Anthologies

Posted on by

Anyone who’s visited here over the last few years will know that Leg Iron Books has been putting out three anthologies of various authors’ works every year. We’ve just published number 23.

There’s also a backlog of single-author novels and short story collections (all mine are far, far on the back burner) due to my recent illness and frankly, three anthologies a year is getting to be difficult to maintain. It’s proving difficult to clear this backlog when the anthologies keep popping up. I’m considering dropping it to two. Maybe permanently, or maybe just until I’ve caught up.

So, which one should I drop? I’m definitely not dropping the Halloween one, it’s my favourite, so it’s between the Christmas and Spring ones. I’m leaning towards dropping the Spring anthology at least for a while, since it’s not tied to any specific festival (it started as an Easter anthology but Easter only has so many ideas for stories).

It isn’t a financial decision, none of the anthologies make any profit but that wasn’t the point of them anyway. They were showcases for new authors and promotion for Leg Iron Books. But that promotion doesn’t really work if I’m too slow in getting the real authors’ books out there and three anthologies a year is eating deep into the time I have for editing and publishing others’ (and mine!) books.

CStM suggested dropping the Spring book and moving the deadline for the Halloween one back by a month. That would ease the pressure between Halloween and Christmas and give me plenty of time between Christmas and the next Halloween for other books.

The Halloween anthology is definitely not getting dropped. And the Christmas one is fun. But… the Spring one has no fixed genre so it’s open to anyone, with no definite theme.

So it’s up for the vote. Do I drop Christmas or Spring? It might not be a permanent closure, but one of them has to go to let me catch up with the backlog of work. When I’m up to speed again the closed one could come back.

Opinions welcome. In the absence of any, I’m going to go with closing the Spring one at least for a year or two.

6 thoughts on “Anthologies”

  2. personally, I like the Spring one. It gives a nice bit of freedom to write without having to worry about a specific theme or setting.

    I find the Christmas one hardest to square the circle with, with Christmas being a nominally happy time and my writing not necessarily having happy happy joy joy events and themes.

    Also the Christmas one comes close after the Halloween one, so time pressure is more.

    So I’d prefer keeping the Spring and losing Christmas for a while.

    Your gaff, your rules though. So whichever is ok. I already have stories in the pipeline in various stages for next one of each anyway.

    Adam D. Stones

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

  3. As an enthusiastic reader (with too little imagination to create my own), I appreciate all your efforts, but you make a good point and the spring anthology could be rested to reduce the pressure on you. Whatever you choose, I’ll be looking forward to the next!

    Ian J

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

First comments are moderated to keep the spambots out. Once your first comment is approved, you're in.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.