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1/ So, this is going to be a long thread about furry publishing, engendered by someone going off on how furry writers are being taken advantage of by publishers who pay poorly and the Furry Writers& #39; Guild is a cabal and so on. You know what? Let& #39;s examine that. Strap in. #noxp
2/ There are about a half-dozen furry small press publishers, FurPlanet being the biggest. They pay authors in one of two ways: novels get royalties and short stories are paid a flat rate, and the short story rate for furry fiction is what people complain about.
3/ Angry Furry Author said "industry standard is about 6¢ a word"; actually, the Science Fiction Writers of America defines the pro rate for short stories as 8¢/word. Now, there& #39;s only one furry short story *magazine* still "in print" (it& #39;s web only) that I know of: Zooscape.
4/ Zooscape actually pays 8¢/word, with payments capped at $80 (so really up to 8¢/word). Other furry publishers do anthologies, but pay flat rates like magazines, rather than royalty shares. (Put a pin in that.) So! Let& #39;s say you want to do a furry anthology and pay pro rates.
5/ You& #39;ve bought 120,000 words: that& #39;s $9600. Add another $400 for the cover art, and let& #39;s pay the editor a half-cent a word for, you know, editing, another $600. Total: $10,600. (Yikes.) Let& #39;s price out printing with Ingram Lightning Source, the printer FP and others use.
6/ Call it a 256-page 5.5″×8.5″ paperback, color cover, 50# white paper; we& #39;ll print in batches of 100. That& #39;s $4.88 a book. So if we sell it at $19.95, our gross is $15.07. Our break-even point, exclusive of anything but creator payment and production costs, is 704 copies.
7/ So: how much do you think furry anthologies sell? Ten thousand copies? Two thousand? One thousand? Oh, sweetie. This is a *small* market. It& #39;s not uncommon for an anthology to sell around 100 copies in its lifetime. Hitting 300 would be a wild, earth-shattering success.
8/ And THAT fact drives furry short story rates, folks. Even going to 2¢/word and cutting the editor& #39;s pay in half doesn& #39;t break even until 200 copies. And, again, we& #39;re not taking into account shipping, tax, travel costs, dealer& #39;s tables, advertising, and so on.
9/ This is also why furry publishers don& #39;t pay royalties for anthologies. In fact, FurPlanet and some other furry publishers have novel royalty rates which are FAR HIGHER than the industry norm. FP pays authors 50% of net: in our pricing above, that would be $7.54/book.
10/ A typical trade paperback contract from a real publisher (you know, the ones who aren& #39;t screwing authors like furry publishers?) pays about 7.5% of gross; that would be $1.50/book. At FP& #39;s rates, dividing that $7.54/book up between, say, 15 authors, plus the editor?
11/ The authors might make more, but they might not! And to go over 1¢/word, we& #39;re again requiring uncommonly good sales numbers by furry standards. It& #39;s just not worth the extra record-keeping the publisher would be doing…for free. *record scratch* Wait, what?
12/ I can& #39;t speak for every furry publisher everywhere, but I *know* the people at FurPlanet and Sofawolf, and know a couple others a little bit. And folks, they don& #39;t pay themselves. It& #39;s not just that their publishing companies are side jobs, it& #39;s that they& #39;re labors of love.
13/ And this is what pisses me off with this "publishers are taking advantage of you poor starving artists." FurPlanet is not Random House. They& #39;re not Marvel. They are paying out way, way, WAY more than they& #39;re keeping. The truth is that anthologies are just a bad business.
14/ This isn& #39;t a furry-specific thing; novels sell more for *all* publishers. And while, with very few exceptions, furry novels sell way less than non-furry ones, our authors get several times more per unit sale. Let me repeat that: most of our publishers actually pay BETTER.
