Crimespace Anthology

[John McFetridge]

We've been having a discussion about self-publishing, POD, new technology and the future of publishing and one thing that seems to show up a lot as the difference between traditional publishing and new publishing is the vetting process - self-published books don't have to be approved by anyone. Maybe this is good, maybe it's not.

Anyway, the discussion led to the idea of a community-driven anthology of crime fiction short stories that would use new technology - POD and e-publishing, I think - to publish.

Would anyone be interested?

The idea now would be to have a place on Crimespace where members could post short stories and the community could vote for their favourites. There's been a suggestion that the stories could be posted anonymously and I guess there'd need to be a way to limit one vote per person. Does anyone feel the honour system would work?

Then we would take the most popular stories and put them into an anthology. I also thought we could probably get it ready in time to have a launch at Bouchercon in Indianapolis in October.

As far as I know this hasn't been done, even though there's been so much talk about the potential of online communities.

Any ideas?

[I. J. Parker]

Yes, I know. But don't you think it's pretty dishonest to gather a bunch of stories from your friends and publish them as "best"?

[John Dishon]

Yes, if that is in fact was is happening.

[Dana King]

Considering the purpose of the Crimespace community, I think we have a de facto theme: crime. They'll all relate to crime in some way, and all be written by Crimespace members, which will provide the benefit of showing the wide range of criminal attitudes held by the authors here. (Hmm, maybe that didn't come out quite right.)

[I. J. Parker]

LOL. We have to believe that an author means what he says, right?

[Julie Lomoe]

Great idea! I'd definitely be interested, although I'm ambivalent about the concept of voting. On the other hand, I can see the need for quality control. Limiting the word count per story would enable more people to be included. And once judgment day passes and the chosen are selected, maybe all the submissions could be posted online somehow. I'd hate to see this online community devolve into something too restrictive and critical.

[Pate Grantwell]

I like the idea, but will the winners of the annual Crimespace competition be automatically included as well? And speaking of the annual competition, I haven't heard anything about it so far. Does anybody have any info about it?

[D. C. Hawkins]

I think we have something here, and it gives us the mechanism for future anthologies. Let's just turn our annual competitions into anthologies. We could start right now with the 2008 results and work through the learning curve with it so that the 2009 would go to press (actual or virtual) much faster. We already know how to do the competition, so that only leaves the editing and publishing part to learn and/or staff.

[Daniel Hatadi]

I think the competition is a different beast altogether. It has a theme and the stories were rated by a small panel. Very different to a full community effort. Also, there weren't enough entries for a full anthology.

In light of this current project, I'm holding off on the competition until we have some firm ideas.

[Dwight]

I think its a great idea that will require some work...i'm all in!

[Debbi Mack]

I'd love to participate in this, however the logistics may be worked out.

[John Dishon]

I found something we might be able to use for voting on stories, should this anthology ever get underway. It's called User Voice.