Anonthology update, and a word from NEMONYMOUS

Nearly three months after its launch, the Anonthology continues to be a resounding success. An anonymous collection of short stories from some of our biggest authors, the Anonthology is a literary experiment challenging fundamental assumptions about authorship. Since launch, we’ve had nearly 8,000 online reads — partly due to a great plug on the Guardian blog!

This October we’ll be revealing the authors of each piece on Fifth Estate. So, if you haven’t put your guesses in yet, it’s not too late. Go to www.anonthology.com to read these pieces and enter the competition. There are still five very special Fourth Estate books up for grabs.

To date, 5,500 physical copies have made their way into the hands of book lovers through numerous channels, including: Plectrum, Untitled Books at Port Eliot festival, Hay festival, iheartfreebooks, Foyles’ Bookshop as part of the 25th Anniversary exhibition, and the Roundhouse, Camden. In addition, we have great partnerships with Stack Magazines, and Nemonymous coming up.

And if you haven’t downloaded a copy to keep, what are you waiting for? You can now read the Anonthology on your Iphone so you can enjoy short anonymous fiction on the train, the plane, wherever! Anonymity has no boundaries.

Now, as I mentioned, one of our upcoming partnerships is with Nemonymous — a magazine that has been conducting similar experiments of its own for some time now. A Sci Fi magazine, Nemonymous is compiled of stories contributed and commissioned anonymously by author and editor D F Lewis. Seeing as we are both interested in experimenting with anonymity in fiction, we saw several opportunities for working together. The lovely editor of Nemonymous has agreed to distribute copies for us and has also written a real-time review of Anonthology – our first – which you can read here

We’ve also asked him to say a few words about his own project, Nemonymous….

NEMONYMOUS

by DF Lewis

Above is the cover of the first edition of ‘Nemonymous’ from 2001, arguably the world’s first ever publication deliberately presented as an anonymous self-contained collection of multi-authored fiction stories. There has been, of sorts, an edition each year since then — all variations on that anonymous theme, essentially with the same ethos of Nemonymity, mixing genre with literary with absurdist with intangibility…

Therefore, I was delighted to see the arrival of ‘ANONthology’ from Harper Collins, a story-by-story review of which I have recently posted here.

In the early days, it was very much seen as a movement. Many of its pioneer authors showed their appreciation by writing about the experience of having their work published by Nemonymous, some of which were shown at Captain Nemo’s Ark.

When told that I had been invited to write a brief article here, some more recent authors in the publication offered their input and below are just a Nemonymous threesome:

“One thing I have liked with Nemonymous is that even though maintaining the same initial premise, the form and structure and apparatus around this has kept changing. No issue is a clone of a prior one, whether it be in how you have changed the submission process, the name information, the theme…” — Anonymous

“It’s good for the craft, the writing; but not necessarily good for sales….new ways of viral promotion need to be researched/developed that fit in with the Nemonymous credo….” — Anonymous

“Well, if I was in your position I think I would write about the thrill of receiving anonymous stories when you put out the call for them, preceding a new Nemo edition. I imagine it to be a little like sea fishing, you’ve baited your hook and await the first nibble/bite etc. Are you going to hook something small yet gaily coloured and vivacious or could it be something much larger, darker and with rows of huge teeth that will threaten to devour its captor? It’s the excitement of the unknown, is the story by a roughhewn undiscovered writer that shows promise and with your help can flourish into a well-cut gem, or could the next anonymous entrant be a world-famous best-selling novelist who felt the urge to do something different?” – Anonymous

I am too close to Nemonymous to be able to express my essential feeling about it, but I think the above come close and better expressed than if I sat for hours honing my thoughts!

Perhaps a few dry points of history, however, from me:

Each of the first five annual issues (2001-2005 inclusive) of Nemonymous was what I called a ‘megazanthus’: i.e. a cross between a magazine (or, rather, a literary journal) and a book anthology. The authors of the stories were not named at all in the actual issue in which they appeared but in the subsequent one. The latest three issues (2007-2009 inclusive) have been large book-shaped anthologies. Each has its authors’ names randomised on the back cover and a year later assigned to the correct story in the subsequent issue. In recent years, a guess-the-author competition has been offered to readers.

The first three issues contained stories that were contracted for publication before I knew the authors’ identities myself! The later issues gave a choice to submitting authors whether or not to email it anonymously.

Nemonymous was originally inspired by my study (since the nineteen-sixties) of ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ literary theory and by an original experiment in the neutralising of author name-prejudice. Furthermore, the effect of reading a multi-authored group of anonymous stories has been said by many to lend itself to a ground-breaking ‘gestalt’ effect.

But it’s all far more exciting than that! Just look at all the reviews. :)