How much do you read furry novels and stories?
Posted by Anon on Wed 8 May 2002 - 09:01 — Edited by Aureth
I read every one I can get my hands on.
21% (31 votes)
I read a lot of them but I'm somewhat selective.
28% (41 votes)
I read them sometimes.
11% (16 votes)
I don't read them much, but have a few favorites.
14% (20 votes)
Text is boring. Gimme pictures!
5% (8 votes)
I mostly read non-furry fiction.
7% (10 votes)
I mostly read non-fiction.
5% (7 votes)
I seldom read anything.
3% (5 votes)
I is illiterate.
6% (9 votes)
Votes: 147
Comments
It's a shame there wasn't a selection for those who write stories (like me). Anyway, I'm fairly selective of the ones I read.
Peace:
- PunkTiger!
Peace;
- PunkTiger!
Sounds like a good candidate for a future poll. It would be hard to cover both reading and writing in one survey question.
I write stories and do art... and I try to find some furry literature, but sometimes it's hard! Because most furry material is considered to be for kids. Still... there are books and comics that envolve antropomorphs in very dirty action... And finding it (especialy here in Poland) is sometimes more difficult than it is consider to be, but it's still fun ;).
White Lion
With the closure of Pawprints, there are no longer any text magazines that publish fiction on a regular basis and, if there are, their marketing skills could improve.
If a writer of anthropomorphic fiction wants to gain a reputation of any merit s/he must know how to market themselves and either find a traditional outlet for their work or create their own.
--
Rev_Boxer @ Gettysburg, PA >
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/cloewen
http://www.angelfire.com/pa4/darkdreams
You are forgetting Yarf, The Tai-Pan Project (edited by one of Flayrah's story editors), and Anthrolations.
Advertising budgets for such fan publications are minimal or none, but they can be easily found at conventions, or through Mailbox Books.
http://www.taipanproject.org/
http://www.sofawolf.com
There's also Storyfur Prime, and South Fur Lands also has furry short stories in every issue.
I will gladly read furry fiction from a bookstore, but I very rarely ever read fanfic as the quality level is vastly different from the professional authors.
There is a good amount of furry stories out there, and more show up from time to time.
For fanfic, I go with Tai-Pan and Yarf! as they usually have gone through several editing processes and are more refined. They also avoid using copyrighted characters by other authors or artists, forcing the author to be ... oh, I don't know... creative? :)
I think you're misusing the term "fan fiction", which is used to refer to works derived from other works, often major commercially successful ones such as "Star Trek", "Star Wars", the Harry Potter series, or in a more furry vein, "The Lion King", or the Redwall series. Its opposite would be "original fiction", meaning the story and its characters and setting are all created by the author. These definitions apply regardless of the media the story appears in, whether it be commercially published, in a fanzine, or on a website (but you'll seldom see fan fiction in a fanzine as one of the cardinal rules of unauthorized fan fiction is that you can't try to make money from it).
As for web fiction, which is what I think you were talking about, I would guess it is a lot like reading the slush pile at a major publishing house For those of you not familier with the jargon, the slush pile is the pile of submissions the publisher receives, of which only about 1-2% will be accepted and eventually published. But most best-selling authors had to start in the slush pile, and likewise, if you look at enough web fiction, you will find some real gems out there.
Actually, he's not mis using the term.
Fan fic refers to BOTH the kind of fiction where you are writing in someone else's universe, AND original fiction published in a fanzine.
Material published in Tai-Pan is not published on the web and it is lightyears above the qualify of a slush pile. We really do edit the work, in true literary fashion, make the authors rewrite it until they reach a certain level, otherwise it is not published.
Technically we are a small press literary zine.
And finally, you are ALSO incorrect about fan fic being published. There are numberous Elfquest, Star Trek, and Pern paper zines in which people publish EQ, ST, and Pern fan fic. These publications exist at the sufferance of the original publishers and are often operated as parts of official fan clubs.
--Gene Breshears, been reading, writing, and publishing since the mid-seventies, some of it even for pay!
Most of what I said about fan fiction (the kind where the story is in someone else's universe) was with regard to unauthorized fan fiction. As you point out, there is such a thing as authorized fan fiction, which is what gets published. (In some story universes, however, the only works likely to be authorized and published are those done by commission or invitation from the copyright holders; the odds of an actual fan work getting authorized are slim to none.)
And yes, if a fanzine's editor is doing his job, the material it publishes is generally much better than average web fiction.
Like several others here, I also write furry fiction. I've found that sufficiently good furry fiction can indeed be sold, and I've in fact sold several pieces. The key is to understand that "furry" is not a recognized market niche. I've sold two historical fantasy pieces, and two urban fantasy works (one of them twice), and probably one or two others that I'm forgetting about. Each of these was a "furry" tale (though one of them admittedly just barely), yet I did not sell them to "furry" markets. I sold them to main-line publishers of SF and F, though I'll hasten to add that none of my sales have been to big name publishers.
