For myself, writing in the 70's and having no awareness of any Furry venues of publishing, I always assumed I'd be collecting rejection slips from ordinary publishers, basing my pleas to be taken seriously on the success of Richard Adams and Richard Bach.
I'm firmly of the opinion that nothing published only in an APAzine counts as being available to the general public. I was writing Furry stuff all throughout the 80's and 90's, and never heard a word about Rowrbrazzle. It wasn't something that could be purchased at anybody's local comic shop. As far as I was concerned at the time, there never was and never would be specialty publishers for what I did.
But, the minute I heard about The Furry Community and that there were indeed specialty publishers, my attitude was, "Why in the world would I want to try to sell this to an ordinary publisher if there are publishers that already have an appreciation for it?"
But then there was this other thing called internet self publishing, and I decided I'd rather get in on that, as even a specialty publisher would make demands I'd find it hard to conform my work to.
Anyway, the fact that there are now specialty publishers totally changes the situation. People are not now discouraged from producing Furry novels simply because there is now a reasonable prospect of publication. So naturally we have more.
But then again, I'm sometimes given to wonder how many other would be Furry authors like myself existed in the 70's, 80's & 90's who were totally oblivious to even the possibility of a Furry scene someday existing. How many unfinished Furry projects from that time period languish in desk drawers and file cabinets, while their authors remain oblivious to the existence of Furry Fandom, if they are even still alive?
In the 70's I had this crazy theory that where there is one Furry author struggling to create something, there must logically be more. I couldn't possibly be the only one who read Bambi and Watership Down and thought, "I could do something like that."
But for the longest time I dismissed this theory - thinking, as most around me did, that my particular brand of insanity was unique to myself, and the few authors who still, ever so rarely, managed to get professionally published.
And now that my theory has been proved correct, and I know that I am far from the only one, it bothers me that those who try to make sense of the history of the interest don't have any way of taking into account how many fans like myself there were during those years who might have publish Furry works had the specialty publishers not come too late - had the fandom itself not been so loathed to reveal itself to those who needed it.
For myself, writing in the 70's and having no awareness of any Furry venues of publishing, I always assumed I'd be collecting rejection slips from ordinary publishers, basing my pleas to be taken seriously on the success of Richard Adams and Richard Bach.
I'm firmly of the opinion that nothing published only in an APAzine counts as being available to the general public. I was writing Furry stuff all throughout the 80's and 90's, and never heard a word about Rowrbrazzle. It wasn't something that could be purchased at anybody's local comic shop. As far as I was concerned at the time, there never was and never would be specialty publishers for what I did.
But, the minute I heard about The Furry Community and that there were indeed specialty publishers, my attitude was, "Why in the world would I want to try to sell this to an ordinary publisher if there are publishers that already have an appreciation for it?"
But then there was this other thing called internet self publishing, and I decided I'd rather get in on that, as even a specialty publisher would make demands I'd find it hard to conform my work to.
Anyway, the fact that there are now specialty publishers totally changes the situation. People are not now discouraged from producing Furry novels simply because there is now a reasonable prospect of publication. So naturally we have more.
But then again, I'm sometimes given to wonder how many other would be Furry authors like myself existed in the 70's, 80's & 90's who were totally oblivious to even the possibility of a Furry scene someday existing. How many unfinished Furry projects from that time period languish in desk drawers and file cabinets, while their authors remain oblivious to the existence of Furry Fandom, if they are even still alive?
In the 70's I had this crazy theory that where there is one Furry author struggling to create something, there must logically be more. I couldn't possibly be the only one who read Bambi and Watership Down and thought, "I could do something like that."
But for the longest time I dismissed this theory - thinking, as most around me did, that my particular brand of insanity was unique to myself, and the few authors who still, ever so rarely, managed to get professionally published.
And now that my theory has been proved correct, and I know that I am far from the only one, it bothers me that those who try to make sense of the history of the interest don't have any way of taking into account how many fans like myself there were during those years who might have publish Furry works had the specialty publishers not come too late - had the fandom itself not been so loathed to reveal itself to those who needed it.