Mad Utopia

Please welcome Tina Moreau, Manager of Absolute Xpress, to Mad Utopia. Absolute XPress (AXP) is a Direct-To-Reader publisher of e-Books and paper-Books with a focus on Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. AXP is an imprint of Hades Publications. Tina comes to us today to explain AXP’s Flash Fiction Challenge, a quarterly anthology of flash fiction open to emerging as well as established authors. I’ve tweeted about the Flash Fiction Challenge several times over the last few weeks. Here is your opportunity to learn more about it, directly from the source.

What is the Flash Fiction Challenge?

The Flash Fiction Challenge started almost a year ago with its pilot anthology, Seven Deadly Sins. As social media and electronic reading grow, we find a lot of people mentioning that they would like to read shorter stories than what you normally find in anthologies. We thought Flash Fiction was the answer and it’s been a success for us.

After working out the process bugs with a second anthology, Creatures of the Night, the Flash Fiction Challenge has become a quarterly anthology. Each challenge has a specific theme that becomes the title of that book. The first quarterly anthology of 2010 is called Thieves and Scoundrels and AXP will be accepting submissions on this topic until January 15th.

How does the Challenge fit into the overall philosophy of AXP?

As stated on our website: Our goal is to publish quality books in both the electronic and traditional print formats, and work with both emerging as well as established authors, to give you (the reader) “great titles when you want them.”

To fit with that goal, each anthology is published as both a print book and an e-book (in various formats). Our books can be found on various online book stores, as well as a few select brick and mortar stores, and our distribution continues to expand everyday.

AXP also has another goal, one we take great pride in. Since we are smaller and newer we can take more chances. We want to help new authors get their foot in the door of the publishing industry, but not just by publishing them. We do what we can to help and encourage our authors to build their platforms, learn to market themselves and use technology to get readers interested their works. Of course, in order to achieve this level of author attention we can’t publish as many titles as larger publishers.

What do the authors get out of being published in the challenge?

As a small press our payment structures are varied. At present we have a pool of money we set aside for each Flash Fiction Challenge and the payments for authors is divided out of that pool by the number of stories selected for each anthology. It ranges between 1¢ and 2¢ per word for world-wide rights in all formats, but as we grow we anticipate our payments will increase as well.

Authors published in the Flash Fiction Challenge can expect AXP to get them involved in the marketing efforts for the anthology. We also try to establish relationships with our flash fiction authors so they will consider AXP when they finish that novella or novel they’ve been working on.

So what can an author do to make sure they get selected?

As with any publisher, we plead with authors to read the guidelines. We only accept submissions that are pasted into the body of an email, and they have to include the author’s name, story title, word count and genre at the top of that email.

Aside from the guidelines though, I’ll give you a sneak peak at the things we are looking for:

• Does it fit within the theme, accepted genres & word count?
• Is the writing easy to read? Correct use of spelling/grammar?
• Is the story idea original? Does the idea capture the reader’s attention/ imagination? Is the story complete?

That’s it. If you can say yes to these questions then you have an excellent chance of being accepted.

If you want more information about the Flash Fiction Challenge, check out its official home on the web: http://absolute-x-press.com/flash-fiction-challenge

Tina Moreau is the Manager of Absolute Xpress. She runs the office, takes care of the authors, liaises with artists and editors, does some marketing and manages the Flash Fiction Challenge. Her goal is to help Absolute Xpress become an imprint that publishes well written and compelling stories from fresh voices in the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres.

Writing In a New Era

This is the third installment in my series, Writing In a New Era. Look for a follow-up post from Tina which will explore that theme, and how Absolute Xpress approaches the challenges of today’s publishing environment, in the not too distant future.
~jon