I made a comment on these in another thread, but it seemed to deserve a thread of its own.
I've had good luck with these in reaching new readers. Basically, it's a way for authors to share their fan bases in a way that is perhaps more organic than newsletter swaps. Authors submit short stories united by genre and/or theme. Those selected promote the anthology to their list and on whatever social media they have. The Also Boughts tend to be other books by the authors in the anthology, at least at first, which suggests that they work pretty well.
Of course, this approach does take some work to get off the ground. Aside from the time spent writing the stories, someone needs to get an appropriate agreement together (licensing rights to publish the selected submissions in the anthology), select what goes in, coordinate editing, formatting, and cover.
If anyone wants to do something like that in urban fantasy, fantasy in general, or similar genres, I'm in. I don't want to be the overall editor of such a project, particularly because I don't want to the be the person who accepts and/or rejects submissions. However, I'm willing to help with editing, I can format on Vellum if desired, and I'll donate reasonable cover costs. If people are interested in a project, it should have it's own thread. If people want to make general observations about the use of cross-promotional anthologies in marketing, this thread would be a good place to do that.
