A not-so-hypothetical question · 12:56am Jan 9th, 2019
There's been some talk of a bookstore at Bronycon. A number of authors have already committed. It's an exciting idea, but practically speaking, I've been on the fence as to whether I might actually make a Horizon publication happen, for a few (mostly logistical) reasons.
… Let's just say for the moment that there are external forces conspiring to push me off the fence in the publication direction.
As such, I'd love a moment of your time! If the idea of a published anthology of Horizon stories catches your attention at all, please click this extremely convenient link and answer a few questions! (Three short ones; three more which are longer but optional.)
The idea is still in its early formative stages, but I'd be happy to discuss at greater length in comments.
It was not immediately obvious to me what you meant by "unpublished". According to the content of the second page that's stories that have appeared in the writeoffs, but I wouldn't know until I have already answered
You might want to clarify that.
4993587
Easy enough to ninja-edit the poll. Thanks for the feedback!
If my little eyes spy everything in the book and eventually on the site I will be very happy and admit that you may not be a change bug after all. ❤️👀👌
Can I vote for Watch Watch and Wheat like five times each?
When I hit "mildly avaricious larcenist" and it got shortened to "M.A. Larcenist" I had a quiet you fucker and fit of helpless giggles.
*cough* Timeenoughforlove *cough
SELL ME A PRINT COPY OF TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE AARRGH
...erm, um.
Hey if that's going to be in it then you have a cover.
I can't really fit my feelings on the matter into the survey responses, so I'll just answer here in greater detail.
I am not interested in a physical book because of the logistics (being on another continent, not being able to carry it around with the rest of the library, not being able to share it over the internet, not being able to Ctrl+F). So everything written below applies to the ebook.
TL;DR: Yes, as long as it is released freely elsewhere at a later date.
It's not a matter of me having access, it's about others having access. Your stories are quite thought-provoking, and being able to easily share them with others - along with the points they raise and the ideas they bring - is very important to me. Especially if they say something that I wanted but never could (cough QB&MH cough), but I point people who are not into ponyfics to HR2 as well.
TL;DR: Yes, if they're good.
On one hand, I'm not on fimfiction because I like ponies, I'm on fimfiction because there's some astonishingly good literature in here that just so happens to feature ponies for some unfathomable reason. On the other hand, your original fiction I've been exposed to - "Machine of literal death", one Tomorrowlands short from the Writeoffs and two of the Tomorrowlands starting points on your fimfic profile - have not been particularly compelling, and are a far cry from the bar you've set with your ponyfics.
TL;DR: I would be upset.
Because it makes sharing weird. On one hand, even if there is DRM on the ebook (already unlikely in itself), I will be able to crack it. On the other hand, I want to read more Horizon stories, and sharing ebooks that are supposed to be paid for probably conflicts with that goal.
At the same time I don't mind throwing money at Horizon if that means we get more Horizon stories to read. I would totally throw money at something like Patreon if that means we get more Horizon stories that can be shared freely and looked up from anything with Internet access without having to remember login credentials (possibly after a while).
I already sponsor an author to write whatever at their commission price per word as long as it's in a certain universe of theirs. No strings attached. I probably would not be able to afford that single-handedly with Horizon, but I'd get behind crowdfunding that.
Now, that's a physical book, and at Bronycon.
I'm not going to be at Bronycon, and while I have a lot of physical books1, most of my books these days are electronic. Epubs and Kindle, generally.
Any thoughts about an epub copy?
4993621
The One That Got Away/Drifting Down the Lazy River?
--Sweetie Belle
4993628
Tempting! But I also am strongly considering commissioning a new cover for the collection which isn't so single-story-specific.
Is that something you might have any interest in, a month or two down the line? I'd be able to pay in both cash, and prior proof of TEFL completion.
4993651
If a Bronycon book is available, chances are very close to 100% that an ebook would also happen. For Hasbro reasons, that ebook would be free (though there may be paid add-ons, or a tip jar or something). Because it would be free, it would most likely be released after Bronycon so I'm not eating my own sales.
That's about as far as I've gotten down that line of thought, but the ebook crowd is definitely on the radar.
Was just thinking earlier today while reading Pen Stroke's blog that I would love to see you participate in the book store.
Except now I'm realizing that I would pay an ungodly amount of money to see a super-nice over-formatted illuminated and whatever else version of The Last Dreams of Pony Island and I didn't need that knowledge in my life.
Also this is reminding me how far behind I am on your latest short stories. Really need to work on that.
4993655
You make a compelling offer.
Consider me interested.
4993651 FYI: I am *right now at this instant* wrangling TOWGA into the Lulu Word template to see what the end product looks like. Trying to get the pages to come out right with the end-chapter letters is more difficult than it seemed at first glance. So maybe.
It's a very crowded fence. I'm balancing on it myself, convinced that I'm going to run out of time
4993661
Well, hey, Reading Rainbow pulled off an artbook Kickstarter. So this is within the realm of possibility!
I'd have to find an artist willing to take on a long string of commissions for the book, though, and put together a funding campaign to make it happen. If it's just you and me, that's one thing, but with a few potential big backers (or a groundswell of interest) I'd have some incentive to start asking around.
4993657
As long as you have a tip jar or some way to pay for it. You could probably even have a suggested tip by it.
While I'm sure most of the stories would be ones you could already get on the site, this would be all collected in one place in an ebook you could load into an ebook reader, which would be nice.
And when doing a book, there's always room for extra content. Besides unpublished stories, you could have a forward to the book, and even a page before each story where you talk briefly about it, that sort of thing. I've read anthologies in the past, and that's the sort of thing I tend to see...
4993679
Yay! It'd be a good one to have as a book.
Funny thing is I actually have a program that can save in Kindle or Epub format, but it isn't designed for text at all. It's designed for manga, so unless I was writing the illustrated adventures of Sweetie Giraffe or something, that probably wouldn't be that useful.
--Sweetie Belle
4993763 Fimfiction does have a save to epub function for each story under the pull-down menu. Not sure how good it looks, but I used the save to HTML function to import the two stories I had into Microsoft Word, and it worked fairly well except a few places where an italicized word followed by a space and a second word would have the space left out. Odd, but liveable.
4993763
4993774
There's a better epub maker than the one built into the site - fimfic2epub by djazz. Firefox or Chrome extensions, direct download, bookmarklet, and Kobo EPUB version are available.
gets to the second page
aggressively smashes the box for QBaMH
4993794 THANK you. I knew there was one out there but I was having a me-day.
I dunno, let me check why I followed you again.
*Checks library.
HOLY CRAP WRITE MORE OF EVERYTHING
Oh, that's why I have trouble finding Time Enough for Love.
4994272
Hah! Thanks for the smile. (A good antidote to the various drama threads swirling around right now.)
2019 certainly seems to have more potential than 2018 on the writing front. I hope I can build up some momentum.