Underdog Anthology 21 – Halloween

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There have been many delays and problems in the background this year, some of them very serious indeed. We have lost another author – David Davis, whose book we were in the process of editing, has sadly passed away. That book remains in limbo until we can determine whether the family want us to proceed. It feels too early to intrude upon their grief.

In the last few years we have also lost Cade F.O.N Appolyon, Marsha Webb, and Dirk Vleugels/Justin Sanebridge to the Grim Reaper. Several others have become very quiet, we can only hope the list isn’t going to grow further.

Still, we must soldier on, and so the 21st Anthology, Halloween 2023, will open for submissions from August 24th to September 30th. It will be pretty tight to get it available for Halloween but there are further delays to come in August and Spetember that have to be taken into consideeration.

The stories should be in the 2000 word range. Longer stories are welcome, Very short ones (under 500 words) might not attract the full payment of £12 (UK money) but we are willing to negotiate on that. Many UK authors have opted to be paid in copies of the books, which is no problem. Overseas authors are better off taking the cash and buying copies locally, or just banking it, since postage charges will reduce the number of books they’d get if they are posted here.

The theme for this anthology is Halloween. It doesn’t have to be scary, but Halloween has to be an important component of the story. Basically, the story is happening at Halloween and there is a Halloween component that affects the story.

Well, when the first Underdog Anthology was published it seemed overly optimistic to call it Volume One. There might not have been a second. There are now twenty volumes out there and, fingers crossed, we’re still going.

All these disasters and delays can slow us down but they have so far failed to stop us.

Price increases incoming

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I have just heard from Amazon that print book base prices are to rise on June 20th. It was bound to happen, costs are going up everywhere, but hopefully it won’t be by much. This should not affect eBooks at all. I hope.The book prices for print books include the costs of materials (paper, ink etc), the cost of getting someone to print it and put it all together, and postage. Yeah, postage is only free to the buyer. It’s in the price of the book. Leg Iron Books makes pennies in royalties on each book sold, most of it goes to Amazon. At the moment, with sales low, all the royalties go to the authors. I get the pennies from the anthologies and my own books, I don’t take a cut at all from other authors’ royalties. Everything is priced as low as possible while still leaving a little profit.So… all the print books are priced very close to the minimum. This inflationary increase means that, to keep the authors actually getting something, I will have to increase the prices. I will do this once I know what the cost increases are going to be. Around June 20th, all the books on sale are going to have to increase in price to keep the author royalties the same.I don’t want to do it. Amazon don’t want to do it. But inflation is running so high that neither of us have any choice. It is possible that the increases might send some books, especially the very tight margins on the anthologies, into zero royalties and that is not a good business model. As I wrote above, this should not affect eBooks although those have a ‘delivery’ charge too. There has been no mention of an increase in that so far. Fortunately, all our books are 6″ by 9″ format or smaller. Books over that size seem to be getting hit harder – we don’t have any of those here. So, it is likely that the price increases will be small but there will be increases. This does not affect just Leg Iron Books. It’s going to apply across the board on independent small publishers and self-publishers. If you’ve been eyeing up a book on Amazon and thinking about buying it, make that decision before June 20th. Of course, if you prefer eBooks, you probably have nothing to worry about. Yet.

Underdog Anthology 20

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At long last, this anthology is now available in print and eBook formats.

Amazon have a new system whereby the print book shows on the site but is marked ‘not available’ for a few days until the pricing shows up. I have no idea why, but it’s their site so I have to assume there’s a reason. It’s now showing as ‘available’ on both the US and UK sites so if it’s not available on yours, just check back in a few days.

Smashwords and Kindle versions show up very quickly, as normal.

Next anthology will be for Halloween, so there’s time to try to clear the backlog of other books first!

Twenty!

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Underdog Anthology 20 will open for submissions throughout March. We can be a little flexible on the end date this time since this one isn’t themed – any genre (as long as it’s legal and not porn) is welcome. It would certainly have to close in the first week of April though.

So, we have come a long way since that optimistically titled ‘first volume’. It’s hard to believe we are now on the twentieth!

Stories should be around 2000 words as a general guide, this is not fixed in stone since we have taken much longer ones in previous anthologies. Payment is twelve proper British pounds per story or the equivalent in books if the author is in the UK and chooses that option. We cannot pay in books outside the UK, the postage rates would take far too much off the payments, but we can transfer money in most currencies.

Well, here we go. Again. As long as this one gets enough submissions, we’ll have made it to twenty.

The 2022 Christmas Anthology

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It’s been a difficult year – although I don’t have to tell you that. It’s been a difficult three years and it doesn’t show signs of getting better.

