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!!!!
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 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
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
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.
