BDSM Anthology

This was lost in the crash so I am reposting the thread and the guidelines. Because of the crash, I am extending the deadline to middle of feb to give people more time to commit. Remember, you can commit to the project simply by sending me a short synopsis of what you want to do - completed work will be a much later deadline.

If you sent me stuff by e-mail then I have it safe and will review it later (I am waiting until after the deadline to crit and review completed work and may be giving some of it out to others to review, though I will comment on synopses and ideas as soon as I can). If you sent me anything in a PM, I'm afraid it died in the crash so you will need to resend it.

Feel free to post adverts to this to any forums, groups or sites that you think will allow it. The more entries we get the better.


__BDSM anthology project__
General notes, statement of intent and submission guidelines

What submissions are we looking for?

__Flash Fiction__ – Very short, to the point pieces of up to 1000 words. These will be more mood pieces than full stories

__Short Fiction__ – Longer stories, up to 5,000 words, with a definite beginning, middle and end.

__Non-Fiction articles__ – Up to 5,000 words discussing some aspect of the BDSM scene. Must be properly researched and referenced with sources listed. While these will not be edited to strict academic standards, a certain amount of peer review will be done.

__Poetry__ – Any length up to 500 words. Can include original song lyrics or similar. Must be in some way BDSM related

__Photography__ – Showing some aspect of BDSM, the more artistic the better. Note, for ease of printing all photographs will be printed in black and white unless they are to be used on the cover so please bear this in mind when taking shots.

__Artwork__ - As for photographs, these are more likely to be published in black and white format so please take this into account.

Photographers and artists may want to speak to one of the writers in order to pair up – doing art or photographs that illustrate a particular story. Cover design has yet to be determined but we are likely to either use a piece of art or photography that is submitted to the project, make a montage of several such pieces or commission a photographer or artist we like the look of from the submissions to do a specialist piece just for the cover.

Non fiction articles should be relevant to the modern scene in some way, discussing some issue of importance to the modern practitioner. We are not looking for journalistic style reviews of individual events or interviews (this is not a magazine) but discussions of theory, practice and concepts are fine. Any sources should be correctly referenced both in the text and in a bibliography at the end. The final anthology will need to be referenced consistently throughout. We will most likely use the Harvard system (also known as the name, date system i.e. Bob et al, 2009) for in text references with a full reference list at the end.

We welcome reprints from online or print sources, assuming that you have explicit permission to use the material from the original publisher and can demonstrate this. We also do not intend to hold onto any of the rights on the material published in this anthology. If you wish to take the material and publish it elsewhere after it has been published by us you are welcome to do so. Copyright remains solely in the hands of the creator of the piece.

Things that need to be sorted out:

__Name__

No need to make this decision yet, but at some point the anthology needs to have a name. Naming, however, may need to wait until we have an idea of what submissions we get – if there is a consistent theme other than ‘BDSM’ for example. Ideas for this will be welcomed.

__Publication__

There are a number of options for this. I list them in order of my preference (least wanted first).

__Online subscription__ – Turn the anthology into a pdf and sell it online with a pay site of some form. I don’t like this option very much because I like the idea of ‘real’ books. However, it’s easier to set up than any of the subsequent ones (presuming we can get a site, which may cost money) and I suppose we can always do this as well as a print option to give more people access.

__Self publish__ – We set up a publishing company of our own and self print. Likely to cost us the most money but is also the most reliable way to get a print publication. At present I am basing my estimates on lulu.com which is probably more expensive than many printers so if anyone knows any cheaper options let me know. To print a 200 page book in black and white interior with colour covers as a normal sized paperback will cost £5.10 per book. This is quite expensive as I am sure you are aware as any profit would need to be added to this and we would need to purchase any books we sold ourselves (see below) in advance. However, I think there are benefits to Lulu in that you can distribute to online sellers through them and the more copies you order in advance the cheaper it gets. Another option is Lightning Source which offer a similar service to Lulu but seem to have better distribution options as well as ATM printing machines in some book shops in America (customer browses their selection on a machine in a book shop, selects a book, pays for it and waits while it prints there and then).

__A ‘proper’ publisher__ - This is the least likely option as I can’t see any of the major publishers seeing a profit in this. I am also not familiar with the current status of erotic fiction with regards to choosing a publisher who may be interested. All I do know is that currently, in the recession climate we have at present, anthologies are apparently not selling well so a publisher may not be interested merely for this reason. However, there are a number of smaller publishers who may have an interest so we can consider approaching them. If anyone has any contacts who can help with this it would be useful to mention them.

__Sales, publicity and distribution__
Only relevant to the ‘self publish’ option above - if it is online then the web page is the distribution/sales and if it is a ‘proper’ publisher then usually they handle all the publicity and distribution.

If we do self publication then I feel we have the following sales approaches.

