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Yeah, I'm failing to update this, huh?
14 years ago
General
I realize I've put myself in a Catch-22 with this FA account: I'm not posting because I have few viewers, but because I don't post there's not much reason to watch me!
As much as I like PDFs for reasons I've stated before, I've concluded through other experiments that they're just not very good for FurAffinity. It's easy to say that it's just one more click for the reader, but that one more click puts a surprising amount of people off. As a web designer I actually knew this, but also as a web designer I also hate the presentation FA gives stories. I let the "artiste" side win the debate, but frankly, it's the UX side that should have won. In part this was because I expected to have a better site up for stories well over a year ago, but shit happens. (For the record, that site--Claw & Quill--still isn't dead, because as terribly slow as I've been with it, nothing that's come along in the last couple of years has quite filled the gap.)
What I'm considering doing is re-uploading stories here in formats you can read online--possibly breaking longer stories into chunks to avoid the Wall O' Text look. What I'm also considering doing is deleting the submissions I've already made and starting over with these new versions. I'll save the PDFs that are already made and have them available as links.
Does this strike people as a good idea? Bad idea? Entirely neutral idea?
As much as I like PDFs for reasons I've stated before, I've concluded through other experiments that they're just not very good for FurAffinity. It's easy to say that it's just one more click for the reader, but that one more click puts a surprising amount of people off. As a web designer I actually knew this, but also as a web designer I also hate the presentation FA gives stories. I let the "artiste" side win the debate, but frankly, it's the UX side that should have won. In part this was because I expected to have a better site up for stories well over a year ago, but shit happens. (For the record, that site--Claw & Quill--still isn't dead, because as terribly slow as I've been with it, nothing that's come along in the last couple of years has quite filled the gap.)
What I'm considering doing is re-uploading stories here in formats you can read online--possibly breaking longer stories into chunks to avoid the Wall O' Text look. What I'm also considering doing is deleting the submissions I've already made and starting over with these new versions. I'll save the PDFs that are already made and have them available as links.
Does this strike people as a good idea? Bad idea? Entirely neutral idea?
While this may be too much bother, actually using one of the popular ebook formats might be worthwhile if you can find a cheap as free converter; I know (over in RPG land) quite a few publishers have been experimenting with EPUB formatted releases of rulebooks.
The ePub format is something else I'll be looking at -- I do have the ability to produce them -- but I don't know if I'll be using that for stories downloadable from here or not. (Although I might.)
Posting as readable text as opposed to downloadable is a nice idea... but I would recommend keeping the PDF available for those who want to take it on the go with proper formatting.
Yuuuuup. I know how you feel.
Not sure how to advise you; I'll let the more experienced folks handle that!