Furry Writers' Guild Forum

FWG Anthology - Ideas

Publishing and Marketing
#1

[ul]Yes it is going to happen.

I plan to get the ball rolling with this sometime in the next week. This is going to be the public ideas thread. If you want to be a part of this project in any way, please read all of this post.

First order of business: I want a judging panel. I’m not sure exactly how other anthologies run it, but I want a group of four people (one of which being myself) to look over all of the submissions and discuss whether or not to accept them. We will also discuss any changes to the storyline to be made as a group. We will discuss this in a private part of the forum. We will announce publicly when something has been accepted, and privately when it has been rejected. If rejected, we will give you a list of things things that can be improved on for possible resubmission. If we don’t feel the story itself is up to the project, we will let you know that as well. I know I hate it when I’m left in the dark, so we will not do that to you.
Each story would require a majority to be accepted. Thus, each story submitted by a non judge (and remember, submissions are open to both FWG members and non-members) must get three out of four votes to be accepted. Stories submitted by judges must receive two out of three votes to be accepted. Obviously judge’s votes will not be counted towards their own work.
If you’d like to be a judge, I’d prefer you email me at the guild email, furwritersguild@gmail.com. I will look at what you’ve done and determine the best three for the job. Any general questions about judging can be asked here, by PM on the forums, or by email. With the exception of myself, no one will know which story belongs to which author. This will allow for a much more fair judging process.
As far as editing goes; I will edit all stories that have been accepted, provided you meet any qualifications for accepting, such as, but not limited to, “I will accept this story as long as you further clarify this one section of plot.” If this ends up becoming a paying thing, I will take some money for this. If not, I obviously won’t be. For more information concerning publishing and payments, please see the general guidelines later in this post.

Second, we need a theme. Please post any ideas you have here.
The current ideas are as following:

  • [li]Relationships gone horribly wrong
    - Ever thought that you’d found ‘the one’? Ever have that feeling that what you have was perfect and would never go away, whether you’d been together for ten years or ten days? What happens when everything you thought you were sure of comes crashing down on you?[/li]
    [li]Writers about writers
    - You’re a writer, right? Why else would you be here? What’s a day like in the life of a writer? I don’t just mean someone who sits at a desk and rants in a journal about their day; I mean someone who eats, sleeps (or doesn’t), and breathes writing. The written word is enough to send tingles down your spine, and you’ll do anything to make sure your story is the best it can be.[/li]

    [li]Anthro characters created by humans
    - The origins of anthros have been a well-debated topic since the idea of them started. How were they created? Do they only exist in some alternate universe? Can they exist in our future? Who made them?[/li]

    [li]Tis the season…any of them
    - Pick a season; spring, summer, fall, or winter. What is it about that season that you love? Hate? What kinds of stories can be told about these times of year?[/li]

    [li]Strong female characters (strong in any sense of the word)
    - Girl power. Feminism. Whatever it is that you call it, women are strong, whether it’s physical or mental. They have made their mark on our society. Tell us their story.[/li]

    [li]The workplace
    - Whether you work the 9:00-5:00 office life or the 3rd-shift stock life, how does it affect you? What’s the mentality of someone working in this sort of position? Do they like it? Do they want out?[/li]

    [li]Specified species - pick one (feline, canine, mythological, etc)
    - Some dogs spend their nights howling at the moon, while others spend their days sniffing out crime. Some do both. What about cats? Unicorns? Lizards? We know dogs have their stories and we love to hear them, so do you want to tell more? Or do you want to move to another species? Lets pick one and tell their story.[/li]

    [li]Things we’ve learned (new, old, remembered, etc)
    - What have you learned or been taught in your life? Was it a happy memory? Sad? Did you just have an epiphany at the office? Write about it.[/li]

    [li]Crossing barriers, physical or otherwise
    - What kinds of barriers are there? Emotional, like a fear? Physical, like a brick wall? Social, like the struggle between financial/racial/gender/sexual classifications? What’s your experience with them?[/li]

    [li]Spanning across generations; characters with actual/mental age differences
    - What kinds of relationships are there between father and son? Grandparent and grandchild? The mentally undeveloped and mentally developed? What kinds of bonds do they have, whether they are good or bad?[/li]

    [li]Struggles
    - Whether you’re struggling to find love, having trouble at work, or going on a dangerous mission to save a city, we want your story.[/li]

    [li]Opening new doors; tales of first experiences
    - This anthology is a first experience for the FWG, though not for all of its members. What kinds of first experiences have you had? Have they been triumphs of love and joy? Or failures of heartache and death?[/li]

    [li]Music
    - If music be the food of love, sing on. A vibrant anthology of music and how it can mend the deepest wounds and bring together fierce tribes. Music is the universal language, what does it say to you?[/li]

Friday evening I will close idea submissions and you will have until Sunday night to vote. The winning idea will be used, the others will be thrown into a list for future use.