__Events__ – We persuade people to take copies of the book with them to events in their local area and sell them on a stall. If we can persuade some of the stall holders at these events (traders in BDSM equipment) to take a few copies to sell then this would be great. If we can get someone at some of the larger events in the UK and USA then this would be a massive shop window for sales. However, even taking a few copies along to a small town munch would be of benefit.

__Online sales__ – It is possible to get books listed on Amazon and other online sellers so we need to explore how this may be achieved. In addition we can approach some existing BDSM sites and see if they are willing to help (an ad banner linking to somewhere you can buy the book would be good). Finally, there is the option of an eBay shop which we can use to administer our own mail order system. Though this will bring up the whole dirty issue of PayPal and possibly needing to have a business account in which to put the money before it is distributed to contributors.

__Self publicity/sales/distribution__ – we advertise on BDSM library, FetLife and other forums, giving links to any of the above. We give out leaflets and spread the word. We sell to our mates when we meet them at events and so on.

__Money__

This is the issue I am least experienced with. The way I see money working is as follows (and feel free to disagree with me and put me right…)
If online publication – we may need to put together some capital for webpage/domain name/server space etc unless someone is willing to donate some (and I am not sure what the situation would be for a personal domain being used for commercial purposes). If we have investors for this then we make some arrangements for them to be paid back their investment from the sales (if any) before the contributors are paid anything. If it is a donation of a site ‘for free’ then we give a goodwill gesture of some money towards site upkeep once we have some sales. Royalty splits then go along the lines outlined below in ‘self publishing’ below.

If self publish – If we want any books to sell at events we will need to agree to buy a certain number and then decide on a profit margin for sales. From this profit we need to pay an equal share to each contributor per book sold. A contributor (by my definition here) is:

- Any writer, artist or photographer
- Any editor or someone who does any other admin style jobs
- A web page owner such as BDSM library who allows their site to be used to advertise

I’d prefer it if no one person claimed a royalty share more than once. So, for example, if you submit some poetry and a photograph and then do some editing you only get one share not three. This seems to be the fairest way to deal with this. Bear in mind that profits are unlikely to be huge, if any. The aim is more to showcase good writing or photography rather than make a huge profit. Making money would be nice, of course, but not the only aim.


__Plan for progress__

At the moment I feel that deadlines should be fairly flexible as I am aware that many of us have other things going on in our lives which may interfere with this. However, I am also aware that if a deadline is not set then things do not happen because people procrastinate.

So, I am setting a deadline which is the 30th January, 2010 which is a deadline to commit to the project. This could be submission of a completed piece of work. It could also be the submission of a first draft, a synopsis or proposal or even an idea of something you’d like to do. Once this deadline is over, I will assess what has been submitted and make decisions about what will be included, themes, layout and so on. At this point, those who are chosen for inclusion may be given further deadlines for edits to be done or completion of the final piece. All submissions need to be sent to fetishdj@yahoo.co.uk with the word ‘anthology’ in the subject line.

As the project progresses, I may need the following assistance:
- Someone with better critical knowledge of poetry than I do (cos mine sucks due to my passionate hatred of all poetry, no matter how good)
- Someone with the ability to judge art and/or photography. I can do this myself but would prefer someone with a little more artistic ability than I have.
- Someone with access to decent typesetting/publishing software and the ability to use it. I have Microsoft Publisher but I want a decent piece of software and someone who knows how to use it.

I would prefer that those who apply for these roles are already involved in the project in some other capacity so as to minimise the number of ‘shares of profit’ we have to make and are aware, like all contributors, of the special nature of the BDSM scene.

Ok fetishdj what about a update please

Regards ian 2411

Still progressing. At present gathering submissions... for those who are interested there is a group set up on fetlife for this (if you are a member, find my profile and there is a link to it on there).

All who expressed an interest should now be writing and preparing submissions ready for editing.

Now that I have cleared the r/l workload a little, I am ready to start accepting submissions for review and editing.

The address to send them is fetishdj@yahoo.co.uk and it helps if you put a [anthology] tag in your subject line so I can spot them easier in the morass of mail I generally get.

Feel free to advertise this to as many people as you can.

I am not setting a deadline for this stage yet. I am going to keep this stage open until I get enough good stuff to fill a book. If I don't get enough in reasonable time I may change my mind about this and set a deadline.

So, those of you who have something ready to submit, feel free to send away. Also, those of you who want to help with editing, let me know so I can start assiging stuff to you.

Ok, some vague sense of organisational ability is with me today so I have used it to set up the following:

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/BDSManthologyeditors

This group is only for those of you who volunteered to help edit and crit submissions. The idea is that I will put submissions into the group file folder where any memeber can access it, memebers are either assigned a piece or request to work on it and you post the completed crit comments/edits to the list as a new file. I am hoping that this will be an easier way to organise how submissions are doled out to editors because I can see who has edited what and what they said.

So, all of you who said you were interested in helping with the editing, please find and join this group.