Setting Up A Fanfiction Archive - Ebook Download Site
As I mentioned in my last post I had a bit of a catastrophe recently with my saved fanfiction. While I was going through and trying to remember just what it was I had, what I wanted to get again and saving those individual pages into one file etc I had a thought that I wanted to share and perhaps ask others what their interest in it may be…
While I already have the fanfiction archive set up for those writers to submit their fanfic to (thanks) there’s plenty of other sites out there as well and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of who writes where and who submits to what site etc.
With the authors permission I’m wondering whether it would be worth archiving complete stories in a single page and .pdb format for people to download when they want to read the entire story from one page or eReader rather than having to flick through multiple pages - or in my case when they’ve found a story they like and know they are going to want to read it again - have it all there in one page ready for them - does that make sense.
There’s several sites around that already do this of course, some of which I use on a regular basis but they are limited in what fandoms they archive for - I’m thinking more along the lines of making this open to any and all fandoms (much like the fanfic site and story archive already is)
As mentioned I wouldn’t put up/archive any stories unless I had the original authors permission by way of personal email contact etc and they would only be in a couple of formats - either a sinlge html page or .txt and .pdb. They would also only be a bare minimum - ’specially when it comes to .pdb as I’m not all that clever and don’t have the knowledge or software to do the chapter/image etc thing.
Anyway those are my thougts, any readers or writers that would like to share their own thoughts or ideas on this I’d love to hear from you either a comment hear or via readzfic @ yahoo . com . au
Filed under: Fanfiction Ebooks, fanfic
Argh, the site ate my comment, so I’m trying a second time:(
All newer eFiction sites already offer displaying a multichaptered fic in one file, so that could be a starting point for you. From there maybe stuff could be exported.
I’ve also wondered whether it would make sense to offer my own stuff in other formats. But I’ve no idea about ebooks and portable readers (never even held one), so I’m not sure where to start. Any ideas?
Hey
I’ve only got an older version of eFiction (I will upgrade one day when I feel brave enough
) though that does offer me a printer ready page so you’re right that’s a start - of course there’s plenty of other fanfic out there on sites that don’t offer that.
As for different formats I notice some places (those that have separate pages) a few have a single .txt file you can open/download. I know there’s more and more people though that read via an eReader (like me) the problem with that is that again there’s different formats, though I think .pdb (for Palm readers) is probably the most popular, while .pdf or .doc can be read on a variety of different types of readers.
If you want to give it a try on your own stuff so people can upload it to their eReaders you can either save it all as a .doc file and upload it to your site or give me a yell and I’ll format it as .pdb for you to upload. That way you can give it a trial run. LOL the thing is, if you ever decide to get a PDA for yourself to start reading, you’ll wonder what took you so long and will never want to read from the computer again
Thanks for the comment
Vanessa
Oh your other comment was there it just didn’t show up cause I have to moderate first
Thanks for all the explanation! txt seems boring - especially because you can’t do any formatting and I hate for my text to looks so naked and, well, ugly. I’ve thought about offering stuff in .pdf, but I must admit that I was simply too lazy up until now to go through my stories and reformat them:)
I have thought about getting an eBook reader, but only fleetingly. At the moment, I’m more engrossed with podfic, because I can “consume” it while commuting.
LOL yeah I agree that .txt is boring. If I was reading a story via a computer I like it to be in either .html or I’ll open it within Word or something so all the formatting is there. It’s much prettier and easier to read that way.
I admit to not really trying podfic - I guess I prefer to read than listen (things sink in better that way - for me at least) and to be honest until you just mentioned it then I never knew it was as big as what it was - I knew some authors had put their stories to audio, but I just did a search and found a site with a huge list.
And LOL I tend to take my Ebook reader with me everywhere that way I can read while I’m waiting at appointments etc and I always have at least 20 different stories on it ’cause I just never know what mood I’ll be in at any given time.
I also prefer reading to listening - but reading is rather hard while driving your car, so I had to compromise:)
LOL - good point. And since the radio/cd player in my car has decided not to work anymore I might have to consider it as well
Freely downloadable ebooks in lots of categories: http://www.zbooc.com