The nominating period for the 2008 Hugo Awards is now open. The awards are being administered by the 2008 World Science Fiction Convention (Denvention 3). You can find their online ballot here.
The nominations process is open to members of the World Science Fiction Society. To be a member of WSFS you must have either been a member of the 2007 Worldcon (Nippon 2007) or you must be a member of Denvention 3. Only a supporting membership of the Worldcon is required; you do not have to attend the convention. For Denvention 3 the cost of a supporting membership is $50. This also entitles you
to various Denvention 3 publications and gives you the right to vote in the Final Hugo Ballot for 2008, the Hugo Nominating Ballot for 2009, and the Worldcon Site Selection Ballot for 2008 (which chooses where the 2010 Worldcon will be held). You can buy memberships for Denvention 3 here.
No special qualifications (other than WSFS membership) are required to participate in the nominating progress. The Hugo Award system recognizes that no one individual can possibly hope to read/see every eligible work in the field. Instead WSFS members are encouraged to nominate up to five works/individuals in each category that they believe are worthy of a Hugo. The most popular nominees will go forward to the Final Ballot.
In general the Hugo Awards are open to works published in the year of eligibility (in this case 2007). By special dispensation of the 2007 WSFS Business Meeting, eligibility has also been extended to any works published outside of the USA prior to 2007 but first published in the USA in 2007. The list of eligible works is vast, but various fans and organizations maintain recommendation lists of likely candidates. See the list of Third Party Recommendation Sites in the sidebar to the right for links to some of these lists.
The deadline for receipt of nominating ballots is midnight (Pacific Standard Time), Saturday March 1st, 2008. However, in order to participate you must have purchased your Worldcon (Nippon 2007 or Denvention 3) membership by January 31st, 2008.
More details about Hugo Award eligibility are available here. Please note that you do not have to submit your work for it to be eligible. More information about the voting process is available here.