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Comment by ericrosedev | Hacker News Reader

I saw this on amazon the other day and picked it up. As an avid reader of short form science fiction, I was really excited to see an anthology that focused on interesting ideas. I'm three stories in and my only gripe so far is Twenty-Four Hours, I just can't find the outstanding idea in it. I think it is a lovely and touching story, it just lacks the punch I'd expect to find in this type of collection. I'd love to hear more about your selection process and what we can expect from future volumes. A+ for the quality of the books printing and presentation, extremely impressive!

edit: just found your article with more info on your process! https://compellingsciencefiction.com/posts/how-i-curate-an-a...

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Thanks for your support! I believe I understand where you're coming from, some of the stories have more novel concepts than others -- Twenty-Four Hours is hard to discuss without spoilers, but I selected it because the characters and setting felt very real, while at the same time it would completely fall apart without the technological concept.

As I wrote in that blog you linked, I tried to interleave the stories so that you get alternating vibes as you go through the book. I know not every story will be for everyone, but I hope you find most of them interesting!

I plan on pursuing as close to the same process as I can next year, I want to put out the most consistently concept-focused Year's Best out there.

Thanks for sharing some of the methodology and code for how you put your book together.

Are you comfortable speaking about the financial side? What does an editor get per copy sold, what does an author get? (In the science world, for instance, editors tend to get money often, but authors never get paid for articles or book chapters.)

Hopefully, now that you have experience in the process and all your code ready, you can repeat the exercise with higher efficiency and profitability.

Happy to talk about it, the TL;DR is that this is a hobby where I as the editor don't expect to make back the money I spent creating the book, but the authors get paid a fixed amount up-front. Here's a more detailed answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45785154#45879003

The only addendum to that answer is that after being featured on HN last week I'm now over halfway toward break-even.

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