Beyond the three big furry publishers (RV, FP, SW), I have seen a couple small, independent publishers of furry lit and I was wondering everyone’s thoughts on those companies. The Ursa Majors have shown that independent publishers using things like Create Space can be nominated and recognized by the fandom, but are they a viable publishing means to both sell and to purchase furry literature?
What are your personal thoughts on this?
Well, By Sword and Star was published by Anthro Dreams, which would fall under that category, and uses POD publishing.
I guess the question would be what you consider “viable.” In my case, thankfully Rabbit Valley, FurPlanet, and Bad Dog all distribute Anthro Dreams books, so there’s at least the opportunity for the physical product to show up at cons, and it’s visible enough at all those sites alongside other works from those publishers. So in some practical ways, from a potential customer’s perspective it’s not that different from having been published by one of those publishers – except that I’d imagine the publishers tend to push their own books at cons more front-and-center than the things they distribute, which is perfectly understandable. If I didn’t have that distribution aspect, things would have been a lot tougher.
That said, I knew going in that AD wouldn’t have tables at cons and wouldn’t be doing much in the way of marketing outside of the podcast, so I knew I’d have to step in as much as I could. I do think I underestimated how much furries buy books at cons, so I’d advise authors to consider that element when looking at publishers – unless you can self-publish or go with a micropress and have a dealer’s table at cons yourself, which was something I couldn’t afford. As far as marketing, besides obvious announcements on FA and such, I also did an FA ad (with some help) and printed up postcards from Vistaprint and got people to help me distribute them on the flyer tables at various cons I couldn’t attend.
I will say that I don’t think furry readers really care where something’s been published. I don’t think there’s a major issue with self-publishing or POD stigma, at least not like there still can be outside the fandom. From what I’ve seen, to a lot of furries, a book is a book, so I don’t think there’s necessarily more respect given from the fandom at large to being published by, say, Rabbit Valley or somewhere, versus publishing something yourself. (Among furry writers it might be different; I’m just going by what I see in FA comments and the like.)
I feel like a lot of it just has to do with ease of access. When looking for books, I don’t usually know what I want prior to searching. I browse and read blurbs on the websites. The publisher makes it easy to just do a general search and go through several options. AD, as Poetigress mentioned, has the benefit of being supplied by several of the other publishers.
Besides the difficulties that promoting your own work would have (in general, and not just in the fandom), it makes it harder by the fact that I can’t just go to one website and have all the options in front of me. I’d have to browse other websites that sell other types of things/other types of literature and go searching until I found the furry subcategory. And then that’s only as effective as the author was at tagging their book with keywords.
Hmm…that gives me a thought for a future project. Maybe a general database of self-published furry lit? Does that exist somewhere already and I just wasn’t aware of it?
I’m gradually starting to build up a small core of furry writers for Jaffa Books here in Australia. At present I’m mainly an Australian retailer for US furry writers, and that’s good for me as a start. Already got Kyell Gold and Jess Owen onboard, plus a few local furs here are getting behind me with an anthology I’m hoping to release in a few months.
From what I can tell by being involved in publishing, is that by and large, within the fandom being attached to a publisher doesn’t matter as much as it does outside. Not to say it doesn’t help - it does - but as was mentioned above, the stigma of self-publishing isn’t as negative as you’ll find elsewhere. Now, I could go on for hours about whether that self-publishing stigma is deserved or not, but that’s a topic for another day.
There’s also Legion Printing; they handle all of Phil Guesz’s stuff.
IMO the issue would be being able to get the book to the readers, in terms of awareness. The Big Three go to all the cons.
On the other hand, the Big Three also carry each other’s books, and I would assume they’d be all too willing ot distribute for smaller pubs too.
I would be all too happy to get on top of this, man. 
From what I can tell by being involved in publishing, is that by and large, within the fandom being attached to a publisher doesn't matter *as much* as it does outside. Not to say it doesn't help - it does - but as was mentioned above, the stigma of self-publishing isn't as negative as you'll find elsewhere.I've noticed that some authors bounce between publishers in the Fandom. Kyell, Ryan Campbell Kevin Frane have books with both FP and SW, for instance. RL publishers do this (I've seen authors who have books with three or four different small presses). On the other hand, a lot of small presses don't want editors to work with them from the outside (a wall I've been hitting hard).
He also published some stuff with Melange (nonfurry small press), but I don’t know if he’s still working with them or not.
I've noticed that some authors bounce between publishers in the Fandom. Kyell, Ryan Campbell Kevin Frane have books with both FP and SW, for instance.
