Co-authors and anthologies: one file out of many

A single-author novel arrives as one file with one set of habits in it. An anthology arrives as eleven files from eleven writers, and every one of them has settled the small questions differently.

Straight quotation marks in two of them and curly in the rest. Scene breaks marked with asterisks, with a blank line, with a row of hyphens, and in one file with nothing at all. Chapter titles that are real headings in four files and bold centered paragraphs in the others. Two spaces after periods. Tab indents in one, first-line indent styles in another, manual spaces in a third.

Word will merge all of that into one document and report no problem, because none of it is a problem to Word. It is a problem to the book.

Decide the house style before anyone sends you anything

The cheapest moment to settle this is before the first file exists. Write a one-page style sheet and send it out with the call for submissions, naming at minimum:

The spelling convention. US or UK, and which dictionary settles the arguments.
Quotation style. Double or single, and how a quote inside a quote is handled.
The serial comma. In or out.
Numbers. Spelled out or in digits, and where the line falls.
The scene-break mark. One mark, named exactly, used by everyone.
Headings. Use the real heading style for a piece title. Nothing else gets a heading.
File format. One format, one file per contributor, no manual page layout — no forced page breaks, no tab indents, no hand-set spacing.

That list costs you twenty minutes and saves a day of cleanup per book. The style sheet: how a series stays consistent is the longer version of the same document.

Normalize on import, not after typesetting

The failure mode is assembling the pile, typesetting it, and then fixing inconsistencies on composed pages. Every fix at that stage changes the line breaks under it, which changes the page breaks after it, which moves everything you already checked.

The order that works:

Collect. Every file in, named for its contributor, nothing edited yet.
Normalize. One pass per file, applying the house style: quotation marks, spelling, the scene-break mark, the serial comma, the heading style for the title. Strip manual formatting — tabs, forced breaks, hand-set spaces, stray fonts.
Assemble into one manuscript, in the final running order.
One editorial pass over the whole thing, read straight through, as a book rather than a stack. This is the pass that catches two pieces opening the same way, the same anecdote told twice, a jarring run of three stories in the same register.
Then typeset.

Steps two and four are the ones under pressure when a deadline arrives, and skipping them is exactly what makes a self-published anthology read like a folder. The editing passes that have to happen before typesetting applies here too — an anthology needs them all, plus the running-order pass that a novel does not have.

In the Interior Formatter. It detects chapter starts even in files with no styles, which is what makes a pile of contributor documents workable — a piece that was never a real heading still comes through as a piece. The contents page is generated from the real chapter structure, so it matches the book rather than a list you maintain by hand. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter

The decisions an anthology needs and a novel does not

Running order. Not alphabetical, and not the order they arrived. Open strong, close strong, and vary tone and length so three similar pieces never sit together. Read the whole sequence before you fix it.
Contributor bios. Front or back — back is more usual — but the real rule is consistency: same length, same person, same tense, same kind of detail. One bio of forty words beside one of three hundred reads as favoritism.
Where the credit sits. Either every piece carries its author's name under the title, or the contents carries it and the pieces do not. Pick one and hold it for the whole book.
Per-piece copyright. Each piece is its own work with its own owner, and the copyright page usually carries a line per piece — often on a continuation page, since it will not fit on one. What belongs on a copyright page covers the shape of that page.
How the contents names things. Title alone, title and author, or title, author and page. Decide before the contents is generated, not after.
Whether each piece gets a title page. A separate half-page or full-page opening before the text is handsome and costs a page or two each. In a forty-piece collection that is a materially longer book.

Rights are an agreement, not an afterthought

What needs agreeing, in writing, before you typeset: what rights you are being granted, for how long, in which formats and territories, whether they are exclusive, whether the contributor may publish the piece elsewhere and when, and how any money is divided. Whether a piece has appeared before matters too, because previously published work usually needs an acknowledgment line and sometimes a permission.

The terms themselves are between you and your contributors, and they vary by country. Get them written down and get them agreed before the book is assembled, and take advice if the money involved warrants it.

Credit on the cover

Two names fit on a cover. Eight do not — set small enough to fit, they become an illegible gray band, and at thumbnail size they are a smudge.

So an edited anthology puts the editor on the cover — edited by your name — and the contributors inside, in the contents and in their bios. A co-authored book with two or three names sets them as a real part of the design, not as an afterthought under the title. If a contributor's name is genuinely a selling point, with or featuring plus that one name is the usual device. See Setting a long title without shrinking it for what happens when there is more text on a front panel than the panel wants.

Make yours

Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.

Start a book →

Next: Preparing a manuscript that typesets cleanly · More: The style sheet: how a series stays consistent · Chapter openings and scene breaks · What goes in the front of a book, and in what order