As explained here, I’m starting a little project (generally titled, you may have noted, “Serious Business”) with the goal of producing Creative Commons licensed, professional-looking ebooks on topics in anime and manga — “professional-looking” meaning copy-edited and laid out nicely, tasks which, I think, my experience in digital publishing (which does not amount solely to anime blogging, mind you) has equipped me to perform with some competence. Since the point is to provide an alternative to texts produced under the constraints of popular publishing and academic conventions, these ebooks will consist of articles from as wide an array of perspectives as we can manage — I say we because I’ll need you, whomever you may be, to submit your writing for consideration. You won’t be (monetarily) paid, but, if it makes you feel any better, neither will I.

In the future, I’ll leave the topic of each successive ebook open to consideration. But this time I’ve chosen the topic myself, for the sake of convenience, and it is…

Life and its Slices

The how, why, and what-the-hell of slice of life franchises

How does slice of life work? What do you do with it? Is slice of life a genre, a narrative technique, or both? How might we identify slice of life, or distinguish it from other genres or techniques? What story elements or tropes are indicative of slice of life? Where does it fit into the anime “tradition?” What and where is its power or its potency? What has slice of life, generally or as used in a specific anime or manga, done for your fandom or your blogging? Has a particular slice of life show changed you as a human being?

In short, I’m asking for articles on one or more slice of life shows. That’s it. Employ whichever angle(s) you prefer, and be inventive.

Guidelines

• Deadline for submission: December 1, 2010. I’m going to aim for a February 1 publication date.
• Minimum word count: 2000. There’s no maximum, but be reasonable.
• Preferred formats: .doc/.docx, .rtf, .odt. Google Docs is fine, too.
• Include some variation of your real name. I’d prefer not to use (only) internet aliases here.
• Tentatively, I’m looking for eight to twelve articles. If, through some twist of fate, more than twelve people are interested, I’ll have to be subjectively selective.
• These articles will be edited to conform, mostly, with some style guide or another (I’m thinking APA, which works well for interdisciplinary things). You needn’t worry about this while writing, as I’ll handle the minor details. However, you must cite all your sources — including and especially anime and manga from which you take quotes and images. Include as much information as you possibly can (authors, editors, translators, publishers, relevant publication dates, and so on); it’ll save me time.
• I have mixed feelings about images, and I’d prefer you not use any you didn’t make yourself. These should be text-oriented articles of the sort you’d find in a magazine or journal. Besides, I can’t really CC-license images that belong to someone else. We can get away with certain things under fair use law, I think, but you’d better be sure that your image is directly related to your commentary.
• Whatever you submit to me must not have been published before. Publishing a nice-looking compilation of existing blog posts would defeat the purpose.
• Collaborative articles are fine.
• Submit articles to me through Google (Gmail, Docs, etc.) at SuperFanicom.

Also: I’m certainly willing to accept submissions from artists, but be aware that you’ll be drawing as the writers will be writing: on a volunteer basis.