# Where do you find anthro stories to read?



## Poetigress (Mar 31, 2008)

(I started to make this a reply to the "Trends in Anthro Stories" thread, then realized it should probably be a thread on its own...)

Where do you go to get your anthro/furry fiction fix?  Mostly to websites like FA, Yiffstar, FurRag, and the like, where authors post their work?  Or to fandom-based print publications like _New Fables,_ _Renard's Menagerie_, or _Heat_?  Or to electronic publications like _Anthro!_?  Or, do you look mostly for mainstream-published works (_Redwall_ books, for example) that feature anthro characters?  Do you subscribe to or purchase single issues of any of the publications produced within the fandom?

Just curious (as both a reader and a writer!) to see where people are going to find anthro reading material...


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## Altivo (Mar 31, 2008)

I prefer full length novels over short fiction, and generally I prefer writing that isn't just done for the sake of yiffy scenes. Consequently, I look at full length works from Sofawolf and Bad Dog Books, as well as mainstream publishers. I do read _New Fables_ and _Renard's Menagerie_ and I admit _Anthro_ only came to my attention recently (after one of my stories got a favorable comment there and it was pointed out to me.) Bad Dog Books' serial anthology _ROAR_ seems promising so far, but that's on the basis of only one volume.

Because I'm not particularly interested in "yiff fiction" I don't pay much attention to Yiffstar and I don't read much here on FA unless it has a description that catches my interest. I post at FurRag and do watch the summaries there but probably read only one of ten submissions at most.


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## TakeWalker (Mar 31, 2008)

It helps to not have a fix in the first place. :3 My backlog of FA bookmarks suits me just fine.


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## AnthroHorse (Mar 31, 2008)

yiffstar.com has a lot of stories both yiff and non-yiff.


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## M. LeRenard (Mar 31, 2008)

Honestly, PT, I don't go out of my way to look for it.  I have my little list of writers on FA I like, and I read their stuff every now and then, I try to edit other peoples' work, to keep up my own grammar skills and to share ideas with others, and if I find a book where some or all of the characters are anthro, that's fine too and I'll probably try reading it.  But I don't subscribe to any anthro magazines, online or off, and I tend to not read anything written by someone not specifically recommended to me on sites like FA or otherwise.  
I guess because I don't really need a furry fix.  There's always a larger pile of non-anthro works that I want to read (and now that I'm getting to be proficient in two languages, the list has doubled).  I get enough of a furry fix from writing stuff myself, you could say...  
Anyway, that's probably more info than you wanted, so I'll shut up now.


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## Xipoid (Mar 31, 2008)

If I'm just going to read a little story, FA suffices. If I'm going to read a book, it's rarely anything anthro-related.


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## Adelio Altomar (Mar 31, 2008)

Now that you Mention SofaWolf, you'd be surprised at how easy it is to buy *any* of their products!


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## lobosabio (Mar 31, 2008)

I tend to just read what gets thrown at me on FA.  As for novels, I tend to get books reading reviews on Anthro.


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## RaiN_WolF (Apr 1, 2008)

YiffStar, and various lucrative places technically not on the Internet.


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## Toonces (Apr 5, 2008)

I pretty much just read stories on FA because usually I'm reading a story to critique, and I think FA in general is much more receptive of and built for the more community-oriented aspects of writing. 

If I was just looking to fap though I don't see any reason why I wouldn't be at Yiffstar. So much easier to sort stories and find things to your tastes.


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## Winter (Apr 8, 2008)

I mostly find stories at Yiffstar or VCL, although the latter doesn't get much new posts.

The good thing about Yiffstar is that you can search for non-sex stories if you feel like reading them.

The Yahoo group eroticfurrywriting used to be good, but it's kind of dead-ish now.


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## Vore Writer (Apr 9, 2008)

To be honest, nowhere. I don't really read a whole lot of anthro stuff, other then Redwall. No big shocker there.


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## Adelio Altomar (Apr 9, 2008)

Do you any of you think it's possible to get furry stories into more mainstream media, _like_ Redwall?


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## Ð˜Ð²Ð°Ð½ (Apr 9, 2008)

Adelio Altomar said:
			
		

> Do you any of you think it's possible to get furry stories into more mainstream media, _like_ Redwall?



that might be an interesting topic all on it's own, actually


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## NerdyMunk (Apr 9, 2008)

Adelio Altomar said:
			
		

> Do you any of you think it's possible to get furry stories into more mainstream media, _like_ Redwall?



