Published Authors Anthology -- sign up here

If you are interested in submitting a short story (not more than 4,000 words) or a poem (not more than 24 lines) add your name here with a suggested title for the anthology that we will vote on later.

Short Story: My buddy, Tigger.

Published authors anthology? So can the piece be previously published?

What genres of fiction?

Wow Shelagh, you are some great go-getter. I'm all for a short story, and my title suggestion is this..."world wide writers" (a little play on www) or perhaps "Seascapes: Stories from Both Sides of the Atlantic"...I think it might depend on who contriubutes and where they hail from.

If you have the rights Karina, your story can be included.

My suggested title: Writers on the Block (Writers Block with "on the" inserted).

I think we also need a theme. How about Friendship?

I'm thinking on my feet here and that theme doesn't go with the title ... but I prefer the theme to the title. I'll have a rethink about the title ... hmmm.

I really blew that Shelagh. My response was the title of my intended short story.

What about: "writers woven words"

My Buddy Tigger gave me the idea of friendship for the theme Abe.

The list of suggested titles so far:

Writers' Woven Words
World Wide Writers
Writers on the Block
Worldwide Web Writers
Word Wide Writers
Word Wise Writers

I like the friendship idea...and Writers' Woven Words, World Wide Writers if you'd like first and second votes )

Okay, guys and gals, I just ran across this thread. Have you done anymore on it? I would be interested in contributing.

Hi Sue,

We would really need a more enthusiastic response than this thread has received. Ideally, the anthology would contain fifty pieces of work (poems, short stories) by fifty contributors.

With a maximum of two thousands words per contributor, the book would have a fianl word count of between eighty to one hundred thousand words.

With an estimated sale of ten books per contributor, the anthology would sell five hundred books.

With only twenty-five contributors allowed four thousand words, the size of the book would be the same but the estimated sales would be halved to two hundred and fifty sales.

These figures have not been plucked from thin air, they are based on the example I gave in an earlier post:

It might be a little early in the life of your two sites to pull this off, Shelagh.

Perhaps down the road you can get more turnout for it.

Two things I've seen done:

A contest announced on lots of sites.

And:

Your weekly featured writer could contriute something each week. By the end of a year you'd have your 50 writers.

Members are not featured every week. At the moment, the forum has only six featured members. To feature a member a week would take up too much of my time. I featured an author a week on the network for thirty-three weeks but only a few of those featured post on the forum.

The enthusiasm has to come from the contributors otherwise I will end up with a rod for my own back. If people think they are doing me a favour, they will be difficult to deal with. We are all very busy and the last thing I need is to be involved with a group of takers who never give back.

Recently I invited 525 friends on Ning to join Zada's Books and More Books Network. The response more than doubled the membership but only 70 of 525 made the effort to join.

There is only so much I am prepared to do to help other authors or would-be authors. They have to pull their weight. That's the bottom line.

I can understand your feelings, Shelagh. It can be quite disheartening. You have better ways to use your time, I am sure.

I joined Zada's B&MB but am a little unclear about it. I must admit I haven't taken the time to check it out more thoroughly. I don't know if I could find my way back. I will attempt to give it more of my time this week.

I pray this coming week is a good one for you!

Shelagh,
working smart instead of hard is the better way.
Your point about not spending your time where there is minimal interest is valid.
I have received numerous invitations to join various forums. At first I thought it a great idea for exposure and joined. Now I'm more selective. If I know the person, like Zada, I will try to participate. The problem is the use of time. Just to sign on and then do nothing doesn't make much sense. I'm not sure how that benefits the sponsor of the forum other than collecting statistics. If I am part of a forum I at least want to see what's going on and participate. But, there still needs to be time for writing and time for oneself.

Hi Shelagh.

Let me know if you're still going ahead with this I might have a story and a couple of poems for you.

You're definitely on the list Karina if this goes ahead.

Sue and Abe,

I wasn't suggesting that members who join networks should actively participate in the networks they join -- I am on 22 Ning networks as well as running the Published Authors network. I post blogs (copy and paste) onto the networks but I don't have time to participate much in the discussions.

The example I gave was to illustate how few people respond to information sent out to them, which highlights the difficulty of marketing books by sending out emails as much as it shows the difficulty of attracting members onto websites to advertise their own books.

An anthology would be another way of free advertising but would not earn any money for the individual contributors. If interested members were to list their names here on a voluntary basis, they would not then be able to complain that they were asked to send their work and therefore they should receive something from the sale of the book.

Any profit would be small and, in terms of time spent, would not cover the costs involved in producing the anthology. It must be clearly understood and accepted by contributors that being a contributing member would be the only reward.

As soon as there are close to fifty names on this thread, I will ask those members to send their work (short stories, poems) by email.

The next stage will be to choose a title and a cover.

As soon as all the work is in, the book will be assembled and then sent out to all contributors to proofread their own contribution.

Finally, the book will be sent to lulu for publication.

Shelagh, many of us get notices almost every day about joining one or another group, or reading one or another blog, and for me there just isn't enough time to do all of it. In order for me to work on my books or finish a short story I have to spend a lot of time writing, then polishing, then re-writing, the trying to decide where to submit or what I want to do with whatever it is that I manage to complete. I hate to join anything and then just not have any time at all for taking part in whatever the activities they have. I usually just don't join.

