Remarks:
Winners:
This is the 10th Stoker win for Joe R. Lansdale, and the 5th each for Ellen Datlow, Jonathan Maberry, and Tom Piccirilli. This year marks the first Mentor Award, "honoring writers who, thru the Mentoring Program, provide excellent support to their mentee".

Nominations:
These are the first Stoker Award nominations -- and the first nominations for any of the awards in this database (as of this posting) -- for Emma Audsley, J.D. Barker, Jake Bible, Jason V Brock (with 2), Robert Payne Cabeen, David Cronenberg (the first novel by the film director), Tyler Crook, Craig DiLouie, Patrick Frievald, Taylor Grant, Tonya Hurley, Jennifer Kent, Sydney Leigh, Josh Malerman, Alessandro Manzetti, Joe Mynhardt, Peter Adam Salomon, John F.D. Taff, Damien Angelica Walters, Dennis Widmyer, and James Wong.

In addition, several others have first Stoker nominations with prior nominations (as of what's been compiled here so far as of this posting) for other awards: Hal Bodner (a 2006 Gaylactic Spectrum nomination), Emily Carroll (with a Kitchies nomination for this same book), Josh Logan (a Ray Bradbury nomination in 2012), Usman T. Malik (a Nebula nomination this year for the same story).

At the other extreme: this year's ballot has the 16th Stoker nomination for Ellen Datlow (with 4 previous wins), the 8th Stoker nomination for Joe Hill (with 3 previous wins), the 3rd nomination for S.T. Joshi (with 1 previous win), the 20th nomination for Joe R. Lansdale (with 9 previous wins), Jonathan Maberry (with 4 previous wins), the 16th nomination for Tom Piccirilli (with 4 previous wins), the 9th nomination for Marge Simon (with 3 previous wins), and the 10th nomination for Steve Rasnic Tem (with 3 previous wins).