FitCat Publishing is looking for writers for an anthology of rescue cat stories. This is a very special anthology because the stories will all be written in First Person Cat (in other words, through the eyes of the rescued cats), and a portion of the profits will go to cat rescue. This will be a fun and rewarding project, but the quality of writing and desire and ability to promote the book will be key when it comes down to the authors chosen for this project.
We are looking specifically for cat bloggers, cat writers, or aspiring writers whose cats have blogs, Facebook or Twitter profiles — writers who are social media savvy, who are part of the online cat community or cat writing community, and those who have relationships with local rescues. And of course, you must have a rescue cat, who will be the protagonist of your story.
The cats will tell the story of where they came from, how they were rescued, how they came to live with their family and the adjustments they made along the way. The stories must be creative, engaging and have a strong voice. There will be 12 cats and 12 stories in this book, and each story will be between 3,000 and 5,000 words. There is no payment up front, but net profits from the book will be evenly divided three ways: between the writers, non-profit cat or animal rescues, and the publishing company. The release date is tentatively scheduled for summer, 2014
For the first 13 months of release (except for December 2014), the net profit percentage designated for the rescues will go to each of the writers’ chosen groups, one for each month. At the end of the 13 month period, the writer whose month generated the most book sales will also see December’s designated rescue profit percentage go to their group.
FitCat will have exclusive worldwide print and digital rights to the published stories for the first 13 months of release, and nonexclusive rights beginning with the fourteenth month onwards.
Submission requirements:
- A one-page synopsis of your cat’s story. This can be written in third person.
- The first three paragraphs of the cat’s story, written through the cat’s eyes, just the way they might appear in the book. Please double space these paragraphs and indent (tab) the first line of each paragraph.
- One or two of your best photos of the cat narrating the story.
- The URLs to your blog, Facebook and/or Twitter accounts – plus any social networking sites you belong to that you would like to include.
- The cat rescue you would like to support. It must be a 501(c) non-profit.
- A way to contact you, including email (if different from the email you will be using to send the submission) and a phone number.
Please send submissions to rescuesubmissions AT fitcatinc.com. Any questions about this project can also be sent to this email.
Guidelines:
- Stories must be written in plain English; in other words, no LOL catspeak or kitty patois. While this style of writing may work for a 400 word blog post, it would make a 3,000-5,000 word story very hard to follow. Small inflections or speech quirks are fine, but your writing style must not depend on it. It is possible to infuse a feline narrative with lots of personality without stretching language to extremes. See http://www.sparklecat.com for examples. Your cat won’t sound like Sparkle, but he or she should be as strong a personality.
- The requirements are the minimum of what we need to judge your work. If you’d like to include anything else, such as a resume or bio, links to past work, or ways you will help sell the book in your area, that would be more than welcome.
- Only one submission per writer. If you have more than one rescue cat, pick the one you can voice the best or the one with the most interesting story.
Submissions will be accepted until November 1, 2013, and accepted writers will be contacted throughout November. If you are not one of the accepted writers, please don’t feel badly — writing ability is one of the criteria, but not the only one, and it is quite possible that we will get many more good submissions than we can actually use.
[…] You can read about it and find out the submission guidelines here, but I will give you the basics. She will need 12 stories from 12 cats, each between 3,000 and 5,000 words, and the net profits will be split in thirds: a third to the writers, a third to the publishing company and best of all, a third to cat rescue! And it gets even better because each cat will have their own rescue that they support. For the first 13 months of the book’s release, each cat will be assigned a month (except December, 2014 ). When each cat’s month comes up, that is their time to promote their book (and get their human to help), and the rescue profits for that month will go to the rescue they have chosen! At the end of 13 months, the cat whose month earned the most sales will also see their rescue get December’s rescue profits — that is pretty awesome because December is a big sales month for books (it is also why my human separated December from the other months — any cat given that month would have an unfair advantage). […]