I’ve noticed that recently and wondered about the reasoning behind it – if it’s just to share the wealth as far as the more popular authors are concerned, and help the other guys out, or if there’s something about the material that makes it better suited to one place or another. I know Ashe said at the publishing panel at Fur 'the More that the Big Three furry publishers do differ slightly in what they tend to publish or do better with, but I never got a chance to find out more about what he meant and how that broke down publisher by publisher. Would still like to know for future reference, personally. 
I’ve noticed that SW has shifted into doing a lot more general audience publishing, while FP and RV still tend to publish a higher percentage of erotica than anything else. Other than that I don’t notice much of a difference.
Sofawolf has a lower limit of 60,000 words for novels, so I guess novellas go to FP.
That’s something else. Rabbit Valley will publish things of any length (to an extent). They just price it accordingly. I’m currently working with a couple of novels that are between the 40k-55k zone and it’s nice to know that they’ll have somewhere to go when I’m done with them.
I think it has to do with Sofawolf’s printing model. RV and FP are more print-on-demand. They don’t keep large amounts of stock; they maybe get a print of 20-30 books, and when those run out, order more. This allows RV/FP to 1) accept a lot of titles, and 2) to take titles that will not sell a lot.
Sofawolf orders print runs by the thousand. Therefore, they are very picky. Their submission process is more rigorous, and they spend a year on editing, which the other publishers only do a single proofread run.
This is why it would be good to get interviews with the three major publishers. Could give more of an insight to their thinking.
I hate to change the topic (I know it’s against the rules) but I come to this as a sort of amateur. Reading all about people getting published makes my head spin and I’m a little scared to really go forward. That being said, I also have trouble making stories that are longer than 30k words. It’s really difficult for me to write very long things. My most recent work has been closer to 15k words, actually. There’s two reasons for this, I’m a performer and it’s difficult for me to speak for more than an hour. A lot of my shorter works clock in at about this amount of time and that’s been a good way for me to get my work on my show.
So I have two questions:
Does being a novella writer limit my ability to publish as an author?
I was wondering if any of the big three publishers take audio books. Usually I can get about an hour of high quality audio, and, though I’m not certain, this should be one CD’s worth of audio. Is there a market for this kind of work?
Don’t be afraid, because the process is painless. You say “Hey I’d like to get (this) published.” Publisher: “Okay! Submit the finished product.” Submit. Is it pure rancid poop? No? “We’ll print it!” The worst they can say is “No”.
Does being a novella writer limit my ability to publish as an author?In the fandom? No. I write mainly short stories and aside from Handcuffs & Lace, that's all I've had published. But not just short stories - novellas work in the fandom. Kandrel recently published [i]Pile[/i], which is 25K words, and Handcuffs & Lace is 36K.
IMO the issue a super short novella (25K or less) sold by themselves is price. Pile is $10. That’s a LOT for only 60 pages of text (and if you’re not getting it at a con, that’s $5 extra for shipping). But that’s how the publisher’s price their stuff - $10 for under 50-60,000 words, $20 for above. But to me, a novella of 40-60K at $10 is very, very attractive; I’m more willing to drop ten dollars down on a book than twenty.
If you have stories that are up to 30,000 words, there are a few things you can do.
Anthologies. Typically anthologies take stories of 10K or less. The challenge here is finding a story that fits the theme of the anthology.
Hot Dish, put out by Sofawolf, is an anthology of stories too long for Heat; their stories run about 10-15,000 words. Bare in mind they are all adult, so if it’s 15K and clean you’re out of luck.
Another example of this is Five Fortunes, which is an anthology of 5 novellas. Poetigress, how many words was your story in that book?
Make a collection. If you have two or three stories, each about 15-30K, put those together and boom, you have a book. I myself am working on a short story collection, and I’m trying to hit 60K simply because that’s the roof for charging $10 for a book. Now, you want those stories to be somehow related; genre, theme, setting, characters, SOMETHING. Otherwise “Hey here’s three stories but they’ve got nothing in common” is hard to market.
Ebooks. Ebooks are SUPER popular and easy (as long as you get the formatting down). The fandom even has its own ebook site (BaddogBooks.com). Now, ebooks are a whole kettle of fish about how to do them successfully, but it’s one avenue to take, even within the fandom.
I was wondering if any of the big three publishers take audio books. Usually I can get about an hour of high quality audio, and, though I'm not certain, this should be one CD's worth of audio. Is there a market for this kind of work?
I would LIKE to know the answer to this, but I don’t know how much it would cost to MAKE a CD and how much you could get off each sales (I know various artists make art CDs, but you don’t see a lot of them so maybe it’s not workable there). If the cost of production is too much, I don’t think publishers would do it. Now, Unless the CD was priced low ($3-5), I personally would prefer a CD with several stories on it, not just 1 story worth 20 minutes to hour; a 4 hour CD is far more palatable to me personally. IMO online would likely be a much better method (no production costs, instant delivery, etc) but you’re not getting sales at cons.
