Tired of rage-tweeting? Publish something!

Rage tweeting is my favorite form of short-term relief. If I'm having a "what's wrong with people" moment, I can tweet the frustration away, hopefully in a funny or enlightening way, so that my words bring relief to anyone else having a similar what-the-actual moment.

But what tweeting doesn't often do is solve anything. Sometimes an echo chamber reaches resonant frequencies that burst outside our bubbles and hit the mainstream, like #MeToo or videos of white ladies calling the cops on people being Black. But these waves are always picked up by people doing things in the physical, not virtual, world, or the moment dies.

What can you do, then, if there's no mass movement on which to hang your particular star? Well, you could do what I did, and publish a book about it.

Seriously. It's now wicked simple (never easy!) to go from idea to finished, reasonably professional product. And there's something about working on a project that has meaning beyond your own individual expression that makes even the most introverted person (me!) more comfortable soliciting content from great writers and then marketing the finished product. One day, a great title occurred to me, and my charity anthology, Low Down Dirty Vote moved from an idle wish to concrete reality.

The Charity Anthology

It's a thing. A big thing. I only noticed them once my own desire to do more than rage-tweet overwhelmed me, but they've been around a long time. The Unloaded volumes, for example, raise money to combat gun violence in America. The series has garnered industry nominations and contains stellar writing talent, ably edited by author Eric Beetner. Search for "charity anthology" on Amazon and you'll find books supporting causes from the military (US and UK) to Doctors Without Borders, books that raise money to fight disease, poverty, you name it.

Sure, you could just donate money to your favorite cause yourself--or you can invest that money in a book that could potentially raise far more money than you could alone. More importantly, you get to spend time working with other people doing something positive. You and the people you beg, plead, or threaten work together on something more important than your artistic vision or career. Together you can raise more money than the sum of your individual contributions, and you can fill the world with much-needed stories at the same time.

You might think a book is something only a publisher can create and distribute, but nothing is farther from the truth! Since I'm a technical writer by day, I'll give you the procedure in an ordered list:

Step 1: Choose a cause, a recipient, and a title/theme for your anthology.

You're going to spend a lot of time on this, so pick things you are passionate about. Your title may change right up until the point you publish it, but picking a theme and a cause/recipient is important--people are willing to donate their talent to causes they believe in. Do your research and make sure the recipient is a real charity with a good track record. I use GuideStar but there are a lot of online resources.

Step 2: Choose your financial model and set up the corresponding organization/paperwork/reporting system.

For example, you could do it very simply, and publish only an e-book, and make your charity of choice the recipient of the money raised by Amazon (mostly Amazon, though of course, you can publish to other outlets as well). I did it in a slightly more complicated fashion, publishing a paperback via IngramSpark (who have great, free new-publisher resources!). Because I'm a technical writer, creating a professional ebook is pretty easy for me, so I published the ebook myself to reduce the amount of money given to distributors. I strongly recommend that if you are even slightly math-phobic that you make as many of the financial details as automatic as possible. Remember that you are making promises of donation to the contributors and the purchasers of your anthology, so be sure you are set up to fulfill those promises. If you'll hand-sell the book, don't forget the reseller's permit in the states where you'll be hand-selling. This is a bit of a pain, keeping track of taxes etc., so you might want to skip it unless you're one of those people who is really great at selling in person.

Don't forget a budget. Because I could leverage my technical writing skills, I didn't have to pay for a number of things. You'll want to assess buying vs. doing these things: website, book exterior design (or just cover if an ebook only project), book interior design, mail drop (unless you want the world knowing where you live), software for things like managing contracts (DocUSign), creating book cover (Adobe suite--you can pay by the month if need be, or find cheaper/free tools), mailing expenses, and free copies for your author and for marketing if you create a paperback, and actual advertising (which I skipped). A for-profit book costs between $2.5k and $5k to produce. You'll likely spend at least $500 dollars of your own money before the adventure is done.

