Support for Indie Authors discussion

For a modest anthology?

Six? A dozen?

What do we think?

I say it depends on a few (many) things. First, the length of your stories. If you are doing flash stories (like 500-1500 WC) you will need a bit more than if you do 5k-10k-15k stories.

Now, I have seen anthologies that had as few as 3 stories and others over 50 so there really is no set-in-stone answer here.

Hmm..good question. Most that I'm a part of and have seen usually contain 10-20 stories. I'm with G.G here though, there isn't really a set limit and it may also depend on the word count as some anthologies ask set a word count.

My gut feeling says the collection should be about the size of the average popular novel.

Perhaps some clues might be found here:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2...

as most of those mentioned are modern.

The first short story collection has 30, but the first one is only one paragraph long!

I think word count matters. You could have six long stories or 20 very short ones, you know?

in these days of ebooks, where free and 99cents are common prices, I would suggest that there's no specific number, but rather - you need to price your anthology/collection, appropriately.
As a side note, in an anthology, you have multiple authors; in a collection, the pieces are all by the same author.

Exactly as many as it needs.
:)

Ten-Fifteen feels good to me. I've written and published a collection of ten, and I'm working on another. I've read decent collections with more than this, but the more you get beyond that number, the more dazzling each one has to be.

I would agree with the above. An anthology should have as many stories as are needed, or as many as you want to include. My first three books were all anthologies, though the first only had two stories. The second had seven, the third had eight. I'd say it really depends on what you're trying to achieve.

I once sold (for real money) a collection that was only four.