One of my writing groups has decided that we want to try to produce an anthology, similar to the one I had the latest story published in. As a participant in that process, I have been roped…er…coerced into helping research what exactly might be involved in such an endeavor.
We’re going to be using the sales to boost our group’s finances, so we’re wondering if we even need to pay the writers for contributing…maybe a free copy of the book along with a stipend of some sort. The first thing on the agenda is to appoint a committee, of course. We need to determine how we’ll pay the publisher, which will have a good deal of bearing on which publisher we end up using. Then, we need to pick a theme. Obviously, “Carolina Crimes” is already chosen, darn it. Maybe we could focus on our chapter’s area, the Upstate of South Carolina, or the Appalachian Mountains specifically. If we go mountains, we could conceivably sell the anthology in various tourist traps around the area, which would be good.
Once we get a theme chosen, we’ll need to set up a timeline of at least a year to get everything done. We’ll need to give authors a few months to actually write and submit their stories. We’ll need to find some good judges and give them enough time to read those stories. And we need to allow time for the publisher to produce the final version of the book. We’ll also need to try to find someone with a “name” to write an introduction and send advance copies to reviewers to get blurbs for the back cover and for marketing purposes.
In short, it’s going to be an undertaking. We’ll see what sort of enthusiasm we can drum up in the chapter, which will eventually be the main sticking point. Wish us luck!