Step 3: Schedule the hell out of everything.

Note: At this point, I'm guessing 80% of you have given up and just written a check to your favorite charity. That's cool, but those people are really missing out on a fun and rewarding adventure. Kudos to you who remain!

I picked a nine-month schedule which was geared to my short attention span more than reality. A year is far more reasonable, especially if you have a day job or children, or even houseplants to care for. It takes a long time to get the stories, a bit of time to edit, and a really long time to publish and get the pre-publication marketing done. More about that soon. Once you pick a publication date, move heaven and earth to keep to it, or you risk the whole thing just sort of falling apart on you. Remember that you need to schedule reviews and advance-reader copies about three months before your publication date. This was the other thing I failed at--with my rushed schedule, ARCs (PDF versions of the mostly-complete book) weren't ready in time for many reviews. Don't be like me. Schedule the hell out of everything.

Step 4: Solicit stories.

You can approach this any number of different ways. I prefer a mixed model of inviting specific writers to contribute stories to half the slots, and then having a second channel of open submission to the world. The mix of new and experienced voices in an anthology is always delightful. Even if you don't happen to know any published writers personally, reach out through your network or the writer's website contact info--if that writer believes in the cause, they may well agree to donate a story even if they don't know you. In my case, I paid each writer for one years' NAFR (North American first publication rights), because I don't believe in asking people to work for free. Now, what I paid was nowhere near the market rate for the writers who agreed to publish in my anthology, and on top of that most of the writers donated their fee to our chosen recipient--but the principal was important. A dedicated website and Twitter account advertised open submissions. This was one point of failure--very few stories came in over the transom. In hindsight, I should have sent out physical press releases, posters, or mail to all the colleges with strong writing programs, and advertised in a few places, and left the window open for six months instead of three (and over the winter holidays, another mistake). Let my failure be a help to you--reach out early and often to get new writers to contribute. Also, talented writers have booked schedules, so they may need a wide time window to slot your charity request in.

Step 5: Read and buy the stories.

It was so much fun to read each story as it came in--the quality exceeded all expectations, and I felt like the richest person in America, hoarding these brilliant stories on my computer. But of course, the stories are bought to be shared. 

You'll need to get a contract signed by each writer. I used DocuSign (which cost a bit), but you can do it the old-fashioned way, by regular mail. If you've never sold a short story of your own, you can copy a contract from the Internet. If you've ever sold to AHMM or EQMM, they have great, simple contracts that you can edit down. I bought only the barest minimum rights, wanting the writers to be free to use these stories for their own purposes in the future. I'm not a lawyer--you might want to consult one.

Step 6: Edit the stories.

This is by far my favorite part of the process. I was lucky enough that my writers needed no substantive editing at all, and only a very light copyedit. That said, paying a copyeditor is worth the money. I missed very simple things that a professional would have caught, which delayed me late in the cycle, repeatedly replacing the interior content of the book with the distributor IngramSpark as I discovered one wee typo after another, often created by me in the conversion process. To my great sorrow, there is one reversed double-quote mark still in the published book. Which brings me to my first piece of meta-advice: be flexible. At several points my plans just didn't work: I'd wanted more diversity in the collection, and more stories, and more new writers. When those things didn't happen, it was time to pivot or give up. I'm so very glad I didn't give up!

Step 7: Design the cover and interior.

Professional looking interiors and covers/back covers/spines don't happen by accident. This is a frequent point of failure for many projects--it turns out that making a cover look truly professional, and making the interior look truly professional for both print and ebook is really, really, time-consuming. It took all my tech writing skills, and borrowed skills from my graphic-novelist husband to pull off a professional book. I tried to hire a professional book designer (cover and interior) but failed to leave enough time to get on anyone's schedule. Here's where working with IngramSpark saved my bacon: they give you a template to use for front cover, back cover, and spine. Without that template who knows what the book would have ended up looking like. If you are only creating an e-book, you just need the front cover. But go stroll through Amazon sometime and notice just how important a professional cover is.

