Last year I coordinated an anthology of short stories called The Newcomer (see signature). By popular request I have agreed to run another.
The theme and title of the collection is 'The Officer'. This could be military, police, fire, local government, whatever. Anything within the broader science fiction genre is welcome, though in the interests of not getting hidden by Amazon we'd need to avoid outright erotica.
The focus of the project will be on exposure for the participating authors. Each story will be immediately followed by a short 'about the author' and two links - one to their mailing list signup and one to their homepage (I would encourage participants to set up a unique landing page for these so they can track conversion). As all the stories will be scifi, this should help generate targeted also-boughts.
Profits from the sales will go towards paying off the setup (cover, proofreading, formatting etc), my time, and ongoing advertising costs. The Newcomer paid off the setup in a little over a month and the advertising kitty fills up nicely until I splurge on some promos.
Entries should be between 2500 and 7500 words. As long as they are available to publish, they could have been already released somewhere else, though new pieces would have priority. They can be completely one-off stories, or introductions to series as long as they have a self-contained storyline.
I can't guarantee that all entries will be included. You can submit more than one story, but I won't choose more than one per author to be included. I am aiming for twelve quality pieces that work well together and avoid covering too much of the same ground.
I am aiming for a June release to take advantage of people stocking up on stories to take on summer holiday. The deadline for entries will thus be 2359 30 May 2017 (please note that I am in the UK, so all times will be GMT).
By submitting your short story, you grant non-exclusive rights in perpetuity for it to be included in the anthology. There will be no fee for entry and no payment for inclusion.
Now closed to entries. Release date 28 June 2017 - http://www.alasdairshaw.co.uk/thenewcomer/officer.php