Kick-start your career with anthologies

If you’re new to the authoring game, here’s a way to find more readers who might be interested in your work: contribute to an anthology.

While it may not produce any income for you, the non-financial rewards are well worth your involvement. Consider the following reasons to contribute an essay, short story, or excerpt the next time you have the opportunity to participate in a project that uses the work of multiple authors:

1. Your work load is significantly less demanding. It’s (generally) a lot easier to produce a short piece when someone else gives you the parameters for writing than when you have to do all the creative work of coming up with an idea and choosing the treatment or genre, let alone actually write the piece.
2. You control your time commitment. Minimally, you write a piece to submit and you’re done. You don’t have to do the editing or manage the publication process, hound the other contributors to get their pieces done, or design and implement the marketing plan. If you want to help with marketing, you can decide how much of your time you want to offer; it’s not your baby alone as when you’re the sole author.
3. Your work will be exposed to new readers when fans of the other contributors read your piece. One of the smartest things I did as a fledgling author of a cozy mystery series was to contribute a short story to a mystery anthology edited by a friend of mine. It immediately granted me access to new readers in my target audience, and thanks to my friend’s reputation, it also gave me credentials as a good writer. Either of those results alone would have been worth my contribution; combined, they were a win-win proposition that gave me a big boost as a new author.
4. Chances are good that the other authors will be doing some marketing of their own for the anthology, which means you get more publicity than you alone could produce. Again, it’s more exposure for you in readers’ circles beyond your own fans.
5. You have an excellent opportunity to network with other authors when your work appears with theirs in the anthology. At the launch party for my friend’s anthology, I met more than a dozen authors working in my genre in my metro area. Many of them were local icons. A few of them were nationally known authors. Some were newcomers, like me. It was a genuine pleasure to meet them all and hear their stories of career development or marketing snafus. I was honored and humbled to be included in their ranks, and that experience reminded me that as a newbie, I had much to learn and a long way to go in my own writing journey. Moral support like that is essential for a new author, and the opportunity to learn from those who are also on the road is priceless.

Have you considered contributing to an anthology?