With another month, I could have made it even better, I'm sure. Which brings me to the second piece of meta-advice: know when to stop fussing and get on with it. Every project is only ever perfect in your mind. My goal was: make sure the writers weren't sorry they'd signed up with me. This cover achieves that goal. Next time it'll be fancier!

Step 8: Convert the stories into a book.

I used Scrivener because I knew I'd be outputting a PDF for print, and different outputs for different ebook formats. However, if the look of this Scrivener interface scares you, don't worry: you can work in Word or whatever tool you prefer. Amazon, IngramSpark and all the distributors have tools to make conversion easy. There's a mountain of advice for free online, and most of it is good. Just be sure you review the results of your formatting and compare it to existing ebooks or paperbacks to ensure you aren't making a mistake. Things like remembering the left and right pages are always offset differently, that fonts matter terribly but are hard for non-artists to sort through, and that tables of contents and other small issues are critical to making a professional book are easy to miss but will make your book look amateurish if done wrong. Don't skimp on time in this area. It's where I spent most of my time. Also, don't forget to start up your marketing apparatus at the beginning of this conversion process, even if "marketing" is just you begging people to read ARCs and give reviews. If you aren't ready to do this three months before the publication date, you're too late.

Step 9: Publish.

If you use a print-on-demand (POD) distributor like IngramSpark or only publish an ebook, this part is pretty easy--you fill out a LOT of forms, but in the end, it's just pushing buttons and typing in fields online. You may choose to sell exclusively on Amazon, in which case there are programs designed just for that purpose. Do your research, evaluate the choices and pick what suits your circumstances best. Research pricing, too. Have marketing copy and your prices ready before you start filling in all those forms. There's a lot of advice online--romance and science fiction writers are ahead of the rest of us in terms of knowing and sharing their knowledge in these areas. Don't overlook them: their advice is based on years of experience. Typically you'll pick a publish date three months in advance (this is why we schedule things so carefully--timing is important!), to give you time to get advance reviews that you can then add to your website and the marketing copy in your publisher's system. Also, if your anthology is in a particular genre such as mystery, suspense, science fiction, fantasy, or romance, there are likely professional organizations that support your kind of story. Look them up and see if they offer any help. Perhaps they offer awards for which you can submit your book.

Once I registered all my info with IngramSpark, the book was available for pre-order online in all the major outlets except Apple's iBook. I'm trapped in some kind of software-snafu with them, and may never get the ebook up there. But I'm trying!

Step 10: Market some more, keep track of the numbers, and make sure the recipient is getting paid.

Don't forget to send courtesy copies (at least two) to each author, and send copies via UPS or FedEx with a charming note to taste-makers, local or national press outlets, and people you admire who might generate word-of-mouth. For some reason, sending works with a note and not by USPS makes it more likely they'll be read. I'm also sending a sample copy to the local indie bookstores in my area since some of the contributors are also from my local area. I updated the website to dispaly order buttons: lowdowndirtyvote.com

To avoid any problems on the financial end, I'm giving our recipient an "advance" against sales of $5,000. It simplifies the paperwork for me. You might not be in a position to do this, of course, in which case, hopefully, you either love bookkeeping or you've arranged to have the recipient receive funds directly from Amazon (where, in many cases, most of the money is generated).

Of course, there's a lot of details I've left out of each step--like, thanking your authors, asking the ones who have time to help you market, remembering to submit the stories to any awards for which they are eligible, and sharing info about the book across your entire network. I found it fun and exciting to discover that I could publish a professional book, and was honored that the writers in my collection trusted me to represent them well. And, we're raising tons of money to help fight voter suppression, which has greatly reduced my urge to rage-tweet.

I hope your publishing journey is entertaining and rewarding, and best of luck!