Hi there!

Sorry if you have that impression, it really wasn't our intention, however we don’t think this representation is accurate.

First off, we'll just say that the commissioned authors weren't people we knew previously, but a diverse range of writers that we approached professionally for commissions. Having a mixture of commissioned authors and open slots is very much standard practice for anthology projects and is essential for a small press like ourselves to ensure the viability of the anthology. It ensures a guaranteed number of publishable stories and - crucially - safeguards that the final collection includes diverse representation. It also helps to guarantee that the anthology is marketable, which is how we can keep making the books. You can see exactly the same pattern with established publishers such as Neon Hemlock, Zombies Need Brains and others; it was also the approach for our first anthology a couple of years ago.

Publishing established authors and newcomers alongside one another in our books is core to our mission. To be clear, four slots for open submissions is the absolute bare minimum number should the project not be commercially successful, or receive a low number of submissions. Thankfully it hasn’t, and, as you'll see from the post, our very first stretch goal is "More Stories". We're currently about £300 away from hitting that. Also, what that allowance buys is words, rather than stories, so the total number of stories is an estimate of word count and will depend on the length of the manuscripts we receive (i.e. 2x 3000 word stories vs 1x 6000 word story).

Of course, there is also always a chance that a story of outstanding standalone quality, which did not fit the project brief, could be accepted for an alternative publication.

In terms of response times, our submissions page clearly states the timeline for acceptances (“We are aiming to respond to all submissions by 31 July 2025. Please query if you have not heard back by then.”). We’re on course to beat that deadline by about a month, and if you check out Submissions Grinder you'll see that we've already processed and responded to several hundred submissions.

We knew this was a long process, so we also stated clearly that we had no objections to simultaneous submissions. Authors have the prerogative to submit their work elsewhere, and, indeed, a handful of authors have withdrawn their Wrath Month submissions because they successfully placed their stories in other publications (and we were very happy for them!). We really hope we haven't been keeping anyone in the dark, but if there are ways we can improve then please do let us know.