Anthologies: Joining With Others In Marketing To The Masses

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From Digital Book World:

A lot of people that ask me how I got started marketing my books. There are so many options out there for marketing your books, and as you probably know, some are effective, and some… not so much. I’ll tell you about the number one way I marketed my books early on when I didn’t have a list or a fan base. It’s a way of sharing the marketing effort: joining with other authors in anthologies.

. . . .

One type of anthology is a collection of stories written by various author and complied into one large omnibus. The authors usually come together and create the topic/genre and set up a few standard rules, including due dates for story submission, formatting specifics and the like. They work together to choose the cover, the title, and the blurb.

Everyone pulls a bit of the load, and when you release the book, you PUSH like crazy together. It’s hard work selling a book, as I’m sure you’re aware of, but when you do it in arms with other authors, it makes the load a little lighter.

. . . .

After being a participant in 5-6 of these efforts, I finally stepped up and decided to run several of my own. I pulled together some writer friends who had similar genres as myself, and we did novella short stories for Halloween and then again for Christmas.

There’s some time involved in these projects, but the monetary investment was $25, and we hit number 1 in the holiday section on Amazon and broke through the top 100 for Free with very little effort. It was a fantastic way to share my readers, and have my friends do the same.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World and thanks to Nate for the tip.

8 thoughts on “Anthologies: Joining With Others In Marketing To The Masses”

  1. I don’t know, I always skip anthologies nowadays as a reader because 9 times out of 10, there’s only one story in there that I actually like. Most stories aren’t written very well, or the authors aren’t really up to par. That goes for both traditional and indie anthologies, by the way — traditionally published anthologies are also hit or miss (mostly miss).

    • What genre(s)?

      The problem with modern anthologies (and short stories) is that for decades now there hasn’t been much of a market for them. (Outside of SF.)

      Writers have focused very heavily on novels and those are the skills they have developed. Short stories require specific skills that take practice to hone. (Some of the old masters could tell a complete story in 300 words.)

      Like this guy:

      https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286957

      Ebooks are fostering a slight rebirth of the craft but even there a fair amount of the writers see shorts more as complementary or as promotional vehicles.

      It’ll take time before enough non-SF writers get the hang of it that we see a true rebirth of the short story.

      • I’m not sure SF is completely off the hook here. In the early part of the millennium I wrote short stories.

        I gave it up, though, when I saw that the sci-fi/fantasy mags were infested with Mundane Science Fiction/Fantasy. The kind where you’re not supposed to use your imagination. No space ships, no aliens, no centaurs, no discernible evidence that the story is not taking place right here, right now, in exactly the conditions we live in today. I’m not sure I was alone in ignoring that market. Though it’s possible.

        I recently mentioned to someone what kind of stories I wrote, and a magazine editor said I should send some along. But I’m out of practice on short stories, and I’ll have to train myself again. Now I’m seeing new outlets that make it look worthwhile to retrain myself. But until recently, it wasn’t worth the bother.

        I agree it’s only a matter of time before we see a resurgence in the short story art form.

        • If you’re looking for exposure it might be an idea, though if that mag is paper then you’ll have to fit it in the space they have for it (online they don’t mind longer as they can add more ads for each page you give them to play with.

          I would though read carefully any agreement/contract they ask you to sign – least you give them too much control/power over what you can later write. (I seem to recall hearing about one contract stating that by sending them the story the story and all characters within now belonged to them.)

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