Keep in mind that the majority of winners of Best Fan Writer have won fiction Hugos as well (i.e. Dave Langford won Best Short Story in 2001).
It does occur to me that the "name recognition" issue works two ways. Not only are voters likely to be more familiar with bigger name pros who do fan writing, but due to the increased ease of mass distribution offered by the Internet and blogs, there's incentive for pro writers to blog to keep up recognition between books. As I recall, for example, Neil Gaiman's blog started out as being associated with his then about to be published book. Not that I think any of the significant "pro" bloggers would be blogging near as much if they didn't enjoy it, but there is added incentive from the pro side of their lives to do so.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-09-22 04:41 am (UTC)It does occur to me that the "name recognition" issue works two ways. Not only are voters likely to be more familiar with bigger name pros who do fan writing, but due to the increased ease of mass distribution offered by the Internet and blogs, there's incentive for pro writers to blog to keep up recognition between books. As I recall, for example, Neil Gaiman's blog started out as being associated with his then about to be published book. Not that I think any of the significant "pro" bloggers would be blogging near as much if they didn't enjoy it, but there is added incentive from the pro side of their lives to do so.