Short Story Anthology - thoughts and musings (Patreon)

So. If you haven't realised, I'm intending to launch a short story anthology (http://www.mylifemytao.com/652-2/). 

I won't got into details here about it, but I figured I'd write about the backend process.

The Why

There were a few reasons for doing this. One, I loved the idea when Dakota ran his, and even briefly considered writing for it. Sadly, I had no time / inspiration (you might recall but I was sick then so keeping up to my own writing was hard enough).  But it did plant a seed. Then I saw James Hunter's short story anthology.

And had a few other readers asking about side stories / co-authoring and I thought, ah hell, I might as well.

Just wanting to do it wasn't enough of course. I needed to figure out the details.

The Details

So, we'd start with pay rate (industry standard for magazines sits at $0.06 per word, though some pay as much as $0.12) while in normal anthologies, it's a profit share.

I decided that I really, really didn't want to deal with the accounting side of things and wanted to just do a single one-off payment. Thus the $0.06. 

Copyright was next. 

Luckily, I just need to get first publishing rights for the first 6 months. After that, since it is my IP, if they want to republish the story (in say, a short story collection of their own), they'd have to discuss payment to me (for my world IP) or just change the story to remove the System Apocalypse references. I had thought I'd needed to buy the copyright, but another writer set me straight (yay SFWA!). Otherwise, I'd have to pay a lot more.

I am specifically not requesting audiobook rights yet. I'd love to see how this works out before I throw $3000-5000 down that hole. Not including the money I'd have to pay for those rights. (twitches). 

I could ask (and possibly get!) those rights now, but that's kind of skeezy to take rights at pay rates that are meant for printing. So, no audiobook just yet. I am a little concerned that leaving it till I have published the books to ask for audiobook rights might open me up to being gouged, but considering the cost of audiobook production, it's going to be painful any way.

Though, I do  have an in with Tantor. So maybe I'd bug them and let them sort out right acquisition and royalty distribution. Either way, cart before horse.

Timeline

I set this for 2 months ahead for end June. That gives me time to read it over, contact the authors and get edits in. At the same time, when I'm off at my writer's retreat at end July, I have something I can focus on to write in the 7 days to add my own short story. I'm not sure what I'll write - I'll probably throw up a poll at end June for you guys to vote. :)

The Future

I do have a secondary objective in getting these short stories set-up. If I find an author that I can work with, who writes well and who can hit deadlines and if they're still interested, I'd love to get them to extend their characters into a real series. The SA world is so large, it'd be great to see more of it written. 

The Cost of Publishing

At $0.06 and 5 stories at 100,000 words total, payout will cost me $6,000 before editing. Add in editing cost at $10 per 1000 words, and that's another $1000. Proofreading on top of that is another $200 for one run through. Cover cost & banner = $400

Total cost: $7,600

Not included: Advertising cost, time cost for me to read, edit and fix issues in stories. Cost of getting a lawyer to look over the contract.

I'm easily looking at over $8000+ to produce this short story. I could, potentially, reduce the cost by going royalty share, but then I'd have to spend my time every 6 months or whatever teasing apart royalty amounts to pay people. Which, frankly, is the kind of bureaucracy that I hate.

Is this worth it? I don't know. In the long term, probably. Short term, maybe. In the end, we'll see how this works out. But it's an interesting experience.

Questions? Feel free to hit me up here.