2011-02-21

e-readers and e-fic

Happened to go to the Twisting the Hellmouth archive (predominantly a Buffy archive, with some other fandoms represented) to get an author name so I could tag a fic, and noticed that this archive, like AO3, offers downloading options in mobi (for Kindle), epub (for Nook and Sony), and txt. I think it's pretty awesome that archives are doing this.

I'd love to see the same options for our QAF-specific archives. Does anyone know what adding that capability to the archives would entail? It would be up to the owners of the archives, of course, but I just got to wondering if it would be a huge, difficult thing to offer?

Now that I'm thinking about it, I wouldn't mind seeing epub and mobi links offered within our share sites, either.

We're also trying out a new tag: "e-readers: e-reader dl available". We hope this will become a much-used tag over time as more authors upload to some of these sites. I'd like to request that if you know there's an e-reader version available on an archive, even if you don't link to it, would you mention it in a comment, please?

Of course it's always possible to convert a fic to your reader format using calibre or other conversion software. These archive options just save a few steps in the process.

Any insight you guys have is appreciated!