Book of therian 'stories' - details

[UnknownTherian]

Everyone who commented on my thread about a therian book liked the idea, so now I think we need to clear up some details.

How many of you on the Werelist actually want to do this book?
If you do, comment here. I don't know how many people are on the website, perhaps hundreds, and if this is going to work we need almost everyone to help in some way or another. Tell your friends! If they like it, ask them to comment here too.

While that is being sorted, if this book were to be made there are a lot of things that are unknown at the moment:

1) What should the title be?
2) Should something be written at the back of the book (blurb)? What would be written?
3) Will there be cover illustrations? Will there be illustrations in the book?
4) What will the format be like?
5) Should there be a foreword? Who should write it?
6) How long should the book be? How many writings will be in the book?
7) And of course, who will organise all of this?

There are many other things of course, but those will have to be clarified later. Many good suggestions on funding/costs have been given on the original thread, but if you have more suggestions than feel free to give them!

To be fair, things like titles, illustrations, formats ..etc. could be submitted and then voted for by everyone, but this is only a suggestion.

I do have one other thing I'd like to ask, who feels that it is best for a wide variety of theriotypes to be covered in the book? E.g. at least one reptile article. That way everyone gets a say?


Please give any opinions or suggestions you have!

[ShadowWalker]

I do! And uh, I hope this wasn't taking liberties, but I mentioned it off site to a couple of people and they loved the idea too. I'm not sure any of them have accounts on Werelist, but if they do I'll point them here.

1) I guess you're taking suggestions here. How about 'Under(neath) the Skin'? It's a nod towards the old trial idea you could tell a werewolf because they had fur under their skin, and Ahkila's essay 'Feathers' comes to mind, where she talk about clawing at the skin and the idea of finding something underneath.

2) I'll leave this to people who have better ideas than me XD Not a clue.

3) A cover illustration would be nice. If we're going with the ebook format, it'll be in black and white, so I think perhaps deciding on a proper cover would be more important if it was also going to be sold as a physical book as well. (On this note, doesn't Amazon offer opportunities to self publish ebooks?)

4) Once again, no idea. I suppose structural wise it depends on the content, with a chapter for experiences, chapter for poetry/prose, chapter for philosophical ideas etc.

5) If there were to be a foreward, it should probably be a brief explanation of therianthropy. Considering most if not all people who buy the book are going to be quite familiar with it, it seems uneccessary to have an entire chapter devoted to an explanation for people who aren't. Although maybe that is good. I don't know XD

6) As long as is reasonable and gets all the good stuff in? I think this would depend on how many submissions we get and the quality of submissions. You're probably looking at around 50,000 words?

7) You seem to be doing a pretty good job :P

I'd also like to say, that maybe there could be an option for submission to be anonymous or submitted under a aliasis? That way, there's no bias among the voters for one thing, but also you guys are quite scary and submitting your work under your own account to be judged could put a couple of people off (including myself, admittedly). If works could be emailed to a person, and then the reciever could put them up anonymously, it would be a good alternative for us horribly shy people. And if a work was chosen the author could come forward to work with everybody else on editing/be paired up with an editor.

It'd probably be good to get quite a bit of variation, but I think originallity of ideas/topic and quality are more important.

[Savage]

The project is very unlikely to work effectively by committee or votes. The trick will be to get people seriously committed who have the skills and real life professional experience to actually do this thing, and let them run with it.

I reluctantly qualify. I'd prefer to take a back seat if there's anyone else who a) has the relevant professional skills and b) the ability to realistically assess how much time such a project will take and the time to follow through.

[UnknownTherian]

ShadowWalker:

And uh, I hope this wasn't taking liberties, but I mentioned it off site to a couple of people and they loved the idea too. I'm not sure any of them have accounts on Werelist, but if they do I'll point them here.

Not at all, this helps actually!

I guess you're taking suggestions here. How about 'Under(neath) the Skin'?

Sounds good. Also it could relate to the fact that some of us feel we have non-human souls.

a chapter for experiences, chapter for poetry/prose, chapter for philosophical ideas etc.

Yes, that's what I was thinking.

If there were to be a foreward, it should probably be a brief explanation of therianthropy. Considering most if not all people who buy the book are going to be quite familiar with it, it seems uneccessary to have an entire chapter devoted to an explanation for people who aren't.

That seems reasonable.

You seem to be doing a pretty good job

Really? Thanks.

