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Author to Author
Our panel of established authors answer questions submitted from other authors in the indie community .
Anthologies - what is good about them and are there any drawbacks ?
Do you have a PA ? If yes , when did you determine it was necessary ? If no , why ?
As a short story writer , I have been in a lot of anthologies , both traditional and self-published . I ' ve only had one actually pay out royalties , a Kickstarter anthology run by the editor of a wellknown magazine . Even in that case , the money was trivial , so in terms of financial gain for your time and effort , I would say that anthologies have very little benefit . With Indy publications especially , it is easy to end up pulled into a whirlwind of activities for the anthology .
The key here is to be choosy about who you work with . If it is well organised , it can be a great learning experience and an opportunity for exposure . However , if it isn ' t , you can waste a lot of time and mental energy trying to prop up a collection of stories that no one but the writers are actually interested in . In one instance , the promotion and publicity plan was very badly done and the pressure on the authors to spam their followers and cross-promote all the authors in the anthology was immense . I was incredibly uncomfortable with the techniques used and I dropped out ; it wasn ' t worth my effort and the goodwill of my fan base to be associated with it .
I wish ! I would love to have a PA but it is hard to justify the cost and I think I am too much of a control freak .
I do have a PA , and I was very fortunate at the timing of it all .
I am a control freak , but I was feeling very overwhelmed with everything that I needed to do . It was either stay in control of everything , or let some of it go to preserve my time and sanity . I was able to hand off things that were taking up precious time , leaving me free to do the things I needed to do .
If you are in need of a PA , but don ' t have it in the budget , consider asking a good friend to lend a hand in their free time .
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