# Pay the writer...



## hara-surya (Jul 8, 2020)

I frequently post a video made by the notoriously grouchy and outspoken author Harlan Ellison about paying the writer:






But, seeing how many stories on FA are erotica, and even those that aren't...

Pay the writer...

You're worth it...

Ask for money...

Sell your stories on places like Amazon Kindle Direct and Smashwords.

Your write about weird kinky stuff? So do I!

You don't think Furries stories sell? They do! There's a massive demand untapped for quality stories.

You don't think your stuff will sell? OK, let's rap...

(Also, I rap like Ice-T and Zach de la Rocha so I don't care what you think.)

It will.

Trust me.

People are perverts.

Fifty Shades - as garbage of a book as it was - proves it.

People are perverts.

My grandfather is 94yo and looks at porn. I taught him how to find stuff that wasn't filled with viruses. He likes school girls and so do I...

My father learned I write porn, and probably looked up the weird, kinky shit I write, and he supports me.

Write it, sell it, no matter how kinky it is and you'll probably get sales.

NOW... IMPORANT POINT...

That My Little Pony and Zootopia shit you right? Won't sell. Very, very illegal.

File the serial numbers off and sell it.

That's what Fifty Shades woman did. (It's garbage-quality fanfic of Twilight, which was garbage to start with. Seriously, don't fucking read that shit.)

Don't write porn? Wonderful! Still publish it. As a Furry writer people still think you're a pervert even if you write squeaky clean stories.

Seriously. Don't think "I give it away because no one else will read it" is a good reason. 

People want to read it. Publish it and get paid.


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## Sir Thaikard (Jul 8, 2020)

I've always wondered what the story length preferences were. How many thousand words should a story be before you should self-publish it? I know it should be 100 words but 10,000 words for a short story? 100,000 for a book?

What do you, the expert, have to say on these matters?


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## Deleted member 82554 (Jul 8, 2020)

Pay me, I need a new alternator for my car to get to work.


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## Toasty9399 (Jul 8, 2020)

Sir Thaikard said:


> I've always wondered what the story length preferences were. How many thousand words should a story be before you should self-publish it? I know it should be 100 words but 10,000 words for a short story? 100,000 for a book?
> 
> What do you, the expert, have to say on these matters?



As an expert reader (who's also written 100,000+ words for a fucking rp), I'd say 10,000-50,000 words for a short, 50,000-100,000 for a normal sized book. 100,000-200,000 for a lengthy book. 200,000+ is long as heck. The Fellowship of the Ring is around 187,790 *words*.


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## Toasty9399 (Jul 8, 2020)

Sir Thaikard said:


> I've always wondered what the story length preferences were. How many thousand words should a story be before you should self-publish it? I know it should be 100 words but 10,000 words for a short story? 100,000 for a book?
> 
> What do you, the expert, have to say on these matters?


As to answer your main question.
I will say it's up to personal preference. However, you need to have a completed story and everything you want in it before you even consider publishing. I'd also recommend hiring proofreaders.


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## TyraWadman (Jul 8, 2020)

Stop drinking so much giggle juice!!! 

But you're not wrong. Amidst the terrible Twilight fanfictions, you've got fetish ones whose writers' vocabularies are just god-awful... but if someone mentioned their fetish, it usually generates automatic support!


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## Deleted member 132067 (Jul 8, 2020)

I mean, even without saying that people are horny bastard's who will lap up everything, writing as an art form is just as valid as drawing and should be payed accordingly.


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## Toasty9399 (Jul 8, 2020)

ClumsyWitch said:


> I mean, even without saying that people are horny bastard's who will lap up everything, writing as an art form is just as valid as drawing and should be payed accordingly.


There is a lack of decent sfw published furry books.


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## HistoricalyIncorrect (Jul 8, 2020)

People do indeed buy and read books no matter are they kinky or not. A friend of mine published few of his books and thus motivated me to do the same.

The thing is that language plays a big role here. He writes in Polish and not that many Poles like to read henceforth you should write in English for most lucrative profits.


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## JuniperW (Jul 8, 2020)

Toasty9399 said:


> There is a lack of decent sfw published furry books.


100% agree.


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## Sir Thaikard (Jul 8, 2020)

JuniperW said:


> 100% agree.



Well it makes sense because it pays much worse than NSFW. Talking to other writers as well as my own writing experience shows that the people are willing to pay more and more frequently for NSFW materials.

I totally would write SFW if it was commissioned more, but until that point it doesn't pay the bills.


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## hara-surya (Jul 22, 2020)

Sir Thaikard said:


> Well it makes sense because it pays much worse than NSFW. Talking to other writers as well as my own writing experience shows that the people are willing to pay more and more frequently for NSFW materials.
> 
> I totally would write SFW if it was commissioned more, but until that point it doesn't pay the bills.



I have some plans for a series of R-rated action-oriented Furry stories that parallel a lot of the 1990s action movies (especially Luc Besson) I enjoyed as a teenager except in a cyberpunk-style scifi setting.

One simply retells _Leon: The Professional_ with a former soldier turned hit man and a Judy Hopps sized rabbit woman who had a sheltered life. (Which removes the adult-child romance squick the original movie had.)