Well, yes of course. You just gotta get out there, find someone to propose your stories, hire an editor, etc. Or you can create a blog and make your stories there and hope it gets hits and maybe attention.


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## Adelio Altomar (Apr 9, 2008)

Okay, but do any of you think it's _that_ easy?


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## Ð˜Ð²Ð°Ð½ (Apr 9, 2008)

Not in a million years
JUST find someone to propose your stories? JUST hire an editor?
It's possible, but it would be a long, rocky road.


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## Dyluck (Apr 10, 2008)

I tried yiffstar once, but it was 90% crap and I didn't feel like sifting through it. Plus the site has the longest load times I've ever seen in my life.
I've check around FA as well, and it's about 70% crap; far too much for me to bother looking through, especially without a search function.
However, I have found a few good writers on FA that I enjoy, so I check their favourites section from time to time to see if any stories show up in there; good writers tend to have good tastes in stories.

Edit: By "crap" I mean anything below a college reading level, which I've been reading at since elementary school. I have very refined tastes in literature.


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## Poetigress (Apr 11, 2008)

brownsquirrel said:
			
		

> Adelio Altomar said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...





			
				Adelio Altomar said:
			
		

> Okay, but do any of you think it's that easy?





			
				nameless_ermine said:
			
		

> Not in a million years
> JUST find someone to propose your stories? JUST hire an editor?
> It's possible, but it would be a long, rocky road.



My reponse to all this boils down to... well, yes and no.  

If we're talking about short stories, published individually in magazine markets, yes, it's possible to get furry stories in mainstream markets (by "mainstream" I mean "outside the fandom," as in, not counting markets like _Renard's Menagerie_ and _New Fables_, even though the quality there is on par with many semi-pro markets).  The best chance of selling an anthro story, of course, is in sf/f markets, but it depends on the market and the story.  Last year, I sold "Moon, June, Raccoon" -- which features a talking raccoon character -- to an online literary journal called _The Summerset Review_, which isn't even primarily a sf/f market.  But in that case, the story was meant to be humorous and quirky (the raccoon was a secondary character, although he played a large role in the story, and the others were human), and the editor was open to unusual stories and genres.

If we're talking about novels, again, the answer is yes, although still mostly within the sf/f genres.  Plenty of novels with anthro/zoomorphic characters have been published by big houses, many for the children's/YA market (as with Redwall, Clare Bell's _Named_ series, David Clement-Davies' books, and so on), but also some for adults, the best-known probably being S. Andrew Swann's moreau books.  In the end, I don't think it's any more difficult -- or any easier -- than publishing any other book: writing, revising, crafting the query, submitting to an agent (there are publishers that take unagented submissions, but they're getting fewer and farther between), who then submits it to editors on your behalf... etc., etc.  So, Easog, it's certainly possible, provided the writer is committed to working on their craft and then doing the work and research necessary to get an agent (or sell directly to a publisher, though again, I wouldn't recommend it these days).

I will say that, to sell anthro work in the mainstream, there does need to be a reason why your characters are anthro, even if it's subtle.  If what you mean by "furry stories" is stories where the characters are simple human stand-ins in our current world, and their animal aspects don't figure into the story's society at all -- in short, if you could substitute humans with no change to the overall story -- I don't think most mainstream editors are going to go for that.  But if you're using the anthros consciously, especially if there's some element of humor, social satire, or social commentary, I think it's certainly possible for that to be accepted in the mainstream, if (as with any other genre) the story and the writing are good.  (And if you write weres or shapeshifters, that's even more acceptable, although you're going to have to do something new with them to get past most editors.)

As far as adult work goes, in my experience I haven't had much luck in the past with selling furry stories to erotica markets -- they're still mentally coming to grips with that whole animal aspect, and most seem pretty paranoid about going near anything that feels like bestiality to them, even if the 'animals' involved walk on two legs, wear clothing, and certainly seem capable of giving traditional informed consent.  :?  So I've kept that work within the fandom to save time and energy.  But even that may change, or may have already changed, given the current boom in "paranormal romance" (read: "sexy werewolf stories").  *shrug*


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## Xipoid (Apr 11, 2008)

Poetigress said:
			
		

> [Many Things]



Hmm... that's very interesting albeit not surprising and quite understandable from the erotica stand point (as in that they are adverse conjunctively with why, not just why).