I'd also like to say, that maybe there could be an option for submission to be anonymous or submitted under a aliasis? That way, there's no bias among the voters for one thing, but also you guys are quite scary and submitting your work under your own account to be judged could put a couple of people off (including myself, admittedly). If works could be emailed to a person, and then the reciever could put them up anonymously, it would be a good alternative for us horribly shy people. And if a work was chosen the author could come forward to work with everybody else on editing/be paired up with an editor.

I think that's an excellent idea! I'm sure the others will appreciate it.


Savage:

The project is very unlikely to work effectively by committee or votes. The trick will be to get people seriously committed who have the skills and real life professional experience to actually do this thing, and let them run with it.

Now that I think about it, you're right. It could take a really long time if everything was put to vote, and might not work as well... Would a few things be voted for though? So it would be fair?

I reluctantly qualify. I'd prefer to take a back seat if there's anyone else who a) has the relevant professional skills and b) the ability to realistically assess how much time such a project will take and the time to follow through.

You'd be a great help though. Also I would like to ask, who would put together the team to do the book? Could I be in the team? I don't have any professional qualifications with writing aside from writing in the school paper for one year, which can barely be counted, but I'd like very much to be a part of this.

[ShadowWalker]

Perhaps a Skype group or email group of some kind for people willing to commit a lot of time and effort into it, as well as the relevant skills? And personally I think you should be in the team - it's your idea, after all, and you're currently the one organising it ^^

[Savage]

Perhaps a Skype group or email group of some kind for people willing to commit a lot of time and effort into it, as well as the relevant skills? And personally I think you should be in the team - it's your idea, after all, and you're currently the one organising it ^^

I won't Skype for privacy reasons, unless it's chat only. No voice, no face. But I'm not hopping up and down wildly to be on the team, just offering if it's really needed because I actually do have the professional experience editing and preparing manuscripts for publication.

[Raqui]

I might have to sit this one out. I don't have the time right now to commit to it.

[Crowsong]

I'm very interested.

1) I'm terrible with titles, but I honestly feel something good will come once we get things going. A title is not that important right now.
2) Yes, something about therianthropy and the community, probably.
3) Hmm, I don't know, I think it probably depends on how the writings and actual book turns out. Again, that's probably something we'll want to discuss more later.
4) I think the different types of pieces should be organized as such and so there is some order to it and not just random pieces.
5) I have no idea about this one.
6) Well, we should first see how many people want to and do offer pieces, how long those are, how long most companies will publish (from what I've seen, plenty of publishers have a length limit of some sort)
7) I am willing to take charge. Do I have experience? Well, not really, all I've done is write some novels and I'm talking to some publishers, but I can't say I have much experience or anything in this area. Still, its sort of what I want to do with my life, so why not go for this now?

[Savage]

I would suggest that the criteria for the steering committee be:

1. Keep it small and focused. Doing ANYTHING by committee, especially if you need to coordinate long distance communication, takes longer and can get bogged down and sink under its own weight very easily. People can get involved on the writing or assisting end without needing to be on the decision making end. I think it would be a bad mistake to actually run and manage this by committee, as opposed to having one to at most three or four people functioning as editors and proofreaders making decisions about what material to keep, what to cut, and how to typeset it for e-book publication.

2. Real life experience is crucial. If you do not have people on board who have actual editing, proofreading or typesetting skills, you are not going to have a professional quality product at the end. Creating an e-book is not the same as posting on a forum.

3. The majority of the folks who want to help absolutely can help, by submitting material and helping with initial editing and proofing for each other's work. But you can't make the majority of folks decision makers, or it's either not going to get done or it will get done in a much less consistent and professional way.

[Ashen]

While that is being sorted, if this book were to be made there are a lot of things that are unknown at the moment:

1) What should the title be?
2) Should something be written at the back of the book (blurb)? What would be written?
3) Will there be cover illustrations? Will there be illustrations in the book?
4) What will the format be like?
5) Should there be a foreword? Who should write it?
6) How long should the book be? How many writings will be in the book?
7) And of course, who will organise all of this?

I'd be willing to help how I can, but don't have professional editing or publishing experience. I do have a few poems from when I was young that could be added to the poetry section as well as a few stories

as for your questions... I think the bulk of the book should be put together before things like the front/back cover/title/etc are figured out. As well as length... start collecting stories and putting them together.. see how long it turns out then edit it down if needed. Also some things could be done as bullet points.. like some of the stories/snipets from threads like embarrassing shifting stories. *shrugs*