This is a quick follow-up to my previous post about my analysis and findings regarding Kickstarter-funded multi-author anthologies.
If you have questions, comments, or requests for additional data analysis, please let me know!
Quick Methodology/Scope Summary
Please see my previous post for the full methodology breakdown.
I sampled all successfully funded Kickstarter multi-author anthology projects between 1 July 2019 and 1 July 2020. I focused only on speculative or genre fiction anthologies (science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, mystery, magical realism, etc.). This left me with 26 different Kickstarter campaigns to review and analyze.
Genre Analysis/Findings
19.2% (5 of 26) of anthology campaigns were limited to a single genre (i.e., they were explicitly only science fiction, mystery, horror, fantasy, etc. with no combination of genres, like scifi/fantasy, etc.).
Science fiction and fantasy were the genres most commonly combined in anthologies. 34.6% (9 of 26) of anthologies were just science fiction and fantasy, with an additional 15.4% (4 of 26) anthologies were science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
The least commonly combined genres were fantasy & mystery (1 anthology), horror & romance (1 anthology), and science fiction & mystery (1 anthology).
Genre breakdowns:
- 69.2% (18 of 26) of anthology campaigns included fantasy as one of their genres.
- 61.5% (16 of 26) of anthology campaigns included science fiction as one of their genres.
- 42.3% (11 of 26) of anthology campaigns included horror as one of their genres.
- 19.2% (5 of 26) of anthology campaigns included mystery as one of their genres.
- 7.7% (2 of 26) of anthology campaigns included romance as one of their genres.
Themes
The most common themes and/or keywords of multi-author anthology Kickstarter campaigns included the following (listed from most common to least common):
- “Queer”
- “Adventure” -OR- “dark”-OR- “feminist” -OR- “hope” -OR- “love”
- “Apocalypse” -OR- “detective” -OR- “Gothic” -OR- “horror” -OR- “Lovecraft” -OR- “mythical” -OR- “steampunk” -OR- “technology” -OR- “young adult”
Continuances
7.6% (2 of 26) of anthology campaigns were to fund anthologies in a series:
MOLO WRITES 