No Ordinary Family and SPN Big Bang

[amalthia]

I think it's safe to say one of my favorite new TV shows that came out this year was No Ordinary Family. I loved the dialogue, the powers each character has, and it had some very funny moments. I also loved all the other side characters and am looking forward to next season. I'm not sure this show is going to be a fandom hit because there are no real slash pairings.

And in other news, SPN Big Bang summaries are up for artists to claim. I was quite surprised that there are 244 stories for this year's big bang. I think I forget that while I may have moved on a bit not everyone else did!

This year I'm still offering to create ebook versions for any SPN Big Bang author who would like an ebook version of their story to share.

With my busy summer school workload I'm not sure I'll have time to read much of any of this year's SPN Big Bang stories. I think I'm going to limit myself to authors that post their fic to the A03 or share their stories in a single file HTML/Word Document. Basically, a single file document that is not PDF.

If authors are sharing PDFs thinking that's what people with Kindles and Nooks want then I think it's because they aren't reading PDFS on these devices so they don't see what a 8x11 sized PDF looks like on a 4x6 screen. Trust me, we don't want PDFS. We want HTML or mobi/epub. Word docs work too. They at least convert to epub and mobi more cleanly than PDF and with less formatting errors.

Don't get me wrong there is an audience for PDFs, it's just not the same audience that's reading on portable devices. (or at least not people who've been reading on portable devices long enough to see that PDFS suck ass)

For the love of god and for the love of those who are swamped with school work/working full time, please provide easier to access to your fics.

Just the thought of another year of over 200 stories longer than 20k words being posted only on LJ makes me want to cry. Some people are good at it. They can get 20k words posted in 2 parts, some need 20 LJ posts to share 20k words.

For the sake of my sanity and stress levels I think I'm going to have to stick authors that post at A03/other archive or offer an alternate single file download. Because I don't think this email will have an effect on how people decide to post their fics.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I've reached that point where if a fic isn't offered in a way that I can easily transfer onto my ereader, it's not going to be read by me. Now, that can be via AO3 or via a story posted on a single page - either DW/LJ or one's own website - but if I have to go through a half-dozen links to get the whole story, I'm no longer taking the time to combine files into one ebook. I don't mind taking the time to do a conversion myself and since I actually tweak even epubs so that they are formatted in the way that works for me, I am willing to work with many different file formats (excluding pdfs) but there is more fic out there than I have time to read and I'd rather be using my reading time for actually reading, not creating files out of multiple pages.

[amalthia]

I've pretty much left SPN fandom because I could no longer tolerate how heavily it relies on LJ. I found myself reading a lot more variety in terms of fandoms and trying out a lot of new stories I never would have tried but they were at the A03 and so easy to read on my device. I don't think I ever would have gotten as involved in DCU or Inception or Harry Potter again if it weren't for the A03 and in HP's case all the other archives authors use. :)

In the past when I worked at a job where I had 8 hours of time to kill and unlimited internet access I could afford to read on LJ and merge stories and etc...but my new job leaves very little time for merging stories and I don't have time in the evening because I'm doing school work. So I'm left with what I can grab quickly. LJ is anti-quick. Except for short 2k word stories.

[yourlibrarian]

I was going to say that the worst part isn't even the long stories because, assuming one is taken by them, it might even be worth the time to download and convert. I think it's actually the 5 to 10,000 word stories that benefit the most from being somewhere like AO3 because they're less work to transfer and more worth making the effort.

Also, sadly for me, as I use an iTouch the artwork for BB rarely translates well for such a tiny screen, so I actually lose something in the conversion process.

You didn't mention this but I've run into it before, and I'm not sure if it tends to be associated with PDFs, but I hate it when the stories have footers on each page. Because of the way I enlarge font to read these will often get plopped into the middle of a sentence, over, and over...

[amalthia]

Now that you mention it, yes footers are the worst on PDFs!

When I make ebooks with artwork sometimes I have to shrink the image size or add white space above and below the artwork. However, I haven't had the chance to read on my new smartphone to see how the artwork translates to screens smaller than 6 inches. I was under the impression the smartphone programs either stripped out art or it shrank the art down even further until it's impossible to see.

I also tend to download more short fic from A03 because it's even easier than the longer fics. :)

[yourlibrarian]

I was under the impression the smartphone programs either stripped out art or it shrank the art down even further until it's impossible to see.

Sometimes some funky things happen with artwork (turned upside down, or it doesn't format properly) but most often it just shrinks down. If it's a large banner it's usually still visible, but the smaller ones do indeed become too small to pick out clearly. Mostly, I suspect it doesn't often get placed in the right spot if it's a PDF conversion, especially because I enlarge the font to the max so I'm not really looking at "pages."

[amalthia]

Does this only happen with PDFs? or have you seen this on epubs as well? Converting PDF to other formats is a tricky proposition. Every time I've tried something always goes wrong with the story formatting.

[yourlibrarian]

Everything I'm reading is an ePub, usually converted from some other format. So yeah, it could also be part of the conversion process.

[jumpuphigh]

If something is under 5k, I'm willing to read it on my laptop at times. Other than that, I want to be able to just click a few buttons to download and sideload. Often, I don't read things when I encounter them so saving it is important whether I am going to read it on my laptop or my ereader. I also like using Read It Later so that I don't have to be online to get access to a story.

Ease is really, really important to me. Also, how a story is presented does become an accessibility issue for a lot of people.

Heh

[talking_sock]

Yeah - I always wonder if those LJ authors who post 1K at a time in their LJs ever READ anything online. Do they read in any format, or are they themselves okay with reading in parts on LJs? Have a heart, guys. For one thing, sitting with a computer on your lap to read your story is a sucky hurty experience if you also have to sit at a computer all day for work (ahem, ranty done).

By the way, A, thank you SO MUCH for that ST story you archived, Leave No Soul Behind by Whochick. It rocked, and was nice and long.

Re: Heh

[amalthia]

I also wonder if many authors read on LJ and they enjoy 20k word stories split across 20 posts? I think maybe they aren't saving the story to read at work on their USB drives?

you're welcome on the Star Trek story! :) I haven't read it yet so it's great to hear that it's good.

If you have any requests let me know. generally I try to stay on top of the longer fics and convert those first but since I started reading in DCU fandom I've kind of slowed down on Star Trek/SPN/SGA and Inception conversions.

Re: Heh

[whochick.livejournal.com]

Hi you guys, glad to hear you enjoyed/recced Leave No Soul Behind, but as the author, could I enquire as to where it was archived? Thank you :)

Re: Heh

[amalthia]

Hi,

I found it here. http://ksarchive.com/viewstory.php?sid=2937

If your story is archived elsewhere I haven't seen it.

Re: Heh

[whochick.livejournal.com]

Ha, my misunderstanding! I interpreted the phrase "thank you SO MUCH for that ST story you archived" to mean someone other than me had done so ;)

Cheers, and thanks again for the rec!

Re: Heh

[jumpuphigh]

I always wonder if those LJ authors who post 1K at a time in their LJs ever READ anything online.

And if they do, do they have dial-up?

Re: Heh

[amalthia]

I keep forgetting that some people still use dialup.