Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Is there a market for a new furry publication?

General Writing Discussion
#21

As Fuzz and Rechan said, I also think that theme and topic can be a very big reason why some general audience anthologies succeed or fail.

In addition to the other examples thrown out, I’ll add in Anthrolations, a general audiences anthology with no particular theme that struggled to break even, and Stories from New Tibet, a general audiences anthology with a definite theme that was reasonably successful. (I don’t know the sales details myself. I’m just going off of bits of conversation I’ve had with Jeff, Alo, and Tim.)

Themeless anthologies have a hard time, I think, because they don’t stand out to any particular group of readers. A reader might come to our booth at a con, or our webpage, wanting a sci-fi story, or a romantic story, or something they haven’t read of Kyell’s yet, or something comedic, or something tragic. If the reader wants a sci-fi story and they read a dust-jacket blurb that promises them lasers and space ships and aliens, they may well grab that book because it will give them exactly what they want. It’s harder to sell a themeless anthology to these readers because they aren’t being promised anything other than “there are stories here (possibly by some authors you like).”

#22

Gonna take this opportunity to say I loved the New Tibet series. They were some of the first fandom-published books I read. I’d love to see another in the series, but everyone involved is pretty busy with other projects these days.

#23

Well I do have one anthology coming - at RivFur during my writing panel we created a world and I challenged people to write a story set there - I’m planning on releasing an anthology from that at next year’s convention. If that goes well I’d certainly like to develop more anthologies.

I’m trying to find if anyone recorded the panel, but alas I don’t think people did.
If folks would like to know the details of this world, I can send all the information that was writing down and try and fill in the relevant information.

#24

I’ve recommended both of the New Tibet anthologies as well as Common and Precious on several occasions. Both were wonderful reads.

And this helps shape what Dark End said about themes in anthologies. The guild anthology came under quite a bit of complaints at first, asking “Why does this anthology NEED a theme?” Dark End’s comment goes into exactly why. You’ll get a few people who want to read an anthology simply because it contains authors they like, but I know personally, if an author I like writes a story I would have no interest in the topic of, I wouldn’t read it. It wouldn’t be anything personal, but odds are, even if something is beautifully written, the reader probably (not definitely, but probably) won’t enjoy it if it’s a topic they don’t enjoy.

Though going back to New Tibet, it takes a theme one step further by incorporating a pre-set world and themed characters. I feel like these sort of anthologies have a better chance than those with a general theme or no theme, simply because it still gives the reader a chance to get immersed in a world as they would in a novel, but see many different stories of different people in that world.

#25

I once appeared in an anthology called “Twisted Cat Tales”. I’m told it sold very, very well. It’s also the kind of theme I find easy to write for, if anyone’s considering actually creating such a work. Authors, readers, marketers all happy at once. Yay!

#26

Excellent, this gives me hope, as this is what the Ivfuris anthology is going to be (see previous post).

#27

There are two main things I like about short story collections.

[ol][li]It gives me a chance to sample the work of multiple authors relatively quickly[/li]
[li]I have trouble putting down a good book, but during the academic year, I don’t often have time to read a full novel in one day. Short stories allow me to read one a night, and not be up too late[/li][/ol]

#28

I guess that these are examples of changing tastes. In the 1950s when I began reading s-f, and the 1960s, practically all of the s-f books that weren’t novels were reprint short-story anthologies; at first almost all by Groff Conklin. “The Omnibus of Science Fiction”. The Big Book of Science Fiction”. “Possible Worlds of Science Fiction”. The Healy & McComas “Adventures in Time and Space”. Anthony Boucher’s two-volume “The Treasury of Great Science Fiction”. Murray Leinster’s “Great Stories of Science Fiction”. Judith Merrill’s “Beyond Human Ken”. The first theme anthology that I remember was Donald Wollheim’s 1950 “Flight Into Space”, in which each of the stories was set in the Solar System radiating outward – the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Luna, Mars, the Asteroids, etc. The only theme that most of these offered was that all of the stories were presumably from among the best in the s-f magazines. By the 1960s and 1970s, I think that some of the best short stories of Arthur C. Clarke, Murray Leinster, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, Robert Sheckley, and others were in print in two or three anthologies at the same time, not to mention collections of the author’s own short s-f.

Then in the late 1950s, the first original s-f short story anthologies appeared. The “Star S-F” series, edited by Frederik Pohl, followed in the 1960s & ‘70s by series edited by Robert Silverberg, Terry Carr, and others. The main difference between these and the s-f magazines was that these relied more strongly upon their editors’ reputations (you knew that if all the stories were selected by Pohl, Carr, or whoever, they were bound to be good), and that they were only published when their editor had enough good stories to fill a book – no substandard stories just to fill an issue each month. The most famous/notorious original s-f anthologies were Harlan Ellison’s “Dangerous Visions”.

Then around the 1980s, almost all of the reprints and famous-editor-themed anthologies disappeared. You couldn’t find reprints. When I first tried to sell an anthology of furry stories in the mid-1990s with half-famous s-f reprints (most of which ended up in my 2012 “Already Among Us”) and half stories of equal quality from the furry fanzines (most of which ended up in my 2003 “Best in Show” from Sofawolf Press), I got a professional literary agent who agreed that all of the stories were good; but after trying to find a s-f publisher for almost two years, he gave up.

I learned why at the 1996 Worldcon in Baltimore, when I attended a panel on s-f anthologies with several prominent anthology editors. Someone in the audience asked Martin H. Greenberg why all of the famous s-f stories of the past seemed to have disappeared. During the ‘50s through the ‘70s a s-f reader could hardly avoid Clarke’s “The Sentinel” or Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”; now they were gone. Greenberg explained that for about the last twenty years, all of the publishing companies seemed to have become convinced – or had gotten new editors who were convinced – that the public would not buy reprints any more, no matter how famous they or their authors were; or that the public would buy anthologies of new general s-f even when selected by popular authors/editors. The publishers would only accept anthologies of all-new stories. Even he, with his reputation of editing some of the most popular modern s-f anthologies, could not interest any editor in reprints. They all said that they were glad to talk with him, but to forget his ideas for an anthology with any reprints. They wanted an anthology with all-new stories, and about a theme: s-f stories about robots, s-f about holidays or a specific holiday, s-f about postage stamps and mail of the future, about hotels on other planets and space stations (preferably with a harassed human manager catering to non-human guests), about cats – the public loved cats!, about futuristic schools &/or education, about computers, about future libraries/librarians and hospitals and used-car salesmen, and so on.

Is there anything here for the furry specialty presses? We already have the general-themed “ROAR” and the Halloween-themed “Trick or Treat”. I can’t imagine a whole anthology of stories about furry used-car salesmen.

#29

I’m sure the themed anthologies of original fiction can work – well, keep working – for furry, but as Fuzz noted, there are caveats about the sales potential; people have to really like the theme, I suspect. It’s possible that we should try more shared world type anthologies like New Tibet and MU Press’s old Furkindred concept, too – readers tend to become attached to settings and, of course, recurring characters. Furry has never had a Thieves’ World but maybe it could.