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Lush Self Publishing? Interested in having your stories available in PDF?

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The self publishing question made me think what else we could do to help authors.

I am mulling over a few ideas at the moment.

Would there be much demand for you to be able to create your own PDF, containing your stories? Most people don't own a pdf writer, and many aren't keen on sending publishers / others word documents.

The way I see it working is you could select which stories you'd like to go into your pdf document - make your own "book" as it were. I don't know what Gav could do with regards to cover designs / layout etc, that part of the equation might be better off left to individuals, or we'd have a simple interface enabling authors to create a basic cover with text and perhaps an image?

The other idea, people could create (with the author's permission) their own pdf "book" of stories. We would need to have something in place whereby authors can use a checkbox to allow their stories to be published in this way or not. We could automatically link to the author's profile at the end of their story.

I doubt many surfers would be willing to pay for such a service, but it could be a good way to help spread your work virally.

Thoughts?
You are an amazing woman Nic. They way you keep up-dating this site with new fresh ideas is just great!!!!
PDF Creator

Create your own PDF files. Also as I understand it the latest version of MS Word can create PDF files as well. OpenOffice has always had this capability. Then the issue just becomes distribution. But being able to pay for a downloadable set of stories to carry on your e-reader would be convenient. Want them in a different e-reader format? Then just convert them with Calibre. All is free and open source software.
Thousands of user submitted stories removed from the site. You are nothing without your users or their freely submitted stories.
Cool. thanks!

www.szadvntures.com

Latest story:

  • TBD

  • Bump in the Night-Microfiction

  • Smoke Break-Interracial

Thanks for the links Jillicious, they are very useful. The last time I investigated creating pdf's, it looked like I'd have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars with Adobe (a company I am really not fond of).

Our version would take the hassle out of downloading or installing anything. You'd select stories of your choice, and they'd be compiled into a pdf book.

I have to check with Gav what's available on the software side of things, for a web based application.
I love the idea!

I know I would definitely use it...
Gav thinks this is a wonderful idea too!
nice : )
Torture the data long enough and they will confess to anything.
Quote by nicola
The last time I investigated creating pdf's, it looked like I'd have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars with Adobe (a company I am really not fond of).


Sacrilege! Forgive her Father Warnock, she knows not what she says. Blessed be the code and blessed be the fruit of thy Postscript®.
I think that is an awesome idea. I would not mind converting some of mine to PDF
"Writing M/M turns me on..."

I've made PDFs of my stories for years. When the editing process is done, I add pictures and movies. That gets hot.

I do like Adobe products and have FrameMaker and Acrobat, both of which make excellent PDFs. Frame is an authoring tool used by technical and textbook authors.

One problem with this approach is that there must be a release for each picture/clip.

Are you thinking of making PDF available on Lush?

Paddler
Paddling works three ways:

* Me on top
* You on top
* On the water
Quote by Paddler
Are you thinking of making PDF available on Lush?


Yes, that's what this thread is all about.
I'd certainly use it. If possible, I could upload my own PDFs for approval, have them linked to one another.

My nearly complete series, the Candy Striper, can be made into PDF in minutes. I might be a good Beta tester for this project.

It may be possible to license Acrobat Distiller so that folks can drop a file in a folder on Lush's server and have it create a PDF automatically. However, I think the resulting PDF would have to be on Lush's server.

Paddler
Paddling works three ways:

* Me on top
* You on top
* On the water
Is a PDF necessary? Or would other formats such as epub or just plain txt work as well? Most e-readers can do simple text files which would easier to implement.

Also there are free text to pdf converters saving you licensing fees. A simple script with this command line program would make for easy conversion. Or the occasional manual batch process. Even a cron job to execute the command would make for easy conversion. Just an idea. I would personally prefer a command line tool over a GUI for batch processes.
Thousands of user submitted stories removed from the site. You are nothing without your users or their freely submitted stories.
I was thinking of the PDF format primarily, so stories could be passed around without the author worrying the stories would be plagiarised (so much). Txt would be pretty much how we have it now.

Most people wouldn't know what a command line in Jill!

Ideally it would be in some format which is:

a) readily accessible across multiple operating systems
b) free

This is on the drawing board. At the moment we're working on the mobile version of the site as a priority.
Quote by nicola
Most people wouldn't know what a command line in Jill!


My thought would be that conversion would happen on the server end, thus the command line tool suggestion. But if instead users are required to upload their story in PDF then the simple PDF printer I suggested earlier or OpenOffice would do that just fine.
Thousands of user submitted stories removed from the site. You are nothing without your users or their freely submitted stories.