Status and Support

[Alelou]

Oh, I'm completely backed up on CrashPlan. I'm only losing work I haven't saved yet -- maybe a page or a half a page at a time. But it's annoying because when I'm writing I want to be WRITING, not constantly reminding myself to save.

I guess the interim step is simply to set Word to save automatically every minute.

[Cogito]

Does crashplan support versioning? If not, it's not the whole answer.

Configuring regular saves is definitely an option, although in my experience this often causes the editor to momentarily freeze as it saves (your mileage may vary). If you can get into the habit of hitting ctrl+S every time you stop to re-read, that might work better.

[Alelou]

CrashPlan can take you back to multiple points. However, whether it can help you figure out WHICH point you should go back to ... I don't know. I did find them very responsive awhile back when I thought my machine was dying. (It told me I had no files ... as did the most recent CrashPlan report, to my horror -- but they quickly assured me they had all 35 gigs going back months. I didn't end up needing any of it since the issue resolved with a cleaning and a restart.)

[Jamieson]

If you can get into the habit of hitting ctrl+S every time you stop to re-read, that might work better.

Ctrl+S is my best friend. After so many years of fanfic, school, and now all the reports I write for work, I hit it without even thinking, often after every paragraph (I've even caught myself doing it after a single sentence in some cases, especially if it was one I was struggling with and finally got right). It may be a bit on the paranoid side, but it works.

[Alelou]

Mmm. Maybe I could develop that habit. I think I'll just order the new software anyway. It's a good deal and I won't have it if I get a real job and ditch this thankless adjunct gig.

[Alelou]

Have you ever wondered what's going through the mind of somebody who industriously checks that he's "following" your completed stories?

He has 5,000 favorites, so I guess he's got more than enough following to keep up with and should appreciate all those stories that WON'T EVER end up in his in-box.

[Distracted]

I recently had a guy doing that to my stories on ff.net too. I wondered if he just didn't completely understand what "following" a story means. Could be the same guy, I guess, since both of us write Enterprise stories.

Maybe he's just got OCD and feels compelled to check off all the boxes.

[putaro]

Maybe he hasn't read far enough to know that it ends and doesn't pay any attention to the status? I have plenty of people who started following my completed story after it was marked "Complete"

[Alelou]

Since he's systematically working his way through various series more or less in order, I assumed he was finishing them, but maybe he's just making a really, really long reading list. It's probably the same fellow as yours, Distracted. Doran, I think? Something like that. From Germany.

I used to send a little note to let people know they'd have more luck following me as an author than following a story that's complete, but I don't bother anymore. (There's also a small, bitchy inner child who wants to say, hey dude, if you really like this stuff that much, give me a frickin' review, why don't ya?)

[Distracted]

Amen, sister.

[Asso]

...I used to send a little note to let people know they'd have more luck following me as an author than following a story that's complete, but I don't bother anymore. (There's also a small, bitchy inner child who wants to say, hey dude, if you really like this stuff that much, give me a frickin' review, why don't ya?)

This is exactly what happens to me.

[Jamieson]

I here you there! It's a little bittersweet to have more people favourite your story than total number of reviews - on the one hand it seems like those users liked it, but on the other it'd be nice to get a bit of feedback. I do know, though, that a lot of people use the "Following" and "Faves" features as bookmarks, so they have the link saved for when they're ready to start something new and therefore haven't actually read it yet. But it's particularly eyebrow-raising when you discover that someone has added your story to a C2 of "so-and-so's faves" (implying they've read it) but didn't bother to review.

Oh well...I'm just happy to get any reviews at all, and you guys here have been great in that regard So thanks for the feedback and support!

[Alelou]

http://paidcontent.org/2013/05/22/amazo ... l-hassles/

This is intriguing, although I could only see it working with new shows. I suspect the contracts with the original creators and writers of Star Trek probably wouldn't allow this.

But if it did ... I'd be cool with that. Especially if it didn't get watered down into bland "official" fic.

What do you think?

[Asso]

Intriguing is an understatement. I need to clear my head. What could this mean for us?

[Jamieson]

I heard about this today. I tend to get a bit ragey whenever the new trend in "publishing" fanfic comes up (I've mellowed a fair bit - you should have heard me a year ago), but honestly this just confuses me. I get what they're trying to do, I just have no idea how it would work. From what I understand, all of these stories have to conform to specific guidelines for which ever "World" they happen to be in (I'm assuming in order to conform to canon and certain standards of writing), so someone is going to have to actually go through them all and approve, etc...which is fine, but if this suddenly becomes a "thing" then I can see it bottle-necking pretty quickly.

It also said in that article that they're looking at running $0.99 to $3.99 per story, and there is mention of story submissions as low as 5,000 words. I don't know about you, but it has to be a damned good 5,000 words for me to pay even a buck for it.

I'm quite curious to see how many shows/franchises would actually jump on this bandwagon. Those three shows they mention that have already been included are extremely commercialized, and both Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries were book series before they were TV shows. The author who writes Pretty Little Liars puts out a new book every few months (I wouldn't surprise me if there's some ghost-writing going on), and I've heard talk that the newer Vampire Diaries books aren't actually written by the original author (there hadn't been a new book for quite some time, but when the show started up the books suddenly started again - I'm sure that's not a coincidence....). In these cases, they are definitely part of the "franchise machine", where getting it out there - no matter who writes it or what level of quality it is - is most important, so authorizing fanfiction for profit would be right up their alley.

But as you said, I wonder how older and more established books/TV/movies would fit into this, if at all. It almost seems like it might be too much work, especially for the really popular fandoms where you might quickly get into that bottle-necking problem. The article I read earlier today also indicated that authors retain very, very little in terms of their own property (apparently they retain rights of their original content, but it's Amazon who decides what the original content is)...but of course, I can see a lot of people jumping in without actually paying attention to that particular point, and if they have no problem with that, then all is well I suppose.

I am, of course, very ignorant of how the publishing industry works, and admittedly I haven't looked too closely into this whole thing, so perhaps I'm off-base here. As it stands now, I'm not terribly comfortable with it...I guess I'm just set in my fanfic ways.