What Is an Anthology?
Quick answer: An anthology is a book of stories by many different authors, selected by an editor around a theme, genre or period. Learn how anthologies work and how to get in.
An anthology is a book that gathers work by many different authors, selected and arranged by an editor around some organising idea: a genre, a theme, a year, a region, a tradition. In fiction, that usually means a volume of short stories, each by a different writer, with the editor's taste acting as the thread. The word comes from Greek, anthologia, a gathering of flowers, which is a fair description of the job.
For working writers, anthologies matter in two directions. They are a reading shortcut, one book that samples fifty sensibilities, and they are a publication target, since most anthologies fill their pages through open calls and reprint selections.
The longer answer: what editors are actually doing
An anthology is an argument made of other people's work. The editor of a horror anthology is claiming these twenty stories define what horror can do right now; the editor of a national anthology is sketching a canon. That is why two anthologies on the same theme can feel completely different: you are reading the editor's taste as much as the contributors' prose.
Anthologies split roughly into originals and reprints. Original anthologies commission or solicit new stories, often through open submission calls with a theme and a deadline. Reprint anthologies, like the annual best-of volumes, harvest stories already published in magazines and prize lists during a set window. Many mix both.
Famous examples across the spectrum
The Best American Short Stories, running since 1915, is the best-known reprint series: a guest editor chooses twenty stories from hundreds published in North American magazines that year. Dangerous Visions (1967), edited by Harlan Ellison, showed what an original anthology can do, effectively rebranding an entire genre in one volume. The Norton anthologies serve a third function, building teaching canons that shape what students read for decades.
Study the acknowledgements and contents pages of any of these and you can reverse-engineer the pipeline: where the stories first appeared, which magazines and prizes feed which anthologies, and how a single well-placed story keeps earning for years.
How to get your story into one
For original anthologies, the route is the open call. Calls specify theme, word count, deadline and pay; they are listed on publisher sites and submission trackers. Read the theme cynically: most slush fails by orbiting the theme too literally, so the story that interprets the theme sideways often stands out. For reprint anthologies you cannot apply at all; editors find you, which means the real strategy is publishing strong stories in visible places.
Contest results are one of those visible places. A story that placed in a judged competition arrives with a signal attached, and series editors do scan prize lists when assembling their year.
A short history of the gathered book
The form is ancient. The Greek Anthology, assembled and reassembled across centuries, preserved thousands of short texts that would otherwise have vanished, and established the editor as a literary figure in their own right. Victorian Britain industrialised the idea with gift books and annuals, handsome miscellanies sold for parlour tables, while the pulp era in America made the anthology a genre engine, recycling magazine fiction into cheap volumes that trained generations of readers.
That history explains the form's double character today. Anthologies still perform preservation, rescuing stories from the short shelf life of magazines, and they still perform argument, as every best-of volume quietly is. For writers, the lesson of the history is blunt: stories placed in anthologies outlive their first publication by decades. A magazine issue leaves the shelf in a month; the anthology it feeds may still be assigned in classrooms thirty years on.
Common mistakes and misconceptions
Writers routinely confuse anthologies with collections; agents notice. They also sign anthology contracts without reading the rights clause, then discover they granted exclusivity that blocks a future collection of their own. Reputable anthologies take non-exclusive or time-limited rights; read before signing.
The last misconception is that anthology placement is minor. A story in a respected anthology sits on shelves for years, next to established names, in front of exactly the editors and agents who assemble the next round of books. Few single placements work harder.
What poets can take from this
- Track open anthology calls the way you track magazine windows; deadlines cluster.
- Never grant exclusive rights to an anthology without a clear reversion date.
- Aim your interpretation of a themed call one step sideways from the obvious.
- Reprint markets exist: a published story can be sold again, so keep it circulating.
- Read one best-of anthology a year to learn what editors currently reward.
Try it yourself
Invent an anthology: give it a title, a one-line theme, and a table of contents of six imaginary story titles. Then write the opening 300 words of the story you would submit to it, interpreting your own theme at a slant.
Questions
Who owns the stories in an anthology?
The individual authors do, in standard publishing practice. The anthology licenses each story for that edition, usually non-exclusively or for a limited term, while copyright stays with the writer. Always confirm this in the contract.
Do anthologies pay contributors?
Professional anthologies pay per word or a flat fee, and sometimes royalties split among contributors. Token and non-paying anthologies exist too. Payment level is a reasonable proxy for how seriously the project is run.
What is the difference between an anthology and a magazine?
A magazine is periodical and ongoing; an anthology is a one-off book, even when it belongs to an annual series. Magazines usually buy first publication rights, while anthologies often reprint work that appeared elsewhere.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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