amalthia: (Angel Illyria)
[personal profile] 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.

Date: 2011-05-07 06:05 am (UTC)
jumpuphigh: Text "Snark is My Fandom" with snark punctuation in background. (snark)
From: [personal profile] 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.

Heh

Date: 2011-05-07 07:46 pm (UTC)
talking_sock: sock (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.