We hesitated a lot about going ahead with this book. In the end, though, the competition brought in enough to cover the costs of setting up the book, and there was a little left over. Anyway, we’re considering having a print-based cover for this title, so we can do it in-house and don’t have to pay an artist.
The ideal would be to publish on Kindle. Our writers are asking us why we’re not doing that. Short stories on an e-reader or even an iPhone or iPad are absolutely obvious. Yet we daren’t risk it with the current situation about US tax. So frustrating!
As usual, the people selected were delighted. One did ask me whether only fifteen people entered the competition. No, we had over 80. We’d normally have many more for a competition that included publication: we have contact with over 500 authors and have published over 100.
The theme was a little tricky this time: stories had to be linked to one of those dramatic events everyone remembers. The event had to count but the story mustn’t be about the event. If you could take the event out and the story still worked, it wasn’t right. On the other hand, the story shouldn’t be impacted too much by the event, though it was fine, if, for example, flights were delayed because of 9/11. It’s not exactly the sort of story one has lurking in the bottom drawer.