General guidelines:

  • We are looking for short stories, 3,000 - 9,000 words, no buffer. Target range is between 5,000 - 7,000 words.
  • Works must be anthropomorphic in nature. There may be human and alien characters, but your main character MUST be an anthropomorphic animal. Ferals are allowed, but they must show some ability to communicate. If you can pull off a non-verbal communication story without being monotone, then be my guest.
  • Submitted pieces must be unreleased, meaning we want first rights to work for this project. To qualify, no more than 10% of a story can have been posted publicly. Personally I’d prefer that stories don’t get posted publicly even after publishing (if we are able to do that), but it’s your story and you can post it how you choose. Though, 10% is more than enough for a teaser to get someone to want the story.
  • I plan for this to be released into publication. I will speak to a few different publishers to see who will want to work with me on this, but I can make no guarantees at the moment. I also cannot guarantee that after we have accepted a work that a publisher will not want your particular story. I’m hoping that our judging will be strict enough to not let that happen, but anything is possible. Concerning payment for this; it will all depend on what kind of publisher deal we make. I can’t guarantee a paycheck, but I will do everything in my power to make this project successful.
  • I’m looking for general to mature (not adult) stories. This means that there can be descriptive violence and there can be a small amount of sexual description as well. I do not want your stories to centralize on these, however. They should be used as elements to add to the main story and that is it. If 1,500 of your 5,000 words are used to describe the positions and motions of one character thrusting into another, your story will be rejected. If you spend 250 words talking about the bliss of their sex and how it affects them as characters/lovers, that is just fine.
  • If this anthology goes to hard-copy publication, all contributing authors that are not a part of the guild will gain acceptance. If this does not go to hard-copy publication, you will be one step closer to the guild. Acceptance into two or more of our anthologies will give you acceptance into the guild.
  • There is currently not a deadline for submissions. I’m aiming for the book to be somewhere in the realm of 100,000 words, my current thought is that submissions will stop once we hit enough to put the book over 100,000 words. This may change.

If I missed anything, please let me know. I think I covered pretty much all of the basis for this.

We currently have 2/4 judges. If you are interested, please send me a message.

I also would like a name for the anthologies itself. An example of which:
"Tales from the Guild, Volume : .

That about does it. Please let me know what you think.

[color=magenta]Updates
- Added description to current theme ideas
- Changed impact from accepted work to new FWG membership status
- Added blind judging panel
- Added a ton of new ideas courtesy of poetigress and alkaniserval[/ul]

#2

A few quick thoughts, possibly more later when I’m not working –

  1. If it’s a paying anthology, then I’m fine with it counting toward guild membership, because that’s in line with the membership rules that are already in place. If it’s not a paying anthology, though, I don’t like the idea of it automatically allowing membership without a second publication. I feel very strongly that the current criteria for membership need to stay in place and not have exceptions made based on where something’s published.

  2. I’d also like to argue in favor of feral characters not just being an exception. Plenty of the best anthro fiction involves feral characters, for one thing --“anthropomorphic” doesn’t automatically mean “bipedal,” even though it gets used that way a lot in furry these days.

  3. 4K minimum seems just a little high to me; I’d suggest 3K (since allowing shorter stories means the chance to publish more authors in the same page count).

  4. Honestly, I wish there were an option of doing the anthology without a theme, but just want to toss in two cents that it should be as open a theme as possible (more like the Thursday Prompts, for example, and less like “we want stories about x”).

#3

I’ll reply in numbered order to keep it consistent.

