I'mma be an editir! ;)

I'm vice-president of the English Studies Undergrad Association of my University. I came up with this idea of creating an anthology of stories by students from our program that we would self-pub at the end of the year. I'm gonna be in charge of the whole deal but I need some info before we make it official and announce it.
The authors would retain all the rights to their stories if they want to publish elsewhere later. I mainly need to know if I should have them sign contracts so that they can't just call me up and say "my editor says it's a bad idea to have my story in the anthology, I forbid you to sell anymore of them" or something like that. If I should have them sign contracts, how do I go about getting the text for them? The association doesn't have any money so we'd have a hard time paying for a lawyer >.<

Any more info for a wannabe editor? This Anthology would mainly be for the students in the program but we're hoping to sell a few to the rest of the campus population and raise a bit of money for the association which would be in the best interest of "our kids".

That sounds like solid advice. I hadn't thought of the first print rights. As for the printing itself, I had though using Lulu.com or a similar POD service, of course, we would have to buy a certain number of books from them out of pocket to sell in person which is annoying. I thought maybe getting the University to sponsor us some

Are there any ressources, internet or otherwise that you think would help?

HapiSofi said:

My suggestion? Two-column format, single-spaced, on letter-size paper, printed front and back, and stapled on the left.

By definition, this collection will be made up of stories that aren't good enough to get placed elsewhere. Given the quality of some of the stories I've seen elsewhere, the implied level of quality isn't high.

Student writers shouldn't be publishing embarrassing anthologies of amateur writing. They should be working on getting better. If any of them have a piece that's worth reading, they should send it to a better market right now.

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As far as I know, no one in the program has even tried to get published before I've read the stories by some of them they presented in a creative writing class, they are surprisingly good actually. Which is why I even suggested the idea to the other members of the student council. I would never suggest it if I thought we'd only make fools of ourselves. Granted, a lot of the submissions will be unpublishable otherwise (mainly by lack of work IMO) but the point is to make something fun that people will look back on fondly. My hope is that it becomes a yearly thing as well.

Like a yearbook...but artsy.

I just don't want it to become a bitter experience because I didn't do things right from the start.