Thank you all for the thoughtful comments and suggestions you’ve made on Anthology, Anyone? I’ve read them all and they have been most helpful in clarifying my vision on where I want to go with the anthology. Here is a rough outline of what I propose.
Where I stand
I agree with those who suggested a Best of 2009 instead of a six month anniversary anthology. It makes more sense, both due to the hectic nature of this time of year, and as a set up for an annual event. It also gives people time to come up with new pieces to post in the coming weeks, which might help us grow the community.
Every story ever submitted as a #fridayflash, between launch and the end of 2009, is eligible for consideration. Some writers have come and gone, for whatever reason, and may not even be aware of this anthology. If you have fond memories of a certain piece please go back to that author and tell them about the anthology so they can submit. I can think of three or four off the top of my head that I would be proud to share space with.
The nuts and bolts
Submissions will be done via self nomination. Everyone can submit what they feel is their best work for consideration. No limit on the number of pieces you can submit. But remember, #fridayflash is intended to showcase your best efforts, so be reasonable about what you think is your best stuff. I’m hoping for two or three pieces from most folks. That should get us a nice batch of stories to choose from. Actual submission will be done via email. Details on how will be included in the formal announcement, coming out in a few weeks (I have to celebrate the six month anniversary in some manner!).
Which brings me to the selection process. I liked Donald Conrad’s idea quite a lot.
“Winnowing? Use a panel of judges/editors… Each are given a percentage of the stories to read and rank without attribution. The top, say 60%, are then passed to the next judge; again without attribution and without previous scoring…”
This appeals to me for two reasons. First off, I lack the moxy to approach professional editors and ask them if they would kindly judge potentially hundreds of pieces of flash fiction on a volunteer basis. That’s asking an awful lot. More importantly, I want to explore the whole concept of community participation. I’m a big fan of Open Source projects, and I’d like to see how this can be applied to the editing phase of the publishing business.
Many of you said you would be willing to help with editing. I’d like to ask for volunteers to become, in effect, slush readers – to do that stage one winnowing that Donald talked about. If we get enough volunteers this task can be made manageable.
The second phase of the selection process will be done by a panel of judges. Just who ends up on that panel is yet to be determined. It may end up being just me, but I hope I can recruit some additional help. If I end up on the panel I will take my own stories out of consideration.
I think this should be done on a free sample, pay for the full product basis. I think doing that will give us all a better sense of just how that oft touted model works. We really are writing in a new era, and I think it best we learn the ropes first hand rather than simply reading about others experiences. Either way it turns out, huge success or big financial flop, we’ll all end up the wiser.
Those pesky profits
There have been several suggestions on how to handle the profits, if any. I really like Jeff’s suggestion.
“I’d rather all profits go into a pool for buying #FridayFlash promotional items, such as a Nook or Kindle or $100 Barnes & Noble gift certificate that we somehow give away to a reader (not one of us authors).”
We are not likely to earn a lot on this anthology in the first place. Dividing that all up, even if it turned out to be a few hundred dollars, probably won’t even get you a Happy Meal. So pooling the money into a bigger pot, that we can use to promote #fridayflash makes much more sense to me. In the long run, attracting more readership will pay us all much bigger dividends. I’d like to hear more discussion on this. Will anyone be disappointed if any money earned goes back into #fridayflash as reader prizes?
Other good ideas
Lily suggested the anthology contain, “a short bio on each author, including their Twitter handle (if they have one) and a link to [their] blog…” I agree completely.
Tony suggested we include “a brief history of how #FridayFlash came about…” and a “list of the authors who have participated, along with links to their writing blogs…” Sound good to me. But I think we will have to contact anyone not directly involved to get their permission to list their name and blog. That could be time consuming, but should be manageable.
How you can help
I’d like anyone who is serious about helping to send me an email stating what they would be willing to do. My email is jstro AT swbell DOT net. Make your subject FridayFlash Volunteer. Don’t worry, there will be no heavy lifting until after the first of the year.
