The Grand Master Plan of AnthologyBuilder
Cross-Posted from http://nancyfulda.livejournal.com

Now that AnthologyBuilder’s been running smoothly for a few weeks, I’d like to discuss how the site is managed and what our plans are for the future.

What We're All About:

AnthologyBuilder is not a traditional fiction magazine, because you are the editor. AnthologyBuilder is dedicated to making sure that you have a broad range of quality stories to choose from.

All of our stories come recommended by an experienced editor: they’ve either been printed before in paying magazines, or they’ve been carefully scrutinized and copy-edited by our staff. We aren’t interested in publishing stories with excessive sex or violence, so we also screen submissions based on content.

A few people have asked me what ‘excessive sex or violence’ actually means. All I can say is, I’ll know it when I see it. X-rated material is definitely off-limits. For everything else, I decide on a case-by-case basis.

Obviously, these content calls are somewhat subjective. There will always be people who are unhappy with where I choose to draw the line, and I do apologize for that. Those who feel I’m being too restrictive may be interested in the next section of this post.

The AnthologyBuilder Open Market

In three to six months—or whenever I feel we’re ready to handle it—AnthologyBuilder will be opening a subsidiary that’s tentatively being called the ‘Open Market’.

The Open Market will be an online marketplace for short-form fiction. Authors will be able to upload stories and offer them for sale at whatever price they wish, without the quality and content screening used in the main AnthologyBuilder web site. Similarly, artists will be able to upload and sell cover art. AnthologyBuilder will provide the assembly and printing services.

In addition to fiction, the Open Market will host non-fiction articles, essays, and blog posts. It will become a place where customers can assemble almost any combination of fiction they could imagine.

Plans for the Future

As AnthologyBuilder’s fiction database grows, we’ll also be expanding other areas of the site. Within a few weeks we’ll open up artist submissions to augment our selection of cover art.

We’ll also be adding features to help customers find the stories they want: ratings and comments associated with each story, recommendations based on the buying patterns of previous customers, and optional content flags to mark stories with profanity or mature content.

And, of course, once AnthologyBuilder is out of Beta testing, we’ll be making a major marketing push to promote the site and its authors.