Whisper House Press

Notes from the desk of the editor are offered in the interests of personal posterity and transparency for writers and other potential editors who wish to learn from my experience.

the editor

If you follow my work at all, you’ll know I’ve been talking about starting a horror press for a year or two and this year I finally came up with the right name for the press: Whisper House.

I also announced our first production goal: a suburban, psychological, and/or social horror collection we’re going to call Costs of Living.

The call for submissions went out about two weeks ago, and we’ve received 18 submissions so far.

Because equity and inclusion are a top mission of the press and for me personally, the first step beyond the call encouraging all sorts of writers to respond has been to answer each submission with the same standard reply.

What’s next?

Well, here’s where I’m reaching out for help. Because I have no direct experience with publishing an anthology on the editor’s side of the table, I’ve asked writers and editors in the Horror Writers Association, the HOWL discord group, the League of Utah Writers’ Salt City Genre Writers chapter, and my connections on facebook through my author page there. I’m asking folks for “best practices” principles for going through submissions and for putting out the best possible collection.

So here’s where I’m asking for the feedback of writers and authors here on my website.

Do you have recommendations for best practices in editing an anthology?

A totally reasonable thing I’ve gotten in reply is a request for a specific deadline so that people can time their writing projects (and many of us work best under deadline anyhow). I get it. Here’s the new wording: We will accept submissions until MAY 1st 2024 OR until we reach approx. 60k-80k words with high-quality storytelling and finely-crafted writing.

And here’s my thinking: I’m hesitant to set a date since I intend to keep the call open as long as I need to accept more work. Of course, those submitting first have the best chance, since by necessity fewer words available means that fewer stories can be accepted, and right now is the absolute peak of word-availability for potential contributors.

If you’ve got experience in anthology editing, I’d love to get your advice on anything I’m discussing here.

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