  1. I plan to make this paying in some way, shape or form. If I can’t talk with a publisher to pick it up, I’ll probably post it on Smashwords as an e-book and keep trying for a physical book. I will continually try one way or another to get this thing into the hands of a publisher. I only say that this would guarantee membership because of how strict I plan on being with submissions. I’ve seen a lot of anthologies with work that really should NOT have been in there. Certain one’s I’ve only been able to even make it through one or two of the stories in them, absolutely having to quit out of other stories because of how…off they were.

  2. The feral item is one that I’ve been debating. I will probably add that in as an accepted norm, but definitely going to stick to my guns about both human and alien characters. There’s a market starring them, and it isn’t here. I know that wasn’t part of your post, but I figured I’d mention it.

  3. I had actually written 3k - 9k originally, but changed it. I’ll probably change it back.

  4. I personally like the idea of some sort of theme. It doesn’t have to be super specific, like I have it here. It could be as simple as ‘scary’ or ‘romantic’ as a category. Without a theme, I feel that anthologies tend to be all over the place and lose what I feel to be their purpose. I see them as a way for multiple authors to express an idea in completely different ways, showing off their sense of directed creativity. If there’s enough support of no theme I’ll look into changing it, but I’d like it to stay for now.

#4

And again, I don’t think it should matter how strict a market is or isn’t. The criteria are clear, and frankly Duroc took a lot of crap for them over the past 3 years, and I personally don’t want them diluted for new writers coming in when those of us already in the guild met the previous requirements. I know I probably sound very strident on this, but this is a hot-button issue for me, because I’ve watched the guild get criticized for its membership requirements and called elitist and so forth from the very beginning, and those requirements are just as important to me now as they were then. I know you said you didn’t want to change (quoting from FA) “anything about the guild itself, what it stands for, who its members are, or anything else potentially relating to that nature,” and to me this falls under that category.

So that’s my say on that, and I won’t harp on it in the future as far as the anthology goes – this is your ship now, after all, and I do respect that – but I just wanted to make things clear. And since the goal is for the anthology to be paid, then assuming that happens, all this is a moot point anyway. :slight_smile:

Did think of something else – I like the idea of a judging panel, but I would suggest that there also be blind judging of submissions, to remove any possible perception of favoritism either toward FWG members or toward well-known authors.

And now, I need to get back to work before I kill my line count for the day… :-[

#5

I agree with the blind submission idea whole-heartedly. I think it’s only a positive thing. It makes the judge’s jobs easier, it feels fair to non-established authors, and it feels reassuring to established authors (they know their story isn’t accepted in any part because of their name). That’s how I see it, at least.

As for judging, what month would the judges be judging? I’m sure that’s a huge factor for a lot of people.

#6

I agree on this. I’ll change it so that only if this gets published will we grant status. Do you think I should could a Smashwords e-book since it’s technically paying and they had to get something accepted for it? Or should we count that as halfway there?

I agree with the blind judging. I obviously would know who is who because I’d be receiving the email, but when I disperse the email to my judges it’ll have no indication of who is who. One of us will obviously need to know for the sake of letting authors lay claim to their work later on. If there’s any reason I’d be biased whatsoever and if I ever seem biased, feel free to take me out of judging for that story.
I hate to make myself sound like a jerk, but my view on writing is this: I will dislike your writing until the story itself gives me a reason to like it. There are books from very popular/prolific authors that I despise, while I love other things from them and will back them till the day I die.

I don’t have a specific time period for this yet. Judges will be judging as we go along, first come first serve. We will not close submissions until we get X-number of stories. That amount will have to be determined. We may set a generalized word count for the finished product, but it’s something I’ll have to think about.

#7

Smashwords only pays if people buy what you post there.

#8

This paragraph troubles me. It sounds like you want to ask for first rights to the stories but don’t know the right words to do so. When considering any market, I would see a paragraph like this one as a giant red flag.

#9

Care to clarify how this troubles you?
The message I’m trying to send is that I don’t want a collection of stories that have been pre-released online. I’m not sure about you but I wouldn’t go buying an item that I can simply click on a link and read. Not enough disposable incoming going around these days for that.
The 10% rule would allow for a teaser; enough to get their readers to want to know more but not enough to spoil anything.

#10

I write for the love of writing. I submit to markets because they will benefit me somehow. That doesn’t necessarily mean a paycheck, but it does mean that I had a degree of confidence in the market being worth my time. I’ve submitted to every issue of the Rainfurrest Anthology and Allasso, and neither of those markets pay. In both cases, though, the editors had specific plans for how they would release and market their anthologies. Right now, I’m very unclear on what your plan is if you can’t get a publisher to pick up the anthology after the fact.

