Suw Charman-Anderson, Contributor - Forbes
I’m a geek & author covering self-publishing & crowdfunding
Self-publishing doesn’t just make it easier to publish your own work, it also facilitates the publishing of anthologies, whether a collection of short stories or non-fiction essays. This year I put together an anthology of non-fiction writing for Ada Lovelace Day, the international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), which I organise.
I started Ada Lovelace Day in 2009 as a day of blogging about women in tech, and each year it has steadily grown. This year on 15 October we held our flagship science cabaret event in association with Imperial College London and the Biochemical Society, and there were well over 40 grassroots events in eleven countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, Uganda and the USA. We also had masses of press.
But whilst events are fantastic for focusing attention, also I wanted to produce something that would last a bit longer and so A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention, was born. It is a fantastic collection of essays examining the lives of some of the most inspiring women in STEM, including scuba-diving ichthyologist Eugenie Clarke, known as The Shark Lady, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, whose discovery revolutionised our understanding of how stars could behave, and, of course, Ada Lovelace herself, the first computer programmer.
I learnt a lot doing it, so here are my top tips for a successful multi-author anthology project.
1. Invite three times as many people as you needI invited 62 people to contribute to A Passion for Science, but in the end only 17 produced chapters (one brought in three other authors for her chapter), and four provided other contributions.
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