Short story compilation

[ralphkern]

There is clearly a lot of talent on this forum and a thought that occurs is getting peoples names out there a bit more.

An idea that springs to mind, and at this juncture I am putting it out there to see what peoples views are, is how about group of us get together with a short story each and package it up and place a compilation onto the ebook sites.

My initial thoughts would be as follows:

1. The collection would be for free however within the 'authors note' your main works can be advertised.

2. I'm a hard sci fi man myself so that would be the general theme of one I would want to contribute towards however there's nothing that other collections can't be done for YA and fantasy etc.

3. If people like the idea maybe an annual thing.

4. Let's say we select 10 stories and make it a competition to get a piece in there.

The reason why I like this idea is it's a relatively low time investment way for each of us increasing our footprint on the ebook readers.

Anyway putting it out there for initial thougts

 

[The Judge]

Some thoughts off the top of my head.

1 If this is to be any kind of professional compilation you will need an editor, not only to deal with things like spelling and punctuation, but also larger issues of pace, characterisation etc. With the best will in the world, most people's efforts will need some input of that kind. Gary is employing an editor for his book of ghost stories -- and a professional will need paying.

2 I'm not au fait with ebook sites, but presumably some money has to be paid somewhere to someone for something. Agreement would have to be reached as to how those costs would be borne.

3 Even if no payment is involved, some work will be required in getting the ebooks set up, and someone will have to do it. Who?

4 Deciding on the participants -- when other people have suggested writing competitions in the past we've always replied in the negative, since we have the two Writing Challenges and we don't want anything to detract or distract from them. That's not a blanket "no" at this stage, but it's certainly not something we're over-keen to encourage. And you'll need to decide such things as theme, word count etc, and most importantly how the winners of the competition are chosen -- with all due respect to my fellow voters in the Challenges, the winners are not always actually the best story (and I'm speaking as a winner here).


If you're knowledgeable about ebooks and the like, your best bet might actually be to run this yourself off Chrons -- have a look in Press Releases and you'll see Gary's threads about his anthologies and also Glitch's new magazine venture which may be of interest.

 

[jastius]

you could do a best of chrons e magazine if people choose to contribute their old competition entries..
we have poetry art photography and stories.. some of the games are appropriate.. such as the limerick thread.. the ongoing story thread ... etc.
but everyone would have to agree. that would advertise the site and the writers as well.

 

[ralphkern]

Hi Judge.

in anwser to your points:

1. The idea is to use the talent that is here to essentially peer review everything prior to going out. I am not proposing a professionally produced book. I am proposing essentially a corwd sourced effort, which as far as im aware has not yet been done. The cost implication would purely be from the cover art, which may well be able to be sourced from one of the contributors. Even if not then its not a huge cost. I paid £40 and had enough for 7 images on I stock Photo.

2. No. I have put up my own and it is royalty based. As this will be offered for free there is no royalties. If we use Amazon for example they get their money from cross marketing. Alternatively if we do put it up for a cost, it will still be royalty based. no out lay for any contributor with the exception of cover art as above.

3. I am happy to coodinate

4. As say im getting a feel for peoples views at the moment. im not going type up a list of submission requirements without gauging interest levels. If yours is negative so be it. If we get 10 or so positives awesome. I can run it here or elsewhere I dont mind which.

And yes ive done the ebook route and pleased to say its quite simple as long as we agree on format etc. The hard work is going to be for the contributors to write a good quality short story.

 

[Abernovo]

Hi Ralph. Are you thinking of establishing a small, independent press type-of-thing? If so, there's a few members who've done the same. I'm sure there's room for more, though.

If you're looking for somewhere to submit yourself, Gary Compton's creating a short story antho at the minute, details here. He's also announced future anthos are in the planning stage from the same press.

Glitch has also started a press up, partly for books, but also producing a short story magazine. He's looking for subs.

I think the competition for both is going to be pretty fierce.

The other two to look out for here are Ian Whates and Ian Sales. Both of them have small presses, mainly for novels I think, but Mr Whates recently ran a short story contest, so both their sites are worth watching. (And, of course, they're both talented writers too, which is another good reason to check them out.)

I think good quality books will be supported by everyone on this site, so it's worth looking further into this.

 

[Montero]

Fantasy Faction does an annual anthology. You could go and look at the details of how it was done.