Self-published Anthologies - worth a read?

While I don't like to generalize. I am sort of prejudiced against self-published anthologies. And no matter how hard I try, I just can't get myself to read them. To me it feels like a few friends got together one day and decided to write one story each without putting a lot of passion behind this project and then publish their book just for brownie points or bragging rights at school.

Do you read anthologies? Do you think they're worth a read?

 

I'm with you on that one. Self-published anthologies are just boring for me. It does feel a litttle as though they just rush through the writing just to see their names in print. I just wish people would take more time to produce more quality work before they hit publish.

 

I disagree. The quality can vary from the awful to the excellent from what I have read, but it depends a lot. You get people throwing up unedited Word docs to make quick cash, which are normally awful. Then you get authors with backlists of published stories releasing them as collections, like From a Foreign Shore, or the Taipei Writers Group collection "Night Market" which was self published and very good.

The one thing I have noticed is that it matters less whether the anthology was self-published, and more whether it was self-edited. If it has a commercial editor or multiple writers cross-editing, the quality tends to be higher.

The other problem is that publishers will only pick up books that they think have commercial appeal, so if you are looking for something unusual, like a collection of stories based around a group deemed non-commercial, self publishing can be the only way for good anthologies to come out. Horror and Westerns were both deemed unprofitable within the last ten years, and we get a lot of horror anthologies on Bookangel as a result.

 

I think that's a great point. Self-edited works aren't always as high in quality as those edited professionally or those that have been cross-edited. I have always thought that self-publishing platforms should offer editing services.

 

I don't notice any average difference between the quality of indie novels, anthologies, collections, non-fiction etc. I can certainly think of examples that were well worth reading. The most recent one being the science fiction anthology Novopulp 2. I cut my teeth on Bradbury and Van Vogt and a couple of stories in that collection are on that level.

Of course that book is not the work of a few mates on a lark. It is put together the same way a small or large press anthology is. By an editor reviewing submissions. Indie is not a synonym for amateur.

 

Yeah that's my point. Well put together Anthologies are great, but the hastily put together works are the ones that really bother me. Mainly because they are not edited well, the characters aren't developed as well, and the whole thing wreaks of immaturity.

 

I guess we shouldn't generalize too much. Just because I've had a disappointing experience with a few doesn't mean that they are all bad. I'm glad we have places like Bookangel to help us filter out what is worth reading and what is not.

 

Like all books, the self-published anthologies are all over the place as to quality. Even within an anthology you'll find a huge disparity of writing skills. What I find exciting is to discover the gems, then see what else those "talented" writers have created. To me these anthologies are small samplers that lead me to the big box of chocolates.