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 20, 2008)

My issue is that it seems difficult to get books with talking animals or otherwise published in anything but the YA market.  One of my biggest fears is that librarians everywhere are going to put my books in that section simply because they see a fox-guy on the cover, and as a result the biggest audience I'll have is angsty D&D playing preteens and teenagers.  But I've seen this kind of thing happen in the libraries where I worked (namely with the His Dark Materials series, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is not meant for young adults).  It just feels like anthropomorphic animals are always associated with children.
Yes, no?  It's one of the reasons I haven't read a lot of published anthro fiction: I avoid the young adult section most of the time.


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## Anubis16 (Apr 20, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:
			
		

> But I've seen this kind of thing happen in the libraries where I worked (namely with the His Dark Materials series, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is not meant for young adults).



I couldn't agree more (I know it's off topic, but whatever).  I read it as a "young adult," and then re-read it not too long ago.  I doubt a kid could get most of the major themes, and there's some pretty dark and brutal scenes in it.  I'm so pissed off they took out all references to god in the movie (which I refuesed to see), which was the ENTIRE point of the book


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## Poetigress (Apr 20, 2008)

S. Andrew Swann's books were published as adult fiction, as was Michael H. Payne's _The Blood Jaguar_.  I think it depends on the content and themes of the rest of the book -- an anthro book with a teen/YA protagonist would almost certainly be published as YA, but an adult protagonist would be more up to the publisher based on what the story involves.  It can also depend on the author's track record -- if an author has written several books for adults, their anthro book might be more likely to show up on the adult shelves than one by an author who has been writing for midgrade or YA.  And, as I mentioned before, stories that use animal motifs for satire/commentary (guy turning into a dog or something) can easily show up in the adult sf/f section or even the adult general/literary section.  

As far as I'm aware, His Dark Materials is something of a crossover, which has been published in editions for YA and adults (which essentially means different cover art).

I admit, though, I don't personally attach any stigma to the YA market; there is a lot of very good fiction, particularly sf/f, being written for teens in the last decade or so, and it's not all angsty clique-y stuff, either.  Clare Bell's _Named_ series was published as YA, but for me it holds up with "adult" fiction.  My most recent YA purchase was Charles de Lint's simple and elegant _Wolf Moon_ -- I believe it may have originally been published for adults but has now been reissued by the Firebird imprint as YA.  

My point is, the lines between fiction for young adults and fiction for adults are getting blurrier every day.  So it really doesn't bother me.  *shrug*  I know there are plenty of people, in the fandom and out of it, who don't consider children's/YA to be "real" writing, essentially out of ignorance and/or arrogance, and if nothing else, those people miss out on a lot of good reading (for one thing, you can't get away with loads of elegant prose that goes nowhere when you're writing for young readers -- they won't wade through it like adults will).  Frankly, if you avoid the YA section most of the time, you might not be in the best position to judge what's going on there and whether it might be an appropriate audience.  In short, I wouldn't necessarily view it as an insult or a lesser market, although I could understand why it might not be appropriate depending on what you're writing, theme- and content-wise.

As far as anthro animals being associated with children, sure they are, and to me it's no big surprise.  We grow up with the stories of Beatrix Potter, of Goldilocks and the Three Bears -- all sorts of fairy tales, folklore, and picture books that feature talking animal characters.  In writing for children, animal characters are often used because they can easily cross borders of race and nationality, giving the books and characters wider appeal.  So there is a lingering, childlike sense of play and fantasy that goes along with anthro characters, even when they're being serious adults dealing with adult issues.

After all, let's not forget, the writing, the reading -- it's all just a big game of make-believe anyway.  >^_^<


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 21, 2008)

> there is a lot of very good fiction, particularly sf/f, being written for teens in the last decade or so, and it's not all angsty clique-y stuff, either.


Of course.  But the fact is that it's still the Young Adult market, which means that young adults are going to be the biggest audience for that market.  It's just a business concern; YA isn't my target audience, so I feel like if the book gets marketed as a YA book, there won't be too many people reading it.  Philip Pullman got away with it because he's an awesome writer; I don't have that luxury.
And I love how you assume I don't read YA fiction because I see it as low-scale.  Quality has nothing to do with it; it's just a matter of my tastes.  I tend to prefer the kinds of themes that aren't allowed in YA fiction.


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## Poetigress (Apr 21, 2008)

If the book's meant for adults, I can understand that you might not want it published as YA, and that might not even be necessary -- as I said, there are plenty of "anthro" books that have been published for adults (Robert J. Sawyer's Quintaglio trilogy, C. J. Cherryh's Chanur series if you want to count anthro-like aliens), and there will certainly be more.  It may be a more difficult path, but I don't see it as an impossible one if the story warrants it.  

