Countdown to launch…
What a crazy week it’s been for us here, at the FWC. We’ve only seven days to go until we open submissions for your short stories and so we’ve found ourselves up to our earlobes with the little bits and pieces that we hope will ensure everything will run smoothly. The majority of them seem to be small things like preparing email inboxes but there were some things that we simply hadn’t anticipated which needed a bit more attention. For example, it wasn’t until we started advertising the competition that we realised the need for a detailed press releases so other bodies could help share in what we’re doing. In fact, now that we’ve started publicising the competition and the anthology, the question of advertising has cropped up repeatedly.
Now, if you follow our Fantasy-Faction Twitter pages (@FantasyFaction or @FantasyContest) you’ll know that we’re not adverse to an amount of shameless self promotion as a means to let the world know what we’re doing. With the anthology and the competition though, it’s a whole new bucket of radishes. And so, in the past week we’ve been getting in touch with everyone who might be interested in what we’re doing and here are a few of the places we approached:
Our former universities, colleges and schools.
We figured that chances are, if students are studying English and/or creative writing at college and university then they’re probably going to be interested in the chance to be published (the opportunity to win money seems to brighten a few eyes too) so they were our first port of call. We ended up speaking to far more than just the literature students though, and hopefully we’ve inspired a few people who hadn’t considered writing a story before to come and get involved. It was also rather nice to grab a cup of tea with old teachers afterwards and get to know them as adults with real names other than just Sir and Miss. I can now hand on heart say, teachers are people too.
Writing Groups.
Writing groups were a no-brainer to approach, even those that were dedicated solely to a certain type or genre of writing have been approached as in the end, writers want to write.
Popular forums.
We spend far, far too much time on forums and boards catching up on the latest news and looking out for cool tips on who to read etc so it felt quite good being able to be the ones creating the news.
Writing magazines
Whenever I read one of my writing magazines (for the record, I’m a fan of Writer’s Mag and Writer’s Forum) I always scrutinise the competition pages for possible chances to get published and make a little moolah on the side… A guy’s gotta eat and all that. So the possibility of being publicised on these pages is very exciting and hopefully, like approaching writing groups, it will entice non-fantasy fans to our beloved genre.
—
Needless to say, there have been a lot of great new relationships forged with others who share our passion and far too many names learned to add to the xmas card list.
Going back to the press release, it was surprising just how many of the people we approached wanted some kind of press release so that they could reliably pass on informed details to others who may be interested. It was also suggested that we create some form of downloadable posters and other promotional materials so this is what we’ve been spending a fair amount of time working on.
The posters and banners have been fun to put together as we cracked our knuckles and whipped out our artistic flair to make something informative and eye catching but the press release was a little more tough with it having to be detailed enough for journalists and bloggers to create a solid article but not so bogged down in the nitty-gritty that anyone reading it calls you pretentious and promptly falls asleep. Eventually though, I think we produced some pretty cool stuff so keep an eye out in the coming weeks.
Another point of shameless self promotion that we touched upon was the idea of conventions and literary festivals. Have no fear, we’re aiming to attend as many as is humanly possible beginning with the SFX Weekender in Prestatyn, Wales on the first weekend of February. After that we’ll be making as many stops around the UK as we can including both Bath and Cheltenham festivals later this year.
Creating awareness of the Fantasy-Faction Anthology is proving to be incredible fun although it’s rather exhausting. We have more ideas hidden up our pyjamas for how we will publicise the anthology but we’ll save them for a later date, once we’ve announced a few more big names. For now, we hope you’re well, we hope you’re as excited as we are and most importantly (in regards to the competition anyway,) we hope you’re short story is coming along well.
Take it easy World,
Paul.
Judge, Faction Editor, Fantasy Enthusiast.
