Anthologies can be a great outlet for your writing, but be careful which you choose, advises Jane Wenham-Jones
I enjoy writing for anthologies. Especially ones where all profits go to charity. However, I seem to have a knack for choosing those best left untouched. Some years back, I had a piece accepted for one in the US. When my copy arrived, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The editor had added a near death experience! Not just that, she’d used awful clichés to describe it. And all under my name. Until then I hadn’t realised editors could do something like this, least of all to a nonfiction piece. I’ve recently had an acceptance with another anthology, offering to pay $100 (most anthologies never bring in any money) that didn’t state they wanted unpublished work until after they’d made their selections and sent out the contracts. Many are happy to use reprints so when no mention was made in the guidelines, I assumed this was the case. Another anthology I considered submitting to, wanted my date of birth among other things. I thought that quite unnecessary. Several have asked me to join Facebook groups and then there have been floods of irrelevant email notifications spilling into my inbox. It can be hard working out which ones are more trouble than they’re worth. Do you have any general advice?