I think part of the problem may be not so much that publishers are assuming "talking animals=kids," but that teens are more open to reading those types of books than adults may be -- they don't have the mental barriers that adults do.  Thanks to things like Japanese entertainment, for example, preteens and teens are likely to simply say "fox-guy! cool!" and go on with the story, where adults might be more likely to frown and fixate on what the point is of having such a weird character.  

After all, even though I don't have relevant statistics to quote, it seems to me that a good chunk of the furry fandom itself is still in high school...


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 21, 2008)

I guess that's the worry I have, because they'll think, 'fox-guy, cool!', read it, and then be bored out of their minds because it's not at all what they were expecting.  Then they'll tell their friends and family not to read it. 


> After all, even though I don't have relevant statistics to quote, it seems to me that a good chunk of the furry fandom itself is still in high school...


There's a thread somewhere on this forum that agrees with you.  High school and early college.  I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope that I write good enough adult fiction that it won't ever be misconstrued as something else.


> where adults might be more likely to frown and fixate on what the point is of having such a weird character.


That's the trick, right there.  I think you just have to play on that well enough that people get it and like it.  Which is tough.

But anyway... I guess I've completely derailed this thread.  When I get back to the States and their incredibly wonderful library system, I think I'm going to look for these authors you've been recommending.  I do still like furry fiction, after all.


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## Poetigress (Apr 21, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:
			
		

> I guess that's the worry I have, because they'll think, 'fox-guy, cool!', read it, and then be bored out of their minds because it's not at all what they were expecting.



Depends on what they were expecting.  If they've been completely misled by the cover art, cover blurb, and so on... then, yeah.  Otherwise, hey, who knows, maybe they'll get their horizons broadened a bit.   Teens -- especially older teens -- read plenty of stuff published for adults, after all, so while it might not be stereotypical 'teen' subject matter, it may not be as far out of their sphere as one might think.



> I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope that I write good enough adult fiction that it won't ever be misconstrued as something else.



Well, my point in a nutshell is, to me, readers are readers, whether they're fifteen or fifty.  I'm very much with C. S. Lewis that no reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table (I read Stephen King in fifth grade and read children's books now), so while it's true that being published as YA might mean fewer adult readers, that's not set in stone, and especially so in sf/f -- particularly if the work is doing something innovative and unusual.  (This is kind of a tangent, but there have been several sf/f books for teens reviewed in the last couple of years in _F&SF_, which I found to be an interesting development.)  

For my part, the novel I'm currently revising isn't specifically targeted to a YA audience, but since the protagonist is roughly in his early twenties, and the thrust of the story is his learning to accept and deal with the responsibilities of adulthood and leadership, I could certainly see teen readers enjoying it (and yeah, there's some sexual content, but not drastically out of the realm of what gets published in YA).  With that book, though, the issue is that there isn't a major ironclad reason for the characters to be anthro (unless we start arguing atmosphere and a fable-like feeling, or that sort of thing, which is reasonable but not always convincing), so that's why I'm pursuing publication within the fandom instead of in the mainstream.  So in that case, the furry demographic overrides the age one, if that makes any sense.    There's definitely a lot to consider when you start figuring out what your options are for publication.


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## M. LeRenard (Apr 21, 2008)

That's why I'm going to try my damndest to get an agent, first.  He or she can figure all that stuff out for me.


> Teens -- especially older teens -- read plenty of stuff published for adults, after all, so while it might not be stereotypical 'teen' subject matter, it may not be as far out of their sphere as one might think.


Heh... it would be cool to get a cult following.


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## Poetigress (Apr 21, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:
			
		

> That's why I'm going to try my damndest to get an agent, first.  He or she can figure all that stuff out for me.



Exactly.  IMO anyone who's going to try to sell a book to mainstream publishers really needs to have an agent.  Things were different years ago, but now there are just too many publishers that aren't even looking at unagented submissions, so without an agent you start off with three-quarters of the doors automatically closed to you.  (And if you can't sell your book to an agent, you likely won't be able to sell it to an editor anyway.)

To me it's like having a real estate agent -- yeah, you probably could sell your house yourself, but the market gets tighter every day, so why put yourself through that kind of hassle when there are experts to handle all the details for you?


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## TakeWalker (Apr 21, 2008)

As this may theoretically one day become relevant for me... how does one go about getting an agent? <.< New thread suggest, about getting published?


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## thebeast76 (Apr 21, 2008)

I don't necessarily have a single source, but I usually get 'em from my own mind. I find a topic that interests me, then I morph and twist it to make it my own. I do give credit to people if they were a heavy influence on it, but yeah, they're usually from my mind.


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