Google Search: How Do You Edit an Anthology?

 

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, kids!  It's my turn to do a Google search post, and there has been only one thing on my mind for the last six plus months, so naturally I typed in:

That's right!  In case you didn't know, my erstwhile writing partner Wile E. Young, Across the Board's own Kayleigh Marie Edwards, and myself are putting out our very first anthology this October.  It's going to be THE PERFECTLY FINE NEIGHBORHOOD, consisting of stories set in the world of Wile E. and my own THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE.  Kayleigh, Wile E., and I brought on some real heavyweights in the form of Jeff Strand, Candace Nola, and Brian Keene for the invitational portion of the anthology.

And for the back half, we put it out to you, the writing world, for over the transom submissions.  And you did not disappoint!  Now, Google has been of little assistance to me, but here are some things I learned from personal experience (and from asking our very own Mary Fan, who has edited, like, seventeen anthologies at this point.)

1.)  Set your Kickstarter goal low.  

This was a piece of Mary advice.  Kickstarter will fund precisely nothing if you don't meet your goal.  So the best way to get funding for something like an anthology is to set a low goal, then offer stretch goals.

2.)  No matter how clear your instructions, people could fuck up a glass of water.

I'll admit: the rules of our open call are a bit esoteric.  We weren't doing vampire stories here or, god forbid, a truly open submission.  But even so.  I got some very, very strange ones which I will not mention here because it would be unkind to the authors, but definitely ask me the next time you see me drunk at a convention.  I also got plenty of "Dear Editor" even though we asked people to choose one of our names, a number of works attributed to William Hope Hodgson (since that was the famous author I used for the template), and I even got a submissions that weren't Word docs.  Yeah, those will be fun to edit.  I'm flexible, but some of these departures from the call rules, or even just basic business professionalism were very, very peculiar.  That's all I'll say about it.

3.)  Everyone will submit on the last day.

We received almost exactly as many submissions on the last day of the open call as we did in the entire preceding six months.  I don't know why this surprised me.  I've never submitted to an open call sooner than twenty-four hours before closing myself.  And it certainly happened this time.

4.)  Selecting a TOC is haaaard.

This anthology turned out to be a mish-mash for us.  I wanted to do double blind submissions, since there were three of us and it was doable.  But we also wanted to actively encourage diversity among our submitters.  And then, coming in at the last minute, a few authorial heavyweights outside of the invitational pool showed up with submissions.  So we are now attempting to balance quality, marketability, and diversity, a very difficult proposition.  It's going to be impossible to do it fairly, if fair even has meaning in the literary world.  But we'll try out best to balance out our three priorities, and I know I'll have a newfound respect for anybody who has ever put together a TOC before.

I could go on, but I want to hear your thoughts.  Have you ever edited an anthology?  What lessons did you learn?  Let me know in the comments below!