I love this idea ! I've been thinking for a while of pulling together three or four different anthologies by genre based on Hive posts I've done in the past.

For the ISBN, they aren't crazy expensive, and I'd favour owning on ourselves rather than getting trapped into Amazon's ecosystem. That way, we could offer a variety of formats; KDP, other e-book, print on demand, or even print a few on spec in order to do in-person sales & signings.

For the financial model, if we had (say) five Hivers each contributing two stories of roughly equal length, I'd be happy to pay a fifth of the ISBN and cover art cost, although I don't think I could stretch to covering the cost of editing right now.

But if a fellow Hiver was doing the editing, how about the five authors cover the other up-front costs and we work out what the editor should fairly earn. Then, revenue is split 6 ways until the editor has been paid after which it reverts to the revenue being split 5 ways. Or just a 6-way split all through (possibly fairer on the editor, who is taking a gamble that it makes enough to ever pay their wages !).

We might need to also say that the revenue split is after channel fees (Amazon especially takes a huge whack), and maybe say that a fixed percentage is taken off the top for pre-agreed marketing costs.

Marketing might be a combination of on-Hive, plus whoever of us has the biggest YouTube, TikTok & Instagram channels, in-person signings at bookshops & bookfairs, possibly Facebook ads, and maybe even getting to Hive meetups and bringing a few copies to sign & sell.....