About whether they could sell, period (CD or online), I can’t personally comment. But I did ask M C A Hogarth about this last year; she has several audiobooks on Audible.com and (I think) on her site. Her response via email was this:
Audiobooks are a new endeavor for me; I just started them middle of last year. So this is very much still an experiment!You ask how well audiobooks do, and I’ll say that sales are quite slow! Unfortunately, this is why I don’t offer too many of them at present. I’m still committed to doing them when I can afford them, but a novel-length audiobook starts at $1500 and often is more like $3500 once you’re done hiring the actor and editor. I’m lucky enough to have run into some excellent actors, so I hire them when I can–we all have to eat–but unfortunately the titles move only one or two units a month, so I have to be conservative about what I invest in.
I think part of this, though, is that there isn’t much discussion about audiobooks in the furry community! I keep searching for someone to review audiobooks (maybe for Flayrah) or talk about them on furry podcasts, but I haven’t run into anyone yet. Do you know anyone like that? I could spare the change for some review copies of the audiobooks if I could get them more publicity.
Bare in mind I suspect Hogarth went to professional VAs/audio editors. I imagine you could get someone to handle that much cheaper in the fandom - podcasters typically do their own audio editing, so you could probably pay one of them to handle it much cheaper than having it done professionally. Were it me (and bare in mind, I would like to see Handcuffs & Lace in audio), I would split royalties with the VA, so that would cut down costs.
Another avenue you can take if you want to emphasize your performing aspect: offer to read other works in audio. I think that’s one of the challenges that fandom authors trying to get their books in audio have faced: finding a voice actor, and then finding one who will actually finish the product.
It regard to audiobooks, Kyell has had a few of his books done in audio and posted on Audible. My mind escapes me at who recorded them, but it was someone in the fandom. My mind keeps wanting me to say it was Savrin, but I’m not 100% on that. He’s also recorded a couple of them himself.
Audiobooks could be something that BDB may end up doing in the future, and I would quite enjoy that. I know that Audible is a convenient option for a lot of people because most people (assuming they listen to audiobooks on their daily commute, like I do) get through one or two (sometimes three) books a month, and Audible gives you one credit per month with your subscription. $15.10 per audiobook is probably better than the fandom would end up charging for it. So that’s definitely still up in the air.
It was just over 40K, which by some definitions would be a novella and by others would actually be a short novel. (It’s also awesome, but I’m biased.) 
Will come back and comment on this thread more later when I’m not working…
As Rechan mentioned: ebooks ebooks ebooks! They may not be to everyone’s liking, but one thing they are definitely doing is helping the novella market. No one wants to be a 60-70 page print book. It looks rather sad and pathetic. However, as an ebook that’s another matter entirely! Publishers can make it nice and cheap to entice readers who are just after something quick and easy to read. Everyone goes home happy.
Another option for you, if you are dead-set keen on seeing your work in print format is anthologies. (Again, it seems like Rechan beat me to saying that too!) But I shall add that I’m always on the look out for novellas to go into anthologies. I have one already by a furry writer I nabbed from FA a couple of years ago. I’d love to be able to add more. But three or four 20-25k novellas will make a decent sized book that won’t look sad and pathetic on a bookshelf.
I think we might try to do this on Fangs & Fonts, but we’ll see.
I think we already have a thumbs up from Fuzz and someone else. (Ocean knows better than myself)
That print run information is actually rather interesting as I didn’t know that. It does explain a lot.
I think I very much like the concept of ebooks, especially because all my stories have minor, fun, full color pictures and I know full color printing is extremely costly. I could simply remove the pictures, but I really like having them because I was a picky reader as a child and pictures are eyecatching and fresh.
I’m certain I could produce audio books for much cheaper (including the acting and audio engineering), though I’m probably feeling a beginner’s high. I’ve done a lot of the reading necessary to become a professional, I simply lack some of the real-world experience and high end gear associated with these endeavors. Whether or not I could produce a real, high-quality work is rather dubious (still practice practice practicing). I haven’t even published my writing yet and I already want the audio book!
Thank you very much however. I feel a little more confident after reading this thread. I’m going to have to look into baddogbooks.com.
You really have to watch it with audio books/dramas as you can really tell the professional/high end ones from the lower, thrown together ones.
If you want to see how lower end ones can sound better, check out Podio Books, especially from those that succeeded like Scott Sigler http://scottsigler.com/ who did his readings in his closet and ended up succeeding hugely off his podio books.
I tried listening to Scott Sigler reading one of his books several years ago and couldn’t make it past the first few chapters with how horrible his voice acting was. Ended up having to take the book out from the library to finish it that way instead (still wasn’t that impressed, but at least it was easier to read than listen to).
I’m assuming he’s improved since then.