Fanfiction archive question...

[cairistiona]

Okay, so I'm thinking eventually, maybe sooner, probably later, I want to post all my LOTR fic to my Ao3 account.

Question, especially for those of you who have stories at Stories of Arda: what's the most efficient way of downloading a story from an archive that isn't set up to download stories in various (or any) file formats? Copy/pasting the text into a .docx and then uploading? Copying the HTML and uploading?

I still have copies of the stories, but as I tend to edit as I post, the copies I have aren't necessarily going to be the same as the published version. OTOH, knowing me, I'll probably re-edit before I repost anyway, so that may not be much of an issue. It might be easiest to just use my own file copies. (Although, knowing how ancient those copies are, and how I wasn't exactly the queen of being digitally organized back then, erm. The tedium of copy/pasting might actually be easier....)

I have a little app that downloads and converts my fanfiction.net stories, but it doesn't work with SoA.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[mikononyte.livejournal.com]

I use calibre. It only needs the address and, unless it is labelled adult, will downloadit. From there you can convert to mobi, epub, doc or just about anything else.

It is what loads to a Kindle or Nook reader, etc.

Does not upload to network however.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about that app... I'll look into it, thanks!

[mikononyte.livejournal.com]

Looking at some (now that I am on the computer) that I downloaded to read some while back. If the site has it in a box of some sort, then it should download fine.

I have some of yours in my archive file that still load as Mobi's just fine. (as that is what I put in my old Kindle). They can be converted to word or text as well.

I can email you a copy of No Better Name as an example, but it would have to be zipped. If interested, just holler.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the offer, but I already have that safely downloaded from ffnet. Kindle still uses the .mobi format, so I would think, unless they vastly change their Kindles, which I don't see happening, a .mobi from any year will still work just fine (unlike, say, Word and their constant tinkering that makes old .doc files not open... Microsoft is idiotic).

This will be a "someday in the future" project, probably after Dink is off to grad school and I have a lot of hours in the day to fill. But I'm going to start the downloading now, grabbing one every day or so, just in case SoA goes kerplunk. *may that never happen*

[mrowe.livejournal.com]

Your best bet may be copy/paste to Word and upload.

Any html files you copy are bound to be 'polluted' with unnecessary tags and stuff, and would need to be cleaned up before looking nice on AO3.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that may be how I'll have to do the SoA stories, tedious copy/paste. Which may mean it never gets done, but who knows. LOL

[mrowe.livejournal.com]

It might be worth seeing if you can copy/paste directly from SoA to the AO3 draft page (cut out the Word step). It may not work, but if it does, it may save some work...

Otoh, make those local master copies!

[ellynn-ithilwen.livejournal.com]

i posted some of my old stories to ao3 much later after they had been written, and i kept all my old stories on my computer as docs. so i didn't have to download them from some other site. but if i had to do that (from soa, for example), i guess i would login to my soa account, copy the text, and then post it to ao3.
i don't know if that helps, but that's what i would do. ;)

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

Copy/paste is probably how I'll need to do it as well. Like I said, I have the files, but I edit within the site's editor, so the files aren't 100% identical to what's already published. Some of my older story files aren't even in .docx format, they were written so long ago and on a program other than Word, so I have no idea what they'll look like when I try to open them. Copy/paste is probably the easiest way to do it.

[elwenlj.livejournal.com]

I did copy-and-paste into a document for all Febobe's stuff on ff.net. It's a true pain, because I had to do some formatting before uploading to AO3.

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

I actually found a downloader app that works with ff.net files, but it doesn't work for Stories of Arda, so unless Calibre works for it, I'll be stuck doing the copy/paste. I also will need to copy/paste reviews, I guess, since the downloader only copied the story itself, not the reviews. I'd hate to lose those, although to be honest, I rarely read them any more. :/

I like writing, hate the tedium of posting and keeping track of it all. I need an administrative assistant to do all that. LOL