Great Downloader!

[celestlyn]

Hi all! New member here. Just introducing myself. I have a Kindle Fire HD that is a year and a half old. I pretty much love everything about it, except maybe the fact that I can't organize my files on the Kindle or in the cloud. This really is something Amazon should address at some point

Comments

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[fenris_wolf0]

Instead of using a third party app, I recommend using FanfictionDownloader, a very reliable Calibre add-in by Jim Miller.

It's regularly updated, does a very clean job of the multi-chapter downloads and makes updating WIPs easy.

Re: ?

[fenris_wolf0]

But the Storymaster downloader is great for sites like Adultfanfiction etc. which FanfictionDownloader does not handle.

Re: ?

[celestlyn]

Also, the reason I hooked up with the Storymaster site was because my downloader (Raimond's) was no longer working on ff.net. Now that you mention it, when I downloaded the latest version of Calibre it had the option to download fanfic. I'm still not sure how to make it send straight to Kindle. I think someone said it would do that, but maybe they meant that it converted to mobi and I would have to email the file to the Kindle. Either way would be fine, it's just that I love eliminating as many steps as possible.

Emailing directly from Calibre without connecting your Kindle to your PC

[fenris_wolf0]

It's one of the setup options of Calibre: you can re-run the setup wizard at anytime (from the main menu) without messing up your existing settings to enable the direct email functionality. Then you can send your fanfic straight to your Kindle(s). This has always been a function of Calibre? There is a very useful Calibre complete demo here: http://calibre-ebook.com/demo

Personally I prefer to use Calibre to keep my whole library: that way I always have a complete backup organized the way I like it regardless of what happens to my eReader(s). One becomes easily paranoid when one has lived through iPods and iTunes happily eating and losing one's music library more than ten times over the years... :D

And I still read fanfic on my PC quite often since it makes leaving feedback/kudos much easier: offline reading makes it impossible and if I don't do it right away as I finish a story, I forget!

[zeldabel]

OMG, this is exactly what I needed to know! Thank you so much! I appreciate it.

[celestlyn]

I'm glad someone else will find it useful. It was a godsend to me. I had not heard of Storymaster and was excited that it still worked on ff.net. I know most people use Calibre, and I do too, but I don't really like to store all my fics or ebooks on my computer. Calibre is awesome, but it's all stored on the computer instead of in the cloud. If I wanted to store fics in Calibre I would enjoy being able to organize them. I do hope that Amazon will have that option withing the kindle or kindle cloud at some point. I know some people who have thousands of books in their Kindle archive and it would be crazy to have that many and not be able to organize them.

[zeldabel]

You really did help me. I'm having the issue you mentioned about not being able to properly download fan fics (which I adore) from ff.net. Now, thanks to your post, I can! I appreciate it.

[chosenfire28]

I was annoyed about not being able to organize files in the Fire HD as well (I loved the Collections feature on the Kindle Keyboard and wanted that) and to be great surprise when I got the Kindle Fire HDX I found out they brought the Collections feature back - so I am back to being able to organize fics by fandom lol.

I adore the fact that AO3 lets you download in a variety of formats, I use that the most to get fics on my kindle. I do have a program downloaded to download complete stories from fanfiction.net but I am just not in the habit of reading from there.

[celestlyn]

Good to know they have brought back the Collections. I never had a KK, but it's something I wish I'd bought. I suppose the new smartphones and tablets are the next gen of that, but honestly, I really hate typing on a touch screen. I'd much rather have a full keyboard to utilize.

I'm thrilled that so many authors are getting behind AO3 and supporting it. I'm not crazy about ff.net, but some authors just post there, so I have no choice. It isn't a place where I ever go to just browse fics, but pull stuff from there from recs. Most of the stories I read are on Live-Journal or AO3.

I'm still sort of confused as to why ff.net chose to prevent people from uploading their fics to read on ereaders. I don't know any authors anymore who oppose lifting fic for ereaders and they know some people archive fics on their hard drives to save. My collection isn't extensive at all, but when I read an outstanding fic, I like to save it. Anyway, good to know the Collections feature is coming back. Thanks for that info.

[excentric397]

I use FanFiction Downloader and have it convert to text. I save the file on my hard drive, because I know things disappear in the cloud. From the folder I've saved it in, I use the Send To Kindle app. Text is very easy to read on the Kindle. If you really want the pictures and whatever, you can just save the webpage to your hard drive, too, but I never do. I'm about reading the fic, is all. If you're on Firefox, there's a bookmarklet that cleans up pages. It's called 'clippable' and there's an extension (Print Pages To PDF)that will then take all those pages and convert them to a pdf, which you can then use Nitro Reader 3 to convert to text, then send to kindle. Not everyone posts to FF.Net or Ao3, I've found. This is all much easier than it sounds, btw.

