Pets get their ‘awkward family photo’ day in publishing

NEW YORK - Cats dressed as babies, snakes wrapped around their owners’ necks, and “pet-a-like” snaps of dogs and their owners are getting their cringe-worthy day in the publishing sun.

A new book, based on the pet version of the hit comic blog “Awkward Family Photos”, will be published in 2011, Three Rivers Press said on Wednesday.

“Awkward Family Pet Photos” will include “the most outrageous submissions from the awkwardfamilypetphotos.com site, along with never-before-seen photos,” Three Rivers Press said in a statement.

Both sites were created by Mike Bender and Doug Chernack to celebrate the uncomfortable casual snapshots that every family owns.

The book version of “Awkward Family Photos”, released in May, has reached the New York Times paperback advice bestseller list, while the web site gets over 20 million impressions a month.

“Awkward Family Pet Photos” is based on the spin-off site that the bloggers created recently because so many of the photos submitted by the public featured “wonderfully strange” pet pictures.

Three Rivers said they had also signed a deal with Bender and Chernack for a third book, whose topic will be released at a later date.

Awkward baby photos, perhaps?

Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, is owned by Bertelsmann AG’s Random House.