I need the following in way of volunteers:
- Sleuths – to help track down authors who have fallen by the wayside. This actually could begin now, so the authors have time to respond.
- First round judges – to act as the initial filter. I’ll send you the judging form and a pile of stories. Judges will not rate their own work.
- Editors – to markup stories for correction. This will likely be more work than first round judges, requiring a more careful reading, redlining errors, contacting the author about the errors, making the final corrections, and sending the corrected manuscript back to me. Authors will have final say.
- Artists – for front and back cover design. I have a design concept in my head I’d like to bounce off you. Also, I have been reading up on Kindle formatting, and have specs on size and resolution for that platform.
- Other stuff – anyone can volunteer for stuff I’ve failed to mention above. Marketing. Reviews. Things I haven’t even considered. Just shoot me a note.
As always, I’m still open to further suggestions. Feel free to comment, pro or con, on any of the above.
~jon
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Putting any profit into a pot for promotion is a fabulous idea. I like the community approach, and Donald Conrad’s idea is perfect. This looks to be shaping nicely. Great job.
Jon – I love all the ideas you’ve outlined above and i think that sinking any profits back into marketing efforts is an excellent approach. it’s to everybody’s benefit to continue to grow the community and build readership. I will send you an email with areas i may be able to help. well done!!
The promotion pot sounds good. I take it that would mean we charge for the ebook? If so, we need to ensure it is still cheap enough to be an impulse buy
A promotion pot is fine, but I know I am a crappy accountant (I call it Voodoo Accounting Math for a reason!). Are we prepared to essentially create a business (for taxes, accounting, record keeping, etc.) for Friday Flash? Really not trying to throw a blanket on the fire, but Uncle Sam is very specific about which pieces of money he wants a chunk of if you catch my drift.
I just had an idea, and this seems a good place to put it. It would be really neat to be able to add our old FridayFlash’s to the currently building data base. For all us Legacy FridayFlashers
Dan, I agree completely. I think the way to go on projects like this is to make the product eminently affordable. I’m thinking about $1.99. Perhaps even lower. The problem I see with POD is one of costs. That requires real printing, binding, and shipping, so there is a higher initial break even cost one has to charge. If Lulu et al has no cost set up and it only costs money when someone actually orders, then POD may still make sense. I’ll have to do further research on that issue. But for ebooks, price them very low and hope to sell more copies.
E.D. I didn’t call ‘em pesky profits for nothing. I’ll have to think on that a bit.
I’ll have to give some thought to adding archived stories to the database. As of now adding older stories would muddle new story listings in that all new entries are marked Open, which is how the Collector finds new stories for the report. After the report is generated then they get marked Closed. So yes, adding old stories would be great, but not yet. We’ll have to come up with some mechanism to segregate new Open stories from old Open stories first.
~jon
Your project sounds delightful. Exposure sounds like a fair reward for 1000 words.
I love the suggestions! I hadn’t considered the taxes part though *snore* There would be a 1099 filed to whomever uploaded and entered the payment data (Jon)
Oh good. I just love forms.
But I kind of figured it would come to that.
~jon
Well, as for the legacy stories, we just expose the status button, and count on people to mark their legacy stories “closed”.
What about a Best of 2009 tracker for the anthology stories? We could keep track of where they are, who’s editing, etc., etc.
Susan
This all sounds great to me Jon, especially Jeff’s marketing idea for promotional items. I believe the exposure we’d gain would benefit each of us much greater than any happy meal could ever do.
One thing I don’t see addressed here is the # of stories per genre, (Susan Cross mentioned in earlier discussion). Will we include a set # of stories per genre? Considering we could well have 90% horror overall we may have no choice in the matter. I don’t have a preference, just thought I’d mention it as a reminder.
I am exicited about this and can’t wait to hear your idea for the cover art. Is the suspense part of your fun in celebrating the anniversary?
Thanks for all you do for us Jon!
This is a great idea!