[celestlyn]

LOL, it does sound a little complicated, but I'm sure it really isn't. When I try to explain to people how I upload fics to my devices it sounds complex, but it isn't.

I have heard, and found it to be true, that pdf files don't convert well to mobi. The formatting is often lost and you lose the spacing between paragraphs, illustrations and photos don't come through...stuff like that. I was told that when that happened, to upload the pdf and convert it first to epub and then convert the epub to mobi; that way the proper formatting and pictures would come through perfectly. I had the opportunity to try that out on a fic that had a lot of illustrations included and it worked great. It's probably a lot like converting to text before sending to kindle. I've actually never tried to send text files to kindle without converting to mobi. That's interesting. Thanks.

[excentric397]

I started out with converting to Mobi, and it just seemed like so much work for really poor results, but then I discovered the shortcuts I mentioned, and since the pictures aren't really what I need on my reader, the text is great and much less complicated for me. If I really want to keep a page as it is, as I mentioned, I 'save page as html' on my hard drive, by right-clicking the page. Text seems the easiest reading method on the kindle, for me anyway. The hardest part is if someone posts a 50 chapter story, every chapter on a separate page. I have to open each page, click the 'clippable' on each page, but then the Print to PDF thing does the rest. I would not send the PDF to my reader, I can never make them legible, so the Nitro PDF reader conversion thing is a boon. You can clean up any extraneous garbage on the page before sending it to your reader from there, too. I think the Send To Kindle app is available regardless of your browser choice. I am die-hard Firefox, mainly because I cannot operate without my extensions.

[germankitty]

Raimond is updating his downloader frequently, so it still works on Ffnet; I prefer that option, as it allows me to get the fic as .rtf which I then send through www.2epub.com and convert to .mobi. A bit time-consuming, yes, but this way I can edit out the review replies, sometimes rather annoying/tedious A/Ns and the like.

2epub is a bit iffy with special characters, like accent signs (cliché, for example) in the titles, and sometimes I need to save an .rtf file as .doc first, but on the whole it works well for me.

(Also, flagfic promises to be back soon; watch their site!)

As for not allowing copy/paste, Keira Marcos has added that feature to her "Rough Trade" site, too. A bit annoying, because I've snagged a few great fics from there, but as it's primarily meant for writers to share unbetaed WIPs, I can accept this. I just wish it weren't so damn hard to hunt up the finished products!

[celestlyn]

That sucks that people add that feature. I can see how authors might be concerned about people taking their fics and putting them up on other archives when they don't belong to them, but for as many fics and authors that are out there, that doesn't happen too often. And some authors really don't like people downloading their fics at all, but I have to think that it's a very few that feel that way. Especially since most people are doing a fair amount of reading on various devices these days.

Perhaps I'll try Raimond's downloader again, but StoryMaster is working well enough. There are so many options now that if one thing doesn't work, something else will. I see that Flagfic is still supposed to return, but that notice has been up for months. I'm wondering if he just lost interest.

Thanks for the info!

[germankitty]

Well, Keira's rationale is that she's opened the blog mainly for writers, not so much for readers -- a place to collect first drafts, and share with other writers. Fair enough, as it's her site, and her word is law. (Although how that works when even constructive criticism is being actively DIScouraged, escapes me ...) I work differently -- everything I post is very close to 1st draft -- so I perhaps lack a bit of sensitivity there.

Anyway, I dislike emailing fics to my Kindle; used to do that in the beginning, but hated having my email address appear as "author", plus the file size restrictions. So now I use sites where I can edit titles (to reflect order-in-series, for example) to convert files, and edit them beforehand to my liking -- sometimes even to the extent of correcting SPaG. ;-)

[celestlyn]

LOL! I had to smile about you saying that you've corrected SPAG. I can relate. I've done that when I've copy/pasted stuff. I don't save every fic I read; just the ones that I really love and might want to revisit again later.

You're right. People can make their own rules on their own sites and I would respect that. However, I might not be inclined to visit the site anymore, but then again, I was completely without a working laptop for almost a year. I found it hard to sit in front of the PC to read long fics. I'm fine reading short fics on the sites, but after the convenience of reading on an ereader, I just don't want to do it anymore. I have a new laptop now, but it's a full-sized one and reading on it in bed isn't nearly as convenient as reading on my reader. So I'll probably continue to mess around with different downloaders and utilize whichever one works best in any given situation. I'm putting Calibre on my laptop and I'll see about a place to back it up.