Not paying authors is fine, as long as they know what they’re getting into from the beginning. However, telling them to submit their stories “for the love of writing” is kind of insulting.

#11

The concept that you’re describing is First Rights.

http://www.thenextbigwriter.com/writing_resources/first_rights.html

And you should know what First Rights are if you’re asking for them.

#12

At the moment I’m not sure; this is still in the very beginning of its planning stages. I haven’t talked with anyone yet. I’m currently ironing out the details and getting community feedback. Obviously I haven’t run a collaborative writing project before and am trying to please as many people as I can.

I can understand where you are coming from with this, and I’m not sure if you meant for this statement to come out how it sounded, but it comes off as rather condescending. I hope it was not meant as such. This community is something that I care about, and I’m putting a lot of my time into trying to bring life back into it.
I will take that part off, but you need to remember that I’m not trying to insult. If that was my goal, I would not have taken the FWG over.

#13

Personally, I can see how what Sean has said could be construed as insulting, but I didn’t take it that way. Different people write for different reasons, and different people publish for different reasons. I think that if this anthology’s vision doesn’t fit with yours nor approaches your writing in the way you want it to, it’s no big deal; just don’t enter. It’s fine to discuss ways to better it so that you’d be interested in it, but personally I think the tone in this thread could be a bit… lighter? It’ll never get off the ground at all if we don’t work together.

I, personally, am fine with everything Sean has said. Sure, I’m not an experienced writer or author. But I would submit a work based on the rules outlined in the first post, given I had time to write something of which I was satisfied of the quality.

#14

I’m aware of First Rights, though I’m still not sure how my initial statement raises a red flag. Is this simply because I did not use the terminology of ‘First Rights’ or is this for some other reason?

#15

Thank you, and I apologize if anything I said could be conceivable to anyone as insulting. It was simply to convey the message that this is our first time doing this and there’s no guarantee of publishing.

I’m going to make this my last statement on this particular matter, though, because I agree that the tone of this thread needs to be lighter.
This will not be a fight. This is a community collaborative project and should be treated as a coming together of sorts. If this becomes a fight I will not hesitate to drop the project. Again, because it’s the internet and you can’t really reflect a lot of tone into this kind of debate, I’m not sure what words were and were not meant as an attack. I hope none of them were.

Done. If there is to be any more on this particular topic within the confines of the project, you will email the party you want to directly, which probably is me. This thread won’t have any more of it.

#16

Bear in mind that Ryffnah and I, like some of the other FWG members, have a fair amount of experience with publishing outside the fandom, so you’ll find we’re sticklers for terminology and protocol when it comes to calls for submissions and being clear about contracts and such. :slight_smile: (She’s a SFWA member; I’m still working on it.) I’m sure anybody who’s published more than a story or two has horror stories about things not being clear and editors not knowing what they’re doing from the business side of things when publishing work, so we get a little gun-shy when things aren’t in order.

(Not speaking for her, by any means, just giving some background.)

Going back to the issue of whether it would count if published by Smashwords, it really all comes down to payment. If you have funds available to pay writers a per-word rate on publication (or acceptance, either way), then there’s no issue, since currently the membership guidelines talk about “a paying venue (either inside or outside the furry fandom) at a minimum rate of less than 1 cent per word.” (Admittedly the wording’s a little odd there, and may provide some gray area, but I take that to mean any payment higher than zero.)

Now, if publishing with Smashwords would mean paying the writers shares of royalties, that gets a little more complicated, and gets into a gray area. When those membership guidelines were written, there weren’t many anthologies paying royalties for short stories; that’s something that’s really sprung up lately thanks to ebook publishing. I’m of the mind that as long as the writer is paid something, that’s a paying market, and 1 of those gets you into the guild.

On the other hand, the problem with royalties is that there’s really no guarantee the writer’s going to get anything, because it’s all based on sales, and if the sales aren’t there, the money isn’t there, and then sometimes there’s an arrangement where the writer doesn’t get any royalties until it reaches a certain minimum amount. All of which is why I tend to either stay away from short story markets paying royalties, or assume that it’s going to be a non-paying market, and if I get any money out of it that’s a bonus. :slight_smile:

If you say up front, hey, this is a for-the-love anthology and there’s no payment, then fine. It can still count toward membership same as anything else, but the potential member would need 1 other non-paying publication (like a conbook or somesuch) to qualify.

