Successfully self-published author, Jennifer Bromham, reveals all about how to write and self-publish an anthology…
You’ve heard the origin story of how The Christmas Collective met, and, if you’ve read More Than Mistletoe, you’ve heard some of our stories of Christmas. Today, I want to share the behind-the-scenes story of how the Mistletoe books were created.
Publishing a book takes so much more than simply throwing together a group of stories and thinking up a title. When The Christmas Collective came together, the first thing we did was share our skill-sets. To make our stories shine, we needed editors. To make our books stand out, we needed graphic designers and typesetters. To give our books a profile, we needed website designers and a marketing team with knowledge of all social media platforms. We needed publishing experts to advise us on publishing options, including ISBNs, distribution, and pricing. We needed a lawyer with an understanding of copyright law and contract law. We needed an accountant. On top of all that, we needed a fantastic project manager to help us all to co-ordinate our efforts and to pull our projects together. One of the fantastic things about having twelve authors in The Christmas Collective is that, between us, we realised we had expertise in each of these areas. We allocated roles to each writer, based on our experience, and we got ready to follow the project manager’s lead.
For both More Than Mistletoe and The Mistletoe Mixtape, we began with a premise. We wanted stories with heart, romance, and Christmassy feel-good endings. With the Mixtape, we also added an extra theme, deciding to base each story on a favourite Christmas song. With a schedule of dates and deadlines, we set off to write new stories, or to adapt works in progress to fit the brief.
This is where the editors stepped in. Some of The Christmas Collective are very independent writers. For them, editing moved through to the line editing and proofreading stages within a couple of drafts. Other writers preferred more collaborative editing, with regular meetings to bounce ideas around, to develop character arcs and to fill plot holes. Every writer works differently, and the editors adapted their support until every story shone.
The next step was to sequence the stories to ensure the book flowed, with an even distribution of different sub-genres e.g. historical, fantasy, contemporary, romcom, LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTIQ+. We also decided it was key to end with a story that encapsulates the heart of Christmas romance, so each anthology leaves the reader wanting more.
With the sequence agreed, the proofread stories were then ready for typesetting. After a final check from all authors, the contents of the anthology were good to go. But this is only part of the story of what The Christmas Collective was working on over these months.
While the editors were busy editing, our cover design expert was also designing wonderful front covers, asking for feedback, and refining until the final version was agreed. They, along with many of the marketing team, were also creating banners and graphics for social media, and the website designer was busy developing and adding to the website.
On top of this, the marketing team were regularly meeting, planning and creating content to build our social media presence. During the first part of the year, the focus was to maintain our profile without bombarding the public with Christmas – very tricky when our brand is The Christmas Collective! Over the summer months, the marketing team worked to pull together marketing strategies, with members taking on roles as social media coordinators for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and The Christmas Collective website/ blog. With the product (the book itself) ready to go, the editors were also free to offer their support to the marketing team, to follow their lead and create the content they need.
Now, as we move into autumn, this is the time for publicity and promotion. Not only are the marketing team dedicating every spare moment to their platforms, we’ve also been lucky enough to have proceeds from More Than Mistletoe to invest in externally organised blog tours. Working with the wonderful Rachel’s Random Resources (www.rachelsrandomresources.com) we have full blog tours lined up to celebrate both the first birthday of More Than Mistletoe, and the launch of The Mistletoe Mixtape. With interviews, chats with booksellers, blogs, teasers, reveals and general festive-themed promotion crammed into every week of autumn through to winter, every member of The Christmas Collective is all hands on deck (the halls with boughs of holly … sorry, I thought it, so I wrote it!)
And that’s our story so far: two years of collaboration, fun and hard work leading to two Christmas books packed with magical stories. And whilst it’s tempting to end with ‘And we all lived happily ever after’, I won’t, because The Christmas Collective still has more stories to tell, and the future is bright. This isn’t the end. It’s still the beginning.
Written by Jennifer Bromham
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