cat book movement

I have written many times about the skewed ratio between cat books and dog books on bookstore shelves (see November 11, 2010 post 'bias'). Finally, another astute cat person has noticed and spoken up.

In the February 2011 edition of Cat Fancy magazine, Steve Dale wrote an nice article on Gwen Cooper's book Homer's Odyssey. He starts by writing about the struggle Gwen had in finding a publisher interested in a book about cats, he writes:

"It's as if agents think that people who have cats don't read," Cooper says.

It's true - walk into a bookstore and check out the pet books. Even though there are more pet cats than dogs (by about 20 percent), around 70 percent of the pet books are about dogs, with maybe 10 percent about miscellaneous pets, ranging from ferrets to parrots. Cat titles come in at around 20 percent, if even that. These are not scientific numbers, but in my experience of writing and broadcasting about pets, I know publishers have this "thing" against publishing books about cats. A few years ago, an acquisitions editor actually told me, "We're more likely to publish a book about hamsters" (Cat Fancy, February 2011, page 28).

Thank you Steve for validating my point. Maybe this is the start of a movement and one day we will see more quality cat books.