#TeamAndMore Tuesday

Open Calls! Plus: the growth of small-press, open-call anthologies.

April showers bring May flowers. Given the number of horror open calls in the list for this month, though, I thought that perhaps dad flowers were more apropos. Put on some Smithereens and enjoy!

Dead Flowers from WallpaperCave.com

Calls

You can find all the details for May (and the following months) over on the #TeamAndMore site. Here’s the list of upcoming May open calls to wet your whistle. If any of them look interesting, pop over to the open call page for links to the details.

• 01 May - Three Ravens - Tales of the Apocalypse

• 01 May - Red Polka Publishing - SUNKISSED - Short Summer Romances

• 07 May - Cyber Salon - Title TBD (finance & digital money in 2050)

• 15 May - Unnerving - Title TBD (gritty, real-world crime fiction)

• 15 May - The Horror Zine - The Horror Zines Book of Monster Stories

• 19 May - Hemelein Publications - Dog Save the King! (LTUE charity anthology)

• 20 May - B Cubed Press - Scott's Planet (three volumes)

• 29 May - Speculation Publications - Cry Baby Bridge: A Collection of Utter Speculation

• 31 May - Raconteur Press - Your Honor, I Can Explain (Spurgle Chronicles Vol. 1)

• 31 May - Horror Tree - Shadowed Realms: The 2022 Indie Dark Fiction Anthology (reprints only)

• 31 May - Belanger Books - Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885 & 1886

• 31 May - Horrorsmith - Fear Forge Anthology Summer 2023 (camping/campfire story horror)

• 31 May - Weird Little Worlds Press - Playlist of the Damned

• 31 May - Terrorcore Publishing - Title TBD (80's style 'haunted street' anthology)

• 31 May - The Fiction Desk - General Open Call (multiple anthologies)

• 31 May - Live Real Press - Five Second Rule (updated)

Angelique Fawns has posted her list of open calls for May. We already have pointers to the anthologies on our page, but you may want to read Angelique’s insights for each market as well. Her list also includes non-anthology publishers you might want to consider querying.

Authors Publish has also put out a list of 45 Themed Calls for Submission. The article covers calls for anthologies, magazines, and contests. Most of the anthology calls are already included in the #TeamAndMore list. If you’re interested in seeing what other opportunities might be out there, it’s worth a look.

This actually brings me to something I wanted to talk about…

Why Anthologies?

In fact, why short stories at all?

The roots of speculative fiction (SF/Fantasy/Horror) go deep into the history of pulp fiction. Novels simply were not A Thing. If you wanted to break into the business, you started with short stories in magazines. It was that simple.

Short stories continue to work for authors in a similar way. They are a way for a new author to get noticed, establish their ability to produce, and build a body of work. In the publishing industry, they are also a way to network and get to work with, and know, editors and other authors.

For readers, short stories offer the opportunity to sample different types of work. A novel is a commitment, especially in a day and age when your Typical High Fantasy (Book One of Five) can be used as a bludgeoning weapon. In comparison, a short story is a date. It’s a chance for a reader to explore a new author, a new genre, or new ideas.

“OK,” I can hear you say. “Great. You’ve convinced me. Short stories are still A Thing. Why anthologies, though?”

Because we’re seeing a confluence of technologies and services that make publishing and distributing an anthology as easy (and perhaps, easier) than producing a magazine, either print or electronic. Consider the list of open calls from Angelique Fawns and Authors Publish mentioned above. AF has 26 entries listed; 10 are for anthologies. The AP article lists 24 open calls, of which 13 are for anthologies. Across the two, out of 50 open calls, nearly half are for anthologies. Even if you remove duplicates across those two lists, it’s still a pretty good chunk of the open-call opportunities out there for the speculative fiction community.

Open calls can be publicized on the internet and reach authors all over the world. Submissions are effectively instantaneous via email, Google Forms, or services like Moksha. Tools for layout and editing are available to even the smallest press. Amazon and other services handle print or electronic distribution.

All of which benefit both digital and print magazines as well as anthologies. Where small-press, open-call anthologies differ is in services like Draft2Digital and PubShare. These make it easy for publishers to handle organizing authors, contracting, and distributing royalty shares. Traditional pub pays authors up front for stories, then works to recoup that investment through marketing and sales. Royalty-share services let an anthology publisher shift the payment schedule from “up front” to “over time”. It’s effectively a way for an anthology publisher to share risks with the authors.

Well-established authors are unlikely to take that deal. If they are going to publish in a traditional anthology or a magazine, the expectation is for payment in advance, with the possibility of royalties down the road. Trad pub anthologies and trad pub magazines, with their payments up front, are geared toward attracting those established authors. So royalty-share anthologies are more likely to attract - and showcase - new authors, those who are willing to accept more financial risk in return for perceived benefits (publication, connecting with editors and other authors, establishing a fan base, etc.)

In effect: royalty-share anthologies today are serving the same purpose that magazines did in the early days of speculative and pulp fiction. They are a place for new authors to break into the field and demonstrate their capabilities. My prediction is that as additional services work to drive the cost of acquisition and editing down, we will see a growth in small-press, royalty-share anthologies. Not just in the speculative fiction markets, but across genre markets (pulp; crime; noir; romance; etc.)

Short stories are here to stay, and small-press royalty-share anthologies today are what pulp magazines were a century ago: fertile ground for new authors and the readers who are looking to meet them.