This is why Leg Iron Books keeps prices as low as possible. We know there’s not much play money in most people’s pockets these days. This is especially true of the Underdog Anthologies – single author books need to make something for the authors, but the anthology authors are paid up front so the books don’t need to bring in more than a few pennies per copy. None have so far covered their initial outlay but they’re all still out there if anyone fancies a look at the past works.

The latest addition, ‘Have Yourself a Very Little Christmas‘ (Underdog Anthology 19) is no exception, and is now available on Amazon and Smashwords. Both sites allow a quick look inside before you decide whether it’s worth your time.

It’s a collection of tales that will, at least, take your mind off the current state of the world for a while.

Hardbacks

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The first hardback copy has arrived, it’s Mark Ellot’s ‘Renegade’.

It looks good, but we did hit a newbie error. The frames given for the cover suggest that the outer edge would wrap around completely into the interior but we didn’t account for the thickness of the cover boards, so the first lot will have a tiny bit of yellow at the edges. It’s easily fixed and, well, lesson learned.

Existing books will gradually appear in hardback editions and all future books will have this option. The pricing means they aren’t likely to sell many copies but it’s not that much effort so it’s worth adding the option for those who want it.

New book, next anthology and author payments

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The next book released is Mark Ellott’s ‘Renegade’, a tale of piracy in which many buckles are suitably swashed. It should have been out a long time ago, as should several others in the queue. This also marks the first attempt at the new Amazon option of a hardcover version for us, and it seems to have worked out okay, There is one on order to see if that’s true. There are still books in the queue but the matters that have caused delays seem to be easing and we’re catching up.

It seems likely that previous books could also develop hardcover versions and future ones (single author books) definitely will. They are about double the price of the paperbacks so probably won’t sell many copies but it costs nothing to try.

It’s not likely that the Underdog Anthologies will appear in hardback since they are meant to be as low-priced as possible, although the much vaunted but not so far delivered omnibus editions might be. It’s a matter for the future, there is still this backlog to deal with first.

The ‘spring’ anthology was delayed because an idiot (me) typed May instead of March as the deadline. It wasn’t such a bad thing. It helped move the backlog at least a little and it means authors can submit short stories up to the end of May. So it was allowed to stand. Underdog Anthology 17 closes for submissions at the end of this month.

Also at the end of this month is the quarterly payments to authors. So far it’s not looking good – but then rampant inflation, huge fuel and energy price increases and a general worry about the bottomless pit humanity seems to be diving into all have a generally depressing effect on sales. Of anything.

Publishing is going ahead anyway here. If there’s a recession we’re just going to wait it out.

Quarterly payments to authors

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It’s that time again. We have not looked at sales too hard since this winter’s Great Disconnection where even the mobile phones were out. Hopefully there will be some good sales to report but with the world distracted by one thing after another, that cannot be promised.

We’ll see. Tonight.

Anthology 17 and other news

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The Spring Anthology (any genre) will open for submissions on February 15th. The closing date is March 31st but this anthology can be a little more flexible on the deadline than the others. It’s not tied to a particular event, it’s just the Spring one.

Edit: The deadline will be extended to the end of May. It’ll be later than usual for this anthology but the longer deadline will help with clearing the backlog of other work. This also gives authors more time to come up with stories.

Leg Iron Books has had limited internet access the past few months. This is because the storm that hit Scotland last November took down many, many trees and quite a lot of power and phone lines. Including ours. The telephone engineers could not immediately reconnect the cable because of the continuing foul weather and because there were so many fallen trees in the way. They did manage a Heath Robinson style temporary fix after a couple of weeks but a subsequent storm took that out too. Hopefully we will be reconnected properly on Monday 14th, weather permitting, now that the fallen trees have been cleared. Otherwise, we are using a 4G phone that does not have the greatest reception, but is mostly serviceable. We hope to be back to full connection in a few days.

With this in mind, please note that responses might be a little slower than usual. We do have quite a backlog now.

There is some good news, especially for novel and single-author anthology authors. We currently publish on Amazon in print and Kindle, and through Smashwords in all eBook formats to other outlets – but those are eBook only. The only way to get a print copy is currently through Amazon.

Smashwords is being acquired by Draft2Digital. Reading the press releases, it seems little, if anything, will change from the former Smashwords although there will be one major difference. Draft2Digital have developed a print book service, so once this merger is complete, there will be a second source of print versions of the books, outside Amazon. It is not yet clear whether these print books will be available through retailers or just direct from Draft2Digital but having a wider distribution of the print books can only be a good thing.

Hopefully after Monday we will have decent internet access once more and can get back to the job of reducing that ever increasing backlog! There may be a few sleepless nights ahead…