Yet.
My point here is that the marketability of a work has nothing whatsoever to do with its "furryness"; tell a quality story, and then shop it around in whatever genre it seems to fit best. If the tale fits no recognized genre, then frankly it's probably a story that has little appeal outside of its furryness, and thus _is_ unmarketable to non-furs. My suggestion in this case is, don't write those kinds of tales in the first place! =:)
On another front... I'm a partner in an e-publishing company with a strong furry focus; we are in the final phases of getting ready to go into business. (Indeed, I'm looking at my just-completed business license application as I type this.) We plan to publish novel-length stuff only, and we won't be able to make anyone rich. However, I anticipate that Infinite Imagination Books will be accepting submissions in a matter of days, if anyone is interested.
I don't want to post my RL name here, but if you follow the link below it will take you one of my stories posted on the web. From there click on the author's name, and you'll be able to contact me. Send the first chapter or ten pages (whichever is less) as a sample; plain text only, please. (Non-plain-text attachments will not even be opened.) Thanks!
http://tsa.transform.to/worlds/tbp/graduationday.html
A major goal of the new annual Furry Recommended Reading/Viewing List and the Ursa Major Awards started last year by the ConFurence is to collect and publicize recommendations of Furry fiction and fanzines worth reading. The 2001 Recommended Reading List ended up with eleven short stories published in places ranging from fanzines like "PawPrints", "Anthrolations" and "Yarf!", Brock Hoagland's "Tales of Perissa" original collection, and websites like the "Metamor Keep" and Richard Reid's "Corwinda" site. There were twenty-four novels recommended, ranging from popular s-f & fantasy genre novels like "Stars Over Stars" by K. D. Wentworth (Baen Books), literary small-press novels like "Zuntig" by Tom LaFarge (Green Integer Books), and e.books like "MainFrame" by Simba Wiltz (Xlibris). This List is open to anyone who wants to send in a recommendation. I am its custodian, and there are a couple of titles on it that I do not think are all that good; but the people who recommended them do, so they are posted. Hopefully the List will grow to include participation from enough fans until, if anybody wants to know if any good Furry books or short stories have been published during the last year, they can go to the List and see what other fans recommend. The goal of the Ursa Major Awards is to get enough nominations to determine the popular choice for the five best of the past year in such categories as Furry novel, Furry short fiction, Furry fanzine, etc., for the final ballot; and then vote for the single best for the Award. Both the List and the Awards have flaws and suggestions for their improvement are solicited; but they are attempts to do something about encouraging the publication and reading of more and better Furry fiction. -- Fred Patten
Fred Patten
I would *really* like to see the Ursa Major Award voting opened to more than just Confurence attendees.
We would like to do so, if you can suggest a good way of preventing "ballot box stuffing". The nominations are open to all of Furry fandom, and two of the nominees that ended up on the final ballot were pretty obviously the result of organized block nominating by the fans of those two titles. They did at least look like genuinely different nomination forms rather than one person sending in multiple nominations under different names; but if someone did want to take the trouble to send in multiple nominations under different names, we are not sure we could tell it. By limiting the voting on the final ballot to one vote per ConFurence member, we can at least check that. I (speaking personally, not for the whole ConFurence Committee) would like to see the Awards run by an independent committee of representatives of several of the Furry conventions, so we could open the voting to the current memberships of all those conventions. But so far we have not been able to even get the other conventions (with the exception of ConiFur Northwest) to schedule a program event to discuss the Awards, much less show any interest in taking the trouble to participate in running them. (I also admit that I have not tried hard yet to interest the other conventions in this, since we need to get the Awards better organized just among the ConFurence Committee first.)
Fred Patten
Prevention of ballot stuffing? That's easy.
Voting takes place the week before CF. Everyone who wishes to participate gives their email address and it gets added to the list over the year prior. Then, voting forms are emailed out to all the voters with a special unique code added to the subject line. There are a number of simple hash-tables that will generate codes based upon the email address (for example).
As the files come in to CF, the vote goes in the slot designated by the code in the subject line. Anyone morphing the From: line to stuff the box will be disappointed since raw votes mean nothing; only votes with the proper code in the subject line count. And throwing 500 replies with the same code will result in only one vote since they overwrite the data in that slot as they arrive. Even if someone knows the algorithm to make a million votes for Atara, if there is only one slot at CF for the vote to arrive then all but one of them will be ignored.
Simple, yes? Some coding will be involved, but you Cal types have lots of such folks at hand :)
Reality is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we CAN think!
Ah, but what's to keep people from accumulating tons of email addresses in order to get tons of voting power? I have about 15 email addresses myself, all of which are used for various purposes. What's to stop me from submitting all those emails as "votes?" =)
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