, the same publisher), also offers consultations with Hoffer and other writers for $36/half hour. It sort of speaks for itself.

Curiously, the academic presses section includes books from first rate authors and publishers. Of course, anyone ,even the publisher itself, could have nominated them. DGG ( talk ) 04:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed excellent books popping up here and there among the most dubious awards lists. As long as their percentage remains low, their presence makes sense. (Though I'm uncomfortable with such talk: it's conspiracy-theoretic to say first that the lack of any obvious sign of quality helps damn an award and then the presence of obvious signs shows that the award system is trying to camouflage itself.)

Christopher Klim seems to be quite an industry. His books are published by Hopewell too. Ah, christopherklim.com/ tells us "website, text, graphics © Hopewell Publications". Yes, a whois search shows us that the administrative contact for his site has a hopepubs.com address.

Increasingly, the whole thing looks to me like Klim's walled garden for machine incorporating a vanity prize and vanity publication. And if so, part of the eventual undoing of WP-legitimation was the peacocking by one or more earlier authors: in the form in which I first read it, it started The Eric Hoffer Award for short prose and books honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer; I was very surprised never to have heard the name of any American philosopher legitimately describable as "great" not merely in a polemical article but in a reference work. -- Hoary (talk) 06:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Hopewell conglomerate[edit]

Here are some websites that belong to Hopewell:

hofferaward.com (according to the top page)
hopepubs.com (according to the top page)
bestnewwriting.com (according to the top page)
christopherklim.com (according to the top page)
writersnotes.com (according to the top page)
theusereview.com (according to theusreview.com/USRcontact.html)
hofferproject.org (to judge by the contact address at hofferproject.org/HPcontact.html)

Or perhaps they all belong to Klim. Either way, they all belong together. -- Hoary (talk) 13:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are also links from one or more of these sites to robertgover.com. This is now dead, but older versions can be found at web.archive.org. A February 2008 version says "Copyright Robert Gover 2005 - 2008" (and attributes web design to goverphotographic.com). -- Hoary (talk) 01:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]