As far as the anthology here goes, I'd love to be a part of it, but I have a bit of a problem with the 2,000 word limit. Almost every story I write is at least twice that many words, and most are between 5,000 and 10,000. Look at my posts, I can barely keep them below 2,000 words. I also have a large body of poetry but few are 24 lines or less.

We capped the stores for the Amazon Shorts writers anthology at 5,000 words each and got 19 stories with about the same word count as you are looking for here. We have some great stories, by some great writers, and all we need to do to now is get it published.

So, it's not that I wouldn't like to join a lot of groups, or contribute to this anthology, it's just that there seems to be valid reasons why it can't or won't happen.

Hi Don,

Don't worry about joining networks, I only mentioned it to show how much work is required to make a single sale. The Published Authors Network has 438 members but 2,155 people have been invited to join.

There's plenty time to write two thousand words or a twenty-four line poem. My mother read every single story and all the poems in the Stories of Strength anthology (114 contributors) which sold around 1,000 copies. There is more chance that readers will read a 2,000 word story to the end than a 5,000 word story. Better for all contributors to be read than just half of them.

My short story, Leo's Daughter: Mistress of the Web was turned down by amazon shorts so I sent it out to magazines. After a couple of rejections, it was accepted by Universe Pathways Magazine. The English version of the Greek sci-fi and fantasy magazine had 30 contributors and, from the sales rank, probably sold between 60-100 books (I bought two and, presumably, the other contributors each bought two).

It is very difficult to sell books with little or no marketing. When I suggested that 500 books might be sold, the number of sales could just as easily be closer to 100-150 books.

I didn't choose 2,000 words to limit the contributors but to increase the number of contributors. Your Amazon Shorts anthology will be a hard sell and you will be lucky to sell 200 copies.

I was one of the contributors to the 200 Authors book but I didn't buy a copy. If contributors don't want a copy for themselves, how can they expect anyone else to buy a copy?

This is a tough business.

Amen, sister

I have a short story about friendship.
But it isn't so short. It's 3,700 words and I don't see how I could cut it in half.

As far as an anthology title, how about combining 'writers' and 'friendship'?

There is this quote about friendship:

"Are we not like two volumes of one book?" - Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

My suggested title is "A Volume of Friends" ... or something along those lines.

Thanks JoElle, I've added the title to the list:

Writers' Woven Words
World Wide Writers
Writers on the Block
Worldwide Web Writers
Word Wide Writers
Word Wise Writers
A Volume of Friends
Tales of Forum Friends
For Whom Friends Write

Why not publish the book via Lulu so that each contributor isn't "stuck" having to sell X number of copies? If we get an ISBN, the book will appear on Amazon and B&N and will get more exposure, especially if we all talk about it on our blogs.

My suggestion would be for a more commercial title, something that ramps up interest. Anything vague with the word "writers" in it isn't going to make it with most readers. (My blunt two cents.)

These aren't my my real suggestions, but something like "Sweet Pulp" or "Bent Fiction" or a title directly connected to the theme.

Good idea, Shelagh.

"Your Amazon Shorts anthology will be a hard sell and you will be lucky to sell 200 copies."

Shelagh, I'm just not sure what you're basing this on. The Amazon Shorts stories are capped at 10,000 words, and they will actually let you get by with more words if you need them. Readers will read a 5,000 or 10,000 word story if the story is worth reading at all. I would think the quality of the story, rather than the 2,000 word count, would me what you should strive for. I have somewhat over 40 shorts placed in various places, and most of them are over 5,000 words and so far I've been pretty successful with them. I usually have one or more in the top 100 stories in the Amazon Shorts program, and get a royalty check on a regular basis. 2,000 words is to me entirely too short.

Good luck with your anthology, but I just don't think you have any basis at all for your assumptions on what readers will or won't read, or whether or not a book of shorts with stories around 5,000 words will sell.

And I agree with Elf. If I were she I wouldn't cut my story in half either.

Don,

Of course short story readers will read stories with 10,000 words! If the stories in the Amazon Shorts stories have wide spread appeal, all the stories will be read -- but that's a big ask.

The Stories of Strength anthology had a theme and the stories were short. Even those stories in a style that might not appeal to everyone had a good chance of being read because they were short.

I would be delighted if the Amazon Shorts anthology sold well over 1000 copies. I would then be able to copy your marketing strategy and hope to do the same!

Good luck with it!

Btw, I won't be asking NoElle to shorten her story. What I will do is give NoElle plenty time to write another, shorter story.

Again, good luck with the anthology, Shelegh, I just think you're closing the door to some of the writers here with the very low word cap. Not speaking for anyone else, just myself.

"Of course short story readers will read stories with 10,000 words! If the stories in the Amazon Shorts stories have wide spread appeal, all the stories will be read -- but that's a big ask."

Of course not all of the stories in the Amazon Shorts program will be successful, but a lot of them are. Check out the top 100 list. With about 4,000 stories now in the program, the top 100 changes on an hourly basis. Readers will read quality stories that hold their attention even if they do happen to be over 2,000 words. If the stories are not good, readers won't stay tuned for 100 words.