Forum: Author Hangout

Is that still extant? I understood forced paging had been scrapped thanks to the new, extended bandwidth.

AJ

There is a maximum 'page size' (I think it's about 10,000 words). If your single chapter story exceeds that size the system is forced to slice it up (in places you probably will not like) if you don't divide it up yourself.

Lazeez modified the code that did that. According to him, it no longer does that. The only limit I can see, is that you can only post 20 chapters at a time (it used to be lower too).

As for 'long chapters doing worse', I suspect the opposite is true. SOL readers, for the most part, like to be immersed in their stories, and prefer chapters they can really sink their teeth into. Since I've modified my writing to be more concise, my scores have been consistently lower on all three sites, so I'm clearly not being punished for my stories being overly long. Some of my best scores were for stores that ran between 10,000 and 14,000 words.

That said, one issue where posting all at once (all as a single chapter) would be a serious negative would be when the story becomes hard to read. If a single chapter became 20,000 or 50,000 words, readers would have fewer chances to pause and consider the story, or if they stopped reading, they'd have a more difficult time figuring out where they were, and would likely penalize the author over it.

However, I don't see that being a major problem, as few authors posts extremely long single chapters.

The only limit I can see, is that you can only post 20 chapters at a time (it used to be lower too).

I've not seen this limit applied in any way. Either as an initial posting or as a repost limit when my stories exceed 20 chapters.

I've not seen this limit applied in any way. Either as an initial posting or as a repost limit when my stories exceed 20 chapters.

You're right, you can (now) easily post 20 chapters, and then immediately post 20 more. However, if I'm not mistaken (it was a while ago), it used to be that you could only post 8 or 10, and then had to wait until they were accepted and posted before posting any more (meaning most authors ended up waiting for the next day to post the rest).

Bandwidth buys you a lot of benefits! (Now if we can just start posting higher quality covers, or multiple images per submission.) I doubt many authors will post many images, but I always make a point of matching graphic section breaks to my story content (not that I anticipate doing that here, don't worry Lazeez). ;-D

it used to be that you could only post 8 or 10, and then had to wait until they were accepted and posted before posting any more

I can't remember too far back about posting limits, but in 2011 I posted Finding Home 38 parts -I posted it like usual: post the first chapter, wait until that's up, then upload everything else into the Wizard with future dates. Now, the reason I wait for the first part to be up is it makes it a lot easier to post the rest because a I just need to select the new chapter number and all the rest of the information is there. Each chapter with a new date requires it's own Wizard entry.

However, what I think you may be confusing with the posting size is the File Upload Limit the most number of files you can upload for a single posting at once is 20, and has been as far back as I can remember. Now if you have 25 chapters with each as a separate file, then you need to post two Wizard entries to get all the files uploaded. But, if you have the same story as 25 chapters in the one big file you can post it all as one. However, with the big file option if you want them showing as 25 chapters you have to insert the Partition Command of { p } (spaces to avoid processing) so the system will split the chapters where you want it to. This is how I repost a multi-chapter story after I revise it.

Individually coding chapter breaks in one large block of text is a bit more work than is really required, as posting individual chapters is easy enough.

Oddly enough, I see the large block for a revision as being less work.

I write a story as a single formated file of text in a word processor, and don't post until the full story is written. When I prepare it for SoL / FS / SciFi I convert to html via Libre Office, then use Bluefish or Notepad++ to clean up the html code by using Find and Replace All to remove excess code. I then change a few of the html commands to suit the style sheet I'm using. Once I've got the single clean html file I can either break it up into the Posting Parts for SoL (which is what I do for the initial post) or I can go to just before the chapter heading for the start of each Posting Part and insert { p } Chapter xx in the line before it (which is what I do when posting a revision of the full story. If I'm making a revision to a single chapter I do that to the original Posting Part and upload that. I find entering the breaks for each Posting Part less work than breaking it up into individual files.

