In a little over two weeks, Zooscape is going to announce that they’re raising their pay rate, with the goal of becoming a SFWA-qualifying market by the end of the year.
In order to afford the increase in pay, Zooscape will have to publish fewer stories.
Unless Zooscape can find more funding, it will return to its original plan of publishing 5-6 stories, 3x/year, instead of the current 8-9 stories, 4x/year.
This is unfortunate, but I think it will be worth it for the furry genre to have their first pro level market.
With a pro level furry market, authors will be able to qualify for SFWA with sf/f stories sold explicitly under the genre label of FURRY.
That’s a big deal. It won’t be very many authors at a time, given Zooscape’s current funding constraints.
But this is still a very big deal.
The furry literary scene has been longing for, pushing for, fighting for, and dreaming of a pro level furry market for a long time. It’s something I first started discussing with other furry writers nearly a decade ago.
Hopefully, as of December, Zooscape will be that market.
What does this mean for furry writers?
It means that if you want to get a pro level sale, you should be submitting to Zooscape, as soon as they re-open, as often as you can. It also means you should be trying to submit short pieces for the genre — ideally in the 1-2k word range.
Why am I recommending furry writers submit pieces in the 1-2k range?
1) That’s long enough for the sale to count towards qualifying for SFWA
2) Zooscape, like any serious market, will have to be very judicious about the stories it buys, and realistically? Shorter is cheaper.
Yes, Zooscape will still publish longer pieces. However, some of those longer stories will be reprints, and for the others, there simply won’t be as many slots available as for shorter pieces.
Also, by longer, I mean up to 5k for original fiction. So, still pretty short for furry.
Your chances of selling to Zooscape will be better if you can write a knockout furry story in the 1-2k range.
Also, stories of that length generally take less time to write. As a writer myself, with practice, I’ve learned to write one in a couple hours, sometimes less.
Writing flash fiction is fun. You get the sense of accomplishment from finishing a story more often than with longer pieces, and that feeling is a real charge.
Also, it’s great practice, and you can learn so much about your own writing style, while building up a pile of stories.
My own Entangled Universe trilogy only became possible after I spent a couple months seriously practicing writing flash fiction about those settings and characters, learning how to concisely and powerfully evoke the furry space opera aesthetic that I’d been envisioning.
So, if you’re a furry writer who’s interested in getting into SFWA, this might be a good time to start practicing writing flash fiction.
Of course, none of this advice is a guarantee of anything. Zooscape will publish the best furry stories it can find.
But you can increase your chances of selling to any market by writing more pieces of the type and length they need and submitting often.