Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
Just curious: How are things going with the anthology?
|
We've got 8 stories now from the original 5 contributors, of which 5 are finished. Two still need some solid work on line edits, and one has gone off for a significant rewrite.
Unfortunately, we've not had anyone else come forward with stories, so we're well short on word count.
At the moment, we're up at about 33,500 words including the stories still being worked on. After line editing, and assuming that the story being rewritten uses the full 8,000 word limit, that word count will drop, perhaps to 33,000.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the editing and discussion process that we've gone through over the last two months, but I think we don't have anywhere near enough material for the book.
It seems to me that we've got four options:
1) Let the process meander on with the current editing constraints until we do have enough material.
2) Open up the submissions to any MobileRead author removing the 'all stories must submit to criticism and editing' constraint.
3) Complete and publish what we've got.
4) Accept that we've not got enough for a book and stop here, but without too many regrets, because this last couple of months has been incredibly worthwhile anyway.
My own opinions, after much mulling, are:
1) I'm not keen. Our stories would probably be tied up for years and may never see the light of day.
2) This is a possibility, but it opens a big can of worms. Who do we class as a MobileRead author? Do we accept all stories? If not, are we justified in setting ourselves up as editors? There may be a lot of work here tuning and reformatting a lot of stories. Unless the authors are regular MR posters, the lack of editing activity within the forum detracts from the idea that this is a MobileRead anthology.
3) I don't think 33,000 words is enough. I certainly wouldn't want it out on Smashwords and Amazon at that size, and I'm not sure it's enough for the MR library either.
4) I'd be happy to stop the project here, as I think we've all got a lot from it anyway so far.
What do the rest of you think?
Also, who else is following the project? It would be good to hear from any expectant readers!
I suspect, looking at the post count versus views on both threads, though, that there are less than half a dozen people other than the authors following the progress.
I hope this doesn't come across as a negative post, as this has been a very positive experience for me. I'm just wary of it going on to turn into something less positive.
Graham