Author Interview – The Christmas Collective – The Mistletoe Mixtape

On The table Read, “the best book magazine in the UK“, members of The Christmas Collective talk about writing The Mistletoe Mixtape anthology book as part of their writing community.

What has been like establishing/organising a group self-publishing project??

Sarah Shard, 2022 PM, author of ‘Stay Another Day’

Daunting! Blá did an amazing job on the first project, but we all saw how big a role it was. However, in my day job I’ve managed projects, so logically, I felt best placed to take it on.?I started by asking everyone to think about three key things:?what worked well in 2021, what would we love to do better in 2022, and what were their personal goals for the project.

The first half of the year concerned finding three new authors, agreeing the theme and title, and writing our stories. The second half of has been focusing on how to achieve our definition of success. We have different teams set up across marketing, project management, PR, Blog Tour co-ordination and sales. We will only know how well our strategy has worked in the months following publication but fingers crossed, everyone loves the stories as much as we do!

Instagram: @Inspiredlifeclub

Bláithín O’Reilly Murphy, 2021 PM, author of ‘Sausage Rolls for Everyone’

Last year was exhilarating, challenging and a steep learning curve for all!?What made the process easier, was not just the terrific group of talented writers, but also the many useful skills, abilities and hobbies that each member of the group had. Amongst us we editors, a typesetter, those who have knowledge of the law, graphic designers and some with experience of traditional/Indie publishing?that benefited us hugely and made my role a lot easier.?

While this helped greatly, none of us had any real idea how?More than Mistletoe?would turn out. Clear communication, regular contact and scheduling kept us all in check. It can be challenging to stay motivated when you’re not sure what the outcome will be. While some might think it would be crazy to write a book with eleven strangers, having so many to share the work load definitely helped to keep us all going.

Instagram/Twitter: @WhatBlaDidNext?

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