Hope all that makes sense. And apologies if I kind of started this discussion off on a claws-out kind of note; in some ways I’m that person who critiques things by listing off everything that needs work, and having to remind myself to point out the positive things too. ::slight_smile: So, along with everything else I’ve said, I appreciate your drive to get new stuff going for the guild. And I’ll see what I can come up with later for some possible theme suggestions.

#17

I can understand wanting contractual things clear and I do understand that proper terminology for such things can be important. I did add the wording into the first post.
From an editor point of view, I will be up front in saying that I don’t know the publisher side of things; it’s not something I’ve had to deal with yet. Comes with being completely freelance. I do appreciate help in any way that can be, though I am looking for help, not destructive criticism. Again, interpretation is everything, so I apologize if I’ve misinterpreted anything that has been said as an attack rather than help.

Smashwords hasn’t been something that has piqued my interest since it’s come out. It was a suggestion, though I’m severely doubting I’d actually go and use it.
I agree that trying to do something like this on royalties would be a bad idea, simply because we don’t have any idea that it would sell or not. I also don’t have money out of pocket to pay authors for these stories. Odds are if I can’t talk with a publisher about this successfully then it’ll just end up being a free project. If that’s the case I will of course allow anyone the chance to withdraw that did get in this looking to be published, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.
I agree with you 100% on the Smashwords counting towards membership issue, and that’s been changed in my initial post.

Heading to my comment about writing for the love of writing, I do know a couple people who, when they started writing, did it for fun, but now simply do it because it’s an added paycheck. They’d do something else, but it’s something they are fairly good at and don’t want to ‘waste time’ looking for a second income source they prefer more. The people exist. I do once again apologize for if it was seen in a negative way, but it was not meant to be nor should it be taken as such.

As far as the claws-out thing, I understand completely where you are coming from. I do the same thing sometimes, pinpointing every flaw in an attempt to draw out the maximum positive effect. It happens; as much as we try to hide it within the furry context, we’re human.

#18

I think you might be misunderstanding something, though. Let me run through it again just to make sure we’re on the same page.

It doesn’t matter whether the anthology is hard-copy or ebook. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Smashwords or a furry publisher. The question of whether publication in the anthology by itself qualifies a writer for membership hinges solely on whether it’s a paying publication. If the anthology pays the writers, then that one publication will get the contributors into the guild. If it doesn’t pay, then it won’t be enough on its own.

And, yes, all of us, regardless of our goals, do write for the love of writing. After all, there are plenty of easier hobbies and easier ways to make money – especially when you consider that the furry fandom as a whole isn’t exactly enthusiastic about writing to begin with. We’re all here out of love of writing in general and furry fiction in particular.

(I admit I don’t know anyone like the people you’re describing, because frankly writing is too hard to think of doing it entirely for money if there’s truly something else one would rather be doing, and no joy in the writing itself – but I’ll take your word for it that those people exist.) :slight_smile:

#19

We are on the same page. It’s not an issue of it being e-book or not, it’s that I’m not going to promise payment based on royalty and I can’t pay for stories up front. Thus, it may or may not be a paying venue. I apologize if my wording didn’t come out as my mind envisioned it to.

As far as the people writing for the sake of writing, not for enjoyment, it comes with the old phrase saying to never do what you love to do as a career; you’ll learn to hate it. If you keep it as a hobby, whether or not you’re making money off of it, then you’ll continue to love it. Obviously this is nowhere near a perfect rule and has several exceptions, but that’s what ended up happening to the ones I’m talking about. I’ve seen it happen with a lot more things than writing, too. The corporate world we live in nowadays doesn’t help that cause, I’m afraid.

Okay, let’s get this thread back on topic.

Any more ideas as to topics, guidelines, or anything else that could help this along?

#20

I like the idea of a writing-themed anthology. Kandrel wrote a lovely story about an author, ‘Seeing Eye Dog’, in ROAR 4. It would be easy to tip over into self-indulgent Mary Sue territory, but that’s all part of the challenge…

Sofawolf has started using submittable.com to track and review submissions. Seems like a good system - take a look!