Supernatural Rec and OTW archive squee/meta

[amalthia]

Supernatural

Screw You, We're From Texas by makeit_takeit (Jared/Jensen) INSTANT REC!!! I had a blast reading this story. I loved the premise, the characters felt real and I completely believed how the two guys fell in love. Overall I loved how real this story felt and I believed the conflict the guys had to overcome.

(tags: recs-Supernatural Jared/Jensen f4 Length:50k-100k Genre:AlternateUniverse recs-instant!rec)

In other news, the OTW archive has added an export to mobipocket/pdf/epub/and html feature. I've been experimenting more with it tonight and learning how the epub editor Sigil works to see if I can replace the blank paragraph space with an indent. The tests have not gone well and my css style-sheets haven't quite worked right, so I think until I figure it out I'll be creating my own epub formatted fan fiction. The other options is to figure out how to edit the beginning part of the story, reload the epub into Calibre and re-convert to epub so it fits my preferences. My whole setup is geared towards doing it myself and now I need to figure out how to change my conversion flow to adapt the A03 epubs while not changing anything drastically so that I can still convert stories from LJ/DW and ff.net.

I'm not a coder but I imagine it's not easy to set up a way for everyone to enter their personal preferences on such things as font type, font size, margins, space between paragraphs or indents, and etc... I think in time the stories will have cover art, summaries in the metadata, and users can set their download preferences in their Preferences panel. It's amazing to realize that the archive is still in beta and offers such a wide range of features. :)

I'm probably not going to use the export to epub feature right away but I can't deny it's a huge step forwards in helping users download ebook friendly fan fiction stories. I'm incredibly happy that it's happened because now there are over 100k stories available to read on Kindles, Nooks, Sonys, the Iphone/iPad and other portable devices. I've been looking forward to this for years now and I really do hope within a year the Ebook Library is obsolete and no longer needed. Though I suppose as long as authors don't archive their fics and only post to LJ then there may still be a need for the Ebook Library.

Comments

[rivkat]

I'm sure you know this, but for anyone reading: submit feedback on what you want to see changed on the epublishing! Our coders are responsive.

[amalthia]

I have! I just wasn't sure if I was missing something or if the code isn't there yet. They've been great all the other times I've submitted feedback. I just sometimes find it hard to say how much I appreciate something and then at the same time point out some areas I think could use some extra attention.

Plus, part of is still wondering if I'm the only one that cares about this? I've talked to a few other people and they don't notice if the story has spaces or indents to signify a new paragraph. I think I mostly didn't notice it until I had started to read ebooks from publishers and then switched back to fan fiction. The change was jarring and I developed a preference for the way published ebooks looked.

[rivkat]

I'm probably a bad reader for this purpose--I barely notice anything about formatting; I couldn't even tell you if Kindle books have indents or spaces. My guess is that conventions will eventually develop, but it seems to be really in flux right now. If you can find a coder who shares your pain, maybe customization of that kind will go on the list?

My own pet peeve is about pdfs that somehow merge two characters in a word, putting one on top of the other like some terrible transporter accident.

[amalthia]

PDFs are horrible for reading on smaller screens, great description!

I think the reason I'm so alert for formatting is because I format a lot of stories! :) And because they are not my stories I try to pay close attention to make sure they look as good as possible so that if and when an author saw their own story in an ebook format they'd think it looked like a published ebook. The other factor is that Calibre automatically indents paragraphs so when I first started I kept the setting, it was just easier to go with the flow.

I agree that with time a standard will develop. :)

[yourlibrarian]

Though I suppose as long as authors don't archive their fics and only post to LJ then there may still be a need for the Ebook Library.

This. I mean, how many SPN Big Bangs were published to the A03 this year?

[amalthia]

1 for sure! I just posted mine up there last weekend. :) I like the idea of having my fic on multiple servers. When mediawood.net goes down (which happens more than I like) no one can access any of the archives I host, let alone my personal fan fiction/music vids/or tutorials. I'm trying to move more of my fic over to A03 to play it safe.

Merlin Big Bang came out and some people did post their fics at A03 using the Paperlegends Collection which was really nice. :) I really wish the SPN BB had set it up so people could do the same I looked to see if there was a SPN_J2_BB 2010 collection but could not find one. I may have to create one myself and hope if other authors got around to posting their stories there they could find the collection so they are grouped together in a way.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, multiplicity is a good idea. I'd love to see an SPN BB collection over at A03. There's so many I still haven't gotten around to reading yet and the A03 is better set up to handle those long works.

[amalthia]

I think if I see any other SPN BB posted over there I'll look into how to create a collection. :)