NB: Posting Part is what I call a SoL chapter since I write in chapters and sub-chapters then post multiples of them to SoL to make the posting a good sized read.

However, CW, most of the SoL authors write and post a chapter at a time, so my system wouldn't work for them.

As a reader I would not bother starting to read a story submitted in one very large file.
Much better to have chapters or sections that can be read comfortably, then have a break and have an easy way to find the point to resume reading.

I think a lot will depend on how it's done. Most of what I write are novels and sags - 40,000 to 250,000 word long stories. However, when I write I break them up into chapters, sub-chapters, and sections with different coloured and styled headings, which is why I make a big point of including a Table of Contents with the stories, because what I call a chapter doesn't match what SoL calls a chapter. I cut a Posting Part (SoL chapter) into about 5,000 to 10,000 word groups, thus it appears at SoL in multiple postings. I do have html files of the same stories as a single file, and having the coloured headings makes it easy to know where you are in the story - but the same stories without such headings and breaks would be bloody annoying and almost impossible to read.

Paging is coming back. Too many readers asked for it.

Thank you.

AJ

You can upload bigger covers and multiple illustrations per part. Let us worry about sizing and quality. Due to new usability guidelines from google and apple for mobile devices, the displayed image needs to be narrower than 480 pixels, but if the image needs it, we link the full size one to the one that shows up in the story so nothing is sacrificed.

I'd thought the new trend was to display everything in 'retna display sizes' (at least 300dpi) and the browsers would determine, on the fly, how to display it. Requiring a limit of 480 pixels sounds like a return to the 2000s, where everyone was worried that 'older machines' could only display so many pixels at a time.

What's the trade off on cover sizes? If every image gets cut down to 480 pixels, there's little reason to post anything over 480 pixels. If the page decides, on the fly, what size to display to the user, then it makes sense to post large images (for those with retna displays) while the system resizes it as necessary.

Also, would you recommend using graphic section breaks like I use for my books, or would you prefer we stick to the SOL standard "* * *"?

That's why I specifically said, let us worry about the sizing. So if you upload a cover that's 1000px wide we'll know what to do with it.

So the floor plans and maps I provide to help people visualise parts of some stories should now be provided as the full hi-resolution image and let you cut it down. Is that correct?

If I remember correctly, the last time I processed the repost I linked the full sized map to the shrunk version on the site.

Thank you. That saves me having to try and make a shrunk one within the old tolerances. I'll just upload the original and let you worry about. I will continue to load the full one to dropbox with that same public link so people can download it from there if they want to.

A perfect reason for writers to include links in their stories. If desired the links can be used to open many features which would tend to waste space on SOL.

Uh, dumb question, but I thought active links within stories aren't allowed, or was that only for active links in the End Notes?

Since Lazeez started warning about active links in blogs, I've been a bit gunshy about using links. For blogs, it makes sense to link directly to your own website, but I've instead used a text description of my website address (since Lazeez doesn't trust 'outside links'), so I'm a bit confused to discover that everyone else is providing the same 'outside links' to a variety of sources.

I guess it's a question of 'trusted links' (of established sites like YouTube) and non-established sites (like custom author sites), but the distinction seems more to penalize struggling authors, rather than saving readers from malicious sites.

So now I'm befuddled.

I also have a link to my Lulu account in my blog for those who wish to obtain a print or e-pub copy of the story which is either on, or being posted to SoL / FS etc.

Since I traditionally publish on multiple sites, that's why I provide links to my site, so readers can find whichever published version they prefer (ex. Amazon, epub or printed versions of the books).

Like Ernest, I aim to provide my story to anyone interested, whether they can afford to pay or not. In exchange, though, I appreciate feedback as an alternate payment, as decent feedback is worth a lot for authors who often never hear after someone has purchased a book. SOL is excellent for that type of feedback. FS and Sci-Fi aren't quite as good at that, and ASSTR readers prefer the "The Sex was great!" responses over detailed plot comments.