Ebooks

[rhaegal]

Hey, fandom, you have a lot of opinions, right? I find myself in need of some...

So, last week I diligently went through my entire recs list and saved all ~500 fics as ebooks. For my own personal use, I mean; it didn't even occur to me to make them publicly available as that seemed like it would generally not be a good/right thing to do

Comments

[zjofierose]

hmm, that's an interesting question.

it seems to me (after a whole, like, five minute think, so, don't take it too seriously) that the biggest problem would be if someone decided to rub the serial numbers off a fic, and publish it under their real name, or even just a different pseudonym. because then you still have (presumably) basically the same story, but with "different characters" and probably some different details, etc. but a well-defined search could then link the two, and imply either a) plagiarism or b) that the two authors are the same.

personally, aside from that potential issue, i wouldn't care- i'd feel like you, flattered that anyone thought it was worth the time. but maybe for cautions sake, it's best to contact the author if you plan to make them available? and then if it's something they want to use for other things, they can ask you not to?

just my two cents...

[rhaegal]

Yeah, obviously if it's being passed around without correct attribution or outright plagiarized that's very much not cool.

I think having thought about it that I don't really have a problem with other people doing it to my fic, but I wouldn't do it to other people's without explicit permission.

[rhaegal]

Hmm, so you think it should be an opt-out thing? I think I'm erring on the side of caution and going the other way, that authors should give explicit permission. That said, I have no problem with people doing what they like with anything of mine, but I know others are more cautious and/or protective than I am.

we must make a teastament

[ariadnechan]

i will be super happy if someone want my thing enough to put it in a ebook, but maybe not everybody feels this way

i'd being thinking a lot about this because after some authors disappear, a user died last year, and i read something about some artist in k/s mail list who died so her work is lost, because for author rights there is no right to distribute

i was thinking that maybe every author must give some testament of their work, if they decide to go and disappear but they have a lot of fans who wanted to read their things or the author or artist die
we must to know what to do

i think is a big issue.

because k/S is a historic think more important maybe that the individual fanfiction

so i wonder as you plan cons and stuff, maybe you can make this an issue so we talk about it and give approval to put your work in the archive for everyone to look at it no matter how time it passes and you die or get away from the fandom
like a collective memory with obvious credit to the author even if it is only in pseudonym

Re: we must make a teastament

[rhaegal]

Yeah, that's a separate issue, but you're right, it's very difficult to know what to do when an author/artist/whatever either passes on or leaves fandom. I would hope there are enough people around who know me personally that they'd know I would give permission to do whatever they wanted with anything of mine, but that's certainly not true of everyone.

[seshat1]

Mildly off topic, but I was thinking of doing something like this, how do you save something as an ebook? :D

[rhaegal]

Oooh, there are a few different ways, but these are how I did it:

Squee!Book is the best for LJ, DW and random webpages - you just enter the title and author, the link, a cover if there is one, and it loads into a WYSIWYG editor so you can correct any messed-up formatting. Also, if there are fics in multiple parts you can enter a list of links and it joins them together in one file. Very cool.

FLAG is the best for ff.net as it's one-click and fills in the metadata automatically. It also works with some other popular archives - none of the ones I use, but there are some HP sites on there.

And obviously anything on AO3 is easy, just click on 'download' in the top right corner of the fic and it gives you a bunch of file format options.

[muuranker]

The world seems to be going three ways. One way, is the way of academic journals and music corporations: knowledge is ours, and if you want, it pay us $$$$ or face prison.

One way is Creative Commons (associated with All Right Minded Thinking People, naturally!)

And a third way is to assert that all knowledge is without ownership, and if you let it out of your head, it belongs to everyone.

While I associate the CC way with ARMTMs like myself, which of these viewpoints you take depends on your geographic background (people in Asia, for example, are more likey to be in the first group), what _specific_ knowledge is being talked about (or the use to which it will be put), and whether one earns one's daily crust in through creativity/knowledge production.

[muuranker]

ARMTP All right minded thinking PEOPLE. Why I typed ARMTM (all right minded thinking muppets? mongooses? monopods?) I don't know.

[rhaegal]

I suppose fanfiction is a bit of a unique case, because there's no monetary value to it, but because it's still considered relatively transgressive a lot of people want control of their work for privacy reasons. My personal opinion (having once tried, and failed, to erase a digital footprint) is that once something's up on the net it's out of your control, but I can understand why people would feel wary about it.

Also, I think we should have a club for All Right Minded Thinking Mules, or whatever :-)

[muuranker]

The privacy angle is one I'd not really thought about. I think it exists in such things as photos that people are happy to share with a specific group, or even to be 'in the world' but not particularly associated with them, but would not want to see in the paper with their name under it.

For such things, one might one to assert a moral right _not_ to be associated with the work.

Yes. Right Minded Thinking Mule. I like it. I am it!