I promised to publish the accounts for the short story competition and will do so in more detail later. A rough calculation shows that we are between £200 and £300 in the red.
There is no spare money to promote the book (the term "anthology" is a pejorative, apparently) and there are no sales occurring. The only marketing we have is a sign-up monthly mailshot, which goes to over one thousand people, mostly writers. The money required to run the websites and the mailing list is put in by the Pretend Genius co-op. There is no real sponsorship or subsidy. PG (U.S.) has received a few small donations from generous supporters - thanks. The only money on this side where the competition and New Short Stories are run came from the entry fees. We're still hopeful sales may yet pick up.
Even with some of the top writers and best stories of the year, almost nobody unconnected with the competition wants to order the book. It seems that hundreds, thousands sometimes like to enter writing competitions but the same hundreds are not prepared to buy competition anthologies that they wish to be in.
About ten were sold at the launch on April 10th. Since then still spare capacity on one hand for the counting. [Update April 25th 2010: About twelve now - signs of life!]
New Short Stories 4 is available for $10 plus delivery from pretend genius store, which is a highly competitive price, compared to cover price of £10 or $15 from Amazon (with free delivery) or other booksellers. You can also order it from any bookshop, as it is listed in Ingrams' catalogue used by them (another cost, by the way, without any corresponding income.)
Books ordered in UK, Ireland and Europe are printed and mailed from the UK, even though the PG shop is in the US. Books for delivery to the US and other parts of the world are printed and mailed from the US. The PG shop uses an approximate costing of the postage and printing costs and offers a generous standard rate to buyers.
The book series has its own website: www.newshortstories.com.
Ossian
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