I’m an infrequent Friday Flasher, but would love to be involved. A few thoughts from reading this post and the previous one:
- ebook should be made available at Kindle and Smashwords and sell very cheap, may 99c. That will generate massive exposure;
- POD is very cheap and easy. Use Lulu for example and there’s no setup cost if yuo don’t use an ISBN and Amazon and just promote through the Lulu Store. Also, CreateSpace at Amazon is free (I think!) so that would be worth a look if it gets the hard copy POD on Amazon;
- Profits – what about we choose a worthy global charity and donate all the profits? Would that avoid the tax issues?
Sorry up to my eyes in Nanowrimo or would have contributed earlier – but love this idea. Jon make sure you or some of the editors pay yourselves back for your time on the project out of the profits – only seems fair as it is not a small task to edit and prepare copy for print – but also love the promotional idea. I think marketing should really be a group project – we all have our groups of followers, they are a good place to start, then we need to work out where our potential audiences are and put content in front of them i.e. I write a lot of horror so blog post in horror fan site etc to drive traffic through to whichever POD we use or a main website where they can buy/download the book.
On a completely different but linked tangent -earlier in the year I was thinking about suggesting the possiblity of using our collective genius/genii(?) to put together a themed anthology, we choose a subject – love, hate, zombies etc and then together we create an original book of unpublished short stories around that subject. Perhaps something for Summer 2010?
Anyway back to Nanowrimo
Alan, I may be wrong, but I don’t think donating the profits will help avoid the tax issue. If money changes hands the IRS is going to require a form. It will most likely be counted as income, mine as I’ll be running it, and taxes will have to be paid. The only way around taxes would be if we incorporated as a not-for-profit organization, which sounds noble, but just the thought of the paperwork involved with that makes my head hurt. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Deanna, I won’t worry about genre initially. I’m just looking for the best stories. I think we’ll end up with a nice mix, but until we see what we get there is now way to tell how it will turn out. There certainly is no shortage of horror, but I think we get a nice mix each week. Quality of writing and originality of story will matter much more to me than genre.
Clive, nice idea. Once this is over and done I’ll have a better sense of how this whole process works. Themed anthologies are worth considering. We could do a light side/dark side, with humor and slice of life stories for spring and horror/suspense for Halloween. Just thinking out loud, here. Nothing definite. Don’t mark your calendars!
I’ve been told Lulu is kind of a pain for customers to use, and that Create Space is the better option for POD. If anyone has direct knowledge of either of these, or similar, please email me with your tales of praise or horror.
One thing I have always wondered about is cover design for POD. The cover has to fit, front to back including spine. So how do you plan the size if you don’t know how big the book is going to be until it’s ready to go? Anyone with that kind of info, please chime in.
~jon
You can design the cover art without knowing the exact dimensions initially. With CreateSpace (the only one I’m familiar with) you would tell it how many pages you have after you’ve formatted the interior. It then gives you a template with all dimensions to download and you work with it to tweak your cover art. Upload it and you’re done!
Well I see my comment on the “Anthology Anyone?” blog is basically mute because it’s covered here…so great! As I said I’m here to help out in any capacity. I’m a graphic artist and I’ve previously helped to edit two other anthologies.
Everything here sounds like a great idea and something we can all be proud of. I can’t wait to get started.
Thanks, Laura. That was very helpful to me.
Great Rachel. I appreciate the offer very much and will probably want to draw on your previous anthology experience.
~jon
Ya gotta love a man with an idea. I’m not part of FlashFridays, but I’ve enjoyed reading the works of those who are, as I zip around the Blogosphere.
Helen
Straight From Hel
Jon, I just sent an e.mail volunteering.
I’m planning on submitting a few for consideration. This is a great idea!
I’ve held off on commenting because I’m still such a newbie, but the more I participate the more I discover the wonderful talent in this group, and the wonderful sense of community and camaraderie. I will email you to volunteer my services. Thanks for all your hard work!