Another story combines _Nikita_ (Besson), _Without Remorse_ (by Tom Clancy) and _Surviving the Game_ (basically rich guys hunting a homeless man in the woods) where a drug-addicted cat-woman is taken in and becomes the lover of a Nikita-like women, only to be hunted down and killed for sport leading to a revenge plot with a twist climax.

The final idea has a "mean girl" human teenager almost dying in a car wreck, only for her mind to get recorded out into a mind emulation AI and she's forced to return to school wearing the body of a cat-girl.


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## KohleCoke (Dec 11, 2020)

About the legality of the fanfics. Couple questions. But first, some comedy:

I'd be a weird conversation in prison like:
"What're you in for?"
"Oh, grand larceny. Arson. Bunch'a stuff."
"I'm in for writing a Google Doc about me fucking the ever-loving shit out of Nick Wilde."
*Everyone in the entire cell block looks at me weirdly*

In all seriousness, I do want to know the legal issues to having erotica of copyrighted characters. I'll have to do some research on it, but for now a brief explanation would be fine. But "filing the serial numbers off of it"? I'm not exactly sure what that means but I'll take it I guess. Perhaps just not label it as a Zootopia fanfic (in my example)?

(Also pardon any cussing, I did it for comedic purposes)


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## fernshiine (Dec 12, 2020)

I've been having issues writing my book. I have rewritten it _three times _to get it perfect, changing the entire plot and everything. I dunno what to do or how to feel about this specific one because I can't get the tone right in my head. I really want to sell it someday but, gosh, this process...what's wrong with my creativity lately? I can take the commissions of others with no issue but when it comes to my own book I'm banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what to do.


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## Raever (Dec 12, 2020)

hara-surya said:


> As a Furry writer people still think you're a pervert even if you write squeaky clean stories.



This hit a little too deep. XD


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## ConorHyena (Dec 13, 2020)

RykerTheRacc said:


> About the legality of the fanfics. Couple questions. But first, some comedy:
> 
> In all seriousness, I do want to know the legal issues to having erotica of copyrighted characters. I'll have to do some research on it, but for now a brief explanation would be fine. But "filing the serial numbers off of it"? I'm not exactly sure what that means but I'll take it I guess. Perhaps just not label it as a Zootopia fanfic (in my example)?
> 
> (Also pardon any cussing, I did it for comedic purposes)



There's such a thing as fair use - which is fine, however the moment your straying into money-making territory things stop being classified as fair use. 

However if you change the setting and the characters enough that it's not immediately recognisable anymore you won't run into problems. I did the same for my current novel - it started out as a mad max fanfic (and was intended as one) however halfway through I realized I'd only taken 3 names and the 'wasteland generic desert' thing from mad max, and I'm editing the name and giving it a bit more substance so it can stand on its own.


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## KohleCoke (Dec 13, 2020)

ConorHyena said:


> There's such a thing as fair use - which is fine, however the moment your straying into money-making territory things stop being classified as fair use.
> 
> However if you change the setting and the characters enough that it's not immediately recognisable anymore you won't run into problems. I did the same for my current novel - it started out as a mad max fanfic (and was intended as one) however halfway through I realized I'd only taken 3 names and the 'wasteland generic desert' thing from mad max, and I'm editing the name and giving it a bit more substance so it can stand on its own.


Thanks, I think I could probably release them as "free samples", I guess. It'll probably help with legality. That or I just don't release it


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## ConorHyena (Dec 13, 2020)

RykerTheRacc said:


> Thanks, I think I could probably release them as "free samples", I guess. It'll probably help with legality. That or I just don't release it


you can always post/share fanfics without any legal worries. that's fair use. Just don't go making money off it directly.


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## meeper23 (Dec 20, 2020)

I'd pay a writer up front for fanfic...as long as they don't cease contact and keep the money.  I've had that happen to me recently with the story request that I posted on here.

As for copyright/trademark, my experience has been that I don't have legal ownership of a character or story until it's gone through copyright/trademark.  My OC characters can still be subject to violating copyright/trademark law when they're not officially trademarked by me.  I can't trademark them unless they're meant for commercial use.  Even if I paid a writer for a commission fanfic with my OC characters that don't resemble any who are owned by Disney or Warner Bros, they could still make some legal argument on how they resemble certain Zootopia or Looney Tunes characters.  I don't legally own them unless they're trademarked by me.


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## Lycandope (Jan 5, 2021)

I'm grateful for having a TF and TG fetish while also being a writer.  It's a fairly niche fetish and people are willing to pay for decent stuff, thank god, haha!  Although I don't take a lot of commissions so, eh.  And definitely not too much on the fanfics.  Those are under the radar anyway.  Except I did get dinged years ago when I posted a crappy Magic School Bus TF story.  Just from mods on the site, not the company that owns MSB.


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## Faustus (Feb 2, 2021)

I'd like to point out that writing a story and successfully promoting a story are two very different things.

This isn't 'Field of Dreams'. Just because you write it, it doesn't mean people will buy. '50 Shades of Grey' sold well because the author was very good at self-promotion. She was famously not a good writer.


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