Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries, by Fred Patten.
by Patch O'Furr
This is a companion piece to Fred’s overview of The History of Furry Publishing. See Part One: Beginnings – and Part Two: Current Publishers.
This looks beyond publishing by-fans/for-fans, to books you might find in stores. There are very few because fans make a tiny market for a mainstream publisher. I’ve often said that I think it’s worth ambitiously hoping for a “Furry Bible” coffee table book (like a Taschen book) worth selling in stores one day.
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries.
Okay, we’ve covered the specialty furry publishing companies. What furry books have there been from the non-furry publishers?
Most of them are either s-f & fantasy novels about talking animals, or how-to-draw books. You can probably find the former in the Literature or Science Fiction/Fantasy sections of bookstores, and the latter in the Animation or Art sections.
LITERATURE. The s-f & fantasy selection at bookstores is constantly changing. You can usually find such classics as: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll (1865 and 1871); The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (1908); Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945); and Watership Down, by Richard Adams (1972), in Classics or Literature.
There have been so many s-f novels over the years that I won’t try to list them all. One that many furry fans have cited as particularly inspiring them is The Pride of Chanur, by C. J. Cherryh (1981). It and its sequels have been reprinted many times, and are likely to be easily available. A more Young Adult fantasy, usually in Children’s Books, is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien (1971), which will probably always be in print because it won the Newbery Medal.
The only non-furry anthology of furry short stories is Furry!: The World’s Best Anthropomorphic Fiction!, edited by Fred Patten (2006), still in print despite belief in furry fandom that it is out of print today.