The
making of Disrupted Worlds –
Anthology of Original Short Stories
The
world of self publishing is a paradox. It is now so straight forward for
authors to get their words out to the public that it is rather challenging to
get anyone to take any notice. For authors who want to become successful there
is a constant battle for attention.
My
first focus in reviewing self published eBooks was to highlight the available quality, to contradict the dogma that
self published books must be filled with basic errors and be fundamentally
flawed, amateurish efforts. This was easy. There is originality and excellence
in the self published arena. There are new and exciting authors writing
imaginative new works that really should be getting more attention than they
are.
It
is a chicken and egg situation: to get popular you need reviews and to get
reviews you need to be popular. By my estimation roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1000
downloads leads to a review. The numbers are probably worse if you are looking
only at free downloads where not all downloads are going to be read. There are
not many spontaneous reviewers out there.
Inevitably this leads to a situation
where authors must organically build niche followings and hope that this fan
base will develop.
When
I was thinking of ways to crack this cycle, it seemed obvious to me to create a
joint venture, one that could use the marketing power of multiple contributors
to 1) spread the word of mouth more broadly about a single book, 2) introduce
the individual authors to new readers (the fans of the other authors) and 3) to
drive sufficient sales that some form of critical mass could be achieved.
During
the spring of 2013 I contacted a number of authors whose work I was impressed
with and floated the idea of a joint venture to generate an anthology of
original short stories. The first challenge was to find the appropriate contact
details for my favourite authors. It is perhaps unsurprising that authors who
already have a primary day-job will choose to make themselves less obvious, but
it is clear that it was not easy. As success in the field of self publishing is
a popularity contest perhaps it is worth considering becoming more visible to
your potential audience.
Luckily,
the response I did got was highly positive. There was a lot of drive and
ambition to launch into a project of this type. Rather rapidly we put together
a venture with five and then six authors. Those who had to say no were
constrained by those same primary day jobs and the rather short deadline. A
short deadline was deliberate to focus attention; we all like to see product
soon after effort and this was no exception.
Importantly,
we agreed upfront the basic framework of the joint venture and the expectations
that we would place upon each other. This paperwork is very important both to
protect the individual but also to set expectations regarding all aspects of
the work from authoring to publication and marketing to duration of the venture
and ownership. A marketing plan was drawn up and stories written. There were no
constraints placed upon the content of each short story, other than it needed
to be original and previously unpublished. None of us knew what the final
product would look like.
The
voyage of adventure peaked during summer 2013 when short stories were
submitted, first one then two then most by the deadline.
Inevitably there is a short hiatus for the final story, we can either chose to
think of that as a pain or as a delightful wait for the last unknown gift to
arrive. As a joint venture of emerging authors it was incredible to see
products of quality arriving so a
slight wait while we enjoyed a summer vacation seems (now) to be nothing.
I
say again that the quality of the
stories was amazing, not just the plots and characters but the sheer craft of
authors to prepare manuscripts essentially free of errors. It makes proof
reading so much easier. It put a good pressure on the preparation of the final
article. The authors had shown their intent and their eagle eyes for errors and
inconsistencies. There was a continuous drive towards achieving the best
possible most professional standard in formatting and presentation.
Six
authors and one editor can generate a lot of opinions especially when it comes
to tricky issues such as the all important title and cover image. A striking
cover image is truly essential in the packed market place and we used a good
deal of time getting that to a position where not only we agreed but we were
happy. There is always a risk of death by committee in these situations, but we
got through this stage neatly and the product is something that works both on a
small icon and a large image. The Brownian
Motion towards a book title ended up with a punchy number that captures
rather well the stories inside. It was well worth the effort to get a name that
we can be happy with and importantly had an available URL (ie www.disruptedworlds.com!) for
marketing purposes.
The
final piece was easy, even though I thought that it would be contentious;
setting a price for a book with 75000 words and the efforts of six authors you
might think to be a challenge. On the contrary, my initial proposition was
roundly rejected as being substantially above the level that the market would
support. There was a very clear decision that we must keep a clear head and aim
at a balanced price that showed our belief in the quality of the product whilst not pricing ourselves out of the
opportunity to attract the audience we really wanted.
Publishing
this eBook on KDP and as a paperback through Createspace initially is a first
step towards attempting to get the message out there. What we really need is to
attract new readers to pick up this excellent work and share good words about
it. We have set the ball in motion by focusing on the quality of the
publication, now begins the hard work of getting the attention of you the readers!
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