Seeking Information

[snurri]

I'm considering making some stories available at Anthology Builder: any thoughts? Who's done this? Who's leery?

Comments

[sarah-prineas.livejournal.com]

My thought is, I want to see proof that somebody's actually buying anthologies first.

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

I like the idea in principle. I think this thing would be awesome when there are thousands of stories to choose from; right now, it seems a tad limited. Whether you should do it depends on what it is you want out of it.

[mastadge.livejournal.com]

I'm interested, but I'd need a much more substantial body of stories there before I'd be able to justify buying one of the things.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

I've been holding off because they seem to have a near-zero rejection rate. I'm not sure it'll work if it's essentially just a gigantic slush pile.

In my arrogance, let me add...

[wheatland-press.livejournal.com]

That's not building an anthology. I admit it would be less snappy to call it "Perfect bind a bunch of random stories you picked out yourself and own this fake book." Probably not good marketing.

An anthology, properly done, is a more cohesive thing. Its stories fit together in a subtle blending of tone, theme and stuff. Really. I believe that.

From the writer point of view you might get someone to take a chance on your stuff. That would be good.

From the purchaser point of view, it's like a music site offering to burn you a CD with a nice paper insert. In my mind that seems like offering to charge you extra for something you don't really need.

[timakers.livejournal.com]

As soon as rights revert back to me, I release all my stuff online under a CC license. Like you say, short stories are advertising, not income. When someone reads one of my stories in a magazine or anthology, if they google my name they suddenly have access to everything I've ever sold. It just seems like the best way, for me.

*googles himself*

Except they end up at my blog, which is not where my stories are. Gonna have to do something about that...

[scarypudding.livejournal.com]

That's it. No more anthology editing gigs for me.

[nomissnewo.livejournal.com]

Hey, if you do decide to put some stories on there within the next few days, shoot me an email at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com. I'm going to write an article about it and would like to interview some people who have actually tried it.

[matthewsrotundo.livejournal.com]

Wow. Such cynicism on display here.

At the moment, I have two stories up on AnthologyBuilder, and I will probably add more.

What's the attraction for readers? I'll let Nancy Fulda, whose brainchild this is, explain it in her own words. You may or may not see it that way, but other readers obviously do. People are buying books from this website, and the word is spreading. Yes, the selection's small, but AnthologyBuilder has only been operational for a couple of months. New fiction is added daily.

What's the attraction for writers? As Mary Robinette Kowal pointed out over at Speculations, it's found money. There is absolutely nothing for a writer to lose in this arrangement. Even if no one ever buys your story, you're still not out anything. You can pull your work from the website at any time, for any reason. Anything you make is gravy.

To those writers who are saying they want to wait--why on Earth would you want to do that? As I said earlier, more fiction is added to AnthologyBuilder daily. Get your stuff out there now, while the numbers are still relatively small, giving you a better chance to get your fiction noticed.

Or don't. More room for me, then. :-)