Thanks!
Omg, this made my day
eerily, I received this message (warning??) less than five minutes after beginning to read the prologue
What exactly do you have in mind?
Like, obviously I can’t (and don’t want to) stop people from just printing the thing out on paper, and that doesn’t stop being true if they also bind the pages together into a book. If someone were to create multiple such objects and pass them around to others, I suppose it’d be nice if they let me know about it, and of course I would not be pleased if they were to omit my name (well, pseudonym) from the printed copies, or if they were to sell them. But that all seems like it goes without saying, and if it doesn’t answer your question then I’d need to know more about what you are proposing to do.
There are two things I’d like to do with your work that I think you may have a reasonable problem with.
The first is choosing how to present it. If I were to print TNC, I’d have to decide how to typeset it (especially those forum sections!) and what the cover would look like. The only part that would be yours is the text. I don’t know how I’d feel about letting someone do that to my Internet scribbles, but it was kind of implied in my ask, and it doesn’t seem like it fazes you—still, if you want to talk about what I have in mind, my DMs are open. Or I can just make it as vanilla as possible if you like.
Second, the reason I’d like to print TNC is because the college I’ve committed to has this thing where incoming freshmen add books to the library, and, well. I feel like TNC expresses an important part of my past, I guess, this sort of lonely modern intellectual craziness that I’ve never really seen in print, and I wanted to bring a bit of that with me because I’m not really over it yet. My copy of TNC would remain there indefinitely for students to find and borrow—with the AO3 URL printed inside, of course. This is the part I figured you’d probably say no to, but I thought it was worth asking.
And when it comes to selling, I feel I should note… I don’t know what they’ll end up doing with the collection decades down the line when the institution inevitably ceases to exist. I can talk to them about that if it matters.
Sorry for the very late reply – hope it isn’t too late!
This actually sounds really cool and I don’t have any problems with the basic concept. A few things:
When you say “add books to the library,” do most people just donate an ordinary book they own? If so, what do you know about the precedent (if any) for adding a book you’ve printed and binding? If the book doesn’t exist anywhere else, will they still be able to enter it into their catalogue, assign it a call number, and all that?
I’d like to review some digital representation or mock-up of whatever you’re going to print before you print it.
I’d prefer that the book contain my real name (rather than “nostalgebraist”), and be shelved under my real name. I can send it to you in a PM once you’re further along (I’d imagine it can be dropped in at the end of the design process as it would only appear once or twice).
I have a strong preference that the forum sections appear as close to the web versions as possible, with the exception of changes in the color scheme to make it readable in grayscale (or, if printed in color, readable on paper). Since book pages are a lot narrower than the average monitor, this may mean the column with the post text will get really narrow and the posts will look really long, which is fine. Wrapping individual posts across page breaks is also fine, even if it looks bad. Basically, if it looks like someone has just hit “print” on their web browser, that’s actually appropriate and desirable.
Keep me posted!
What exactly do you have in mind?
Like, obviously I can’t (and don’t want to) stop people from just printing the thing out on paper, and that doesn’t stop being true if they also bind the pages together into a book. If someone were to create multiple such objects and pass them around to others, I suppose it’d be nice if they let me know about it, and of course I would not be pleased if they were to omit my name (well, pseudonym) from the printed copies, or if they were to sell them. But that all seems like it goes without saying, and if it doesn’t answer your question then I’d need to know more about what you are proposing to do.
The only others I can think of offhand are Homestuck (which was a major inspiration for TNC) and The Library Unpublished (which was inspired by TNC and includes it metafictionally).
Anyone else have any pointers?
I used a custom CSS stylesheet, which there’s an option for on AO3.
To make the stylesheet, I started with the stylesheet from some actual forum (don’t remember which), and then fiddled with it to get a result closer to what I wanted. I had some vague memories of CSS from a high school web design class, which were helpful, but there was a lot of trial and error too.
@nostalgebraist I am the worst fiancée in the world
now that’s what I call definite wrongness
mildly creepy thing from today: i have a used paperback copy and also a pirated (imperfectly OCR’d) kindle copy of the same book (a glastonbury romance). i’ll read the kindle copy if i’m in bed and it’s too late to have the light on. i was trying to sync up where i am in the two copies, and it turns out there’s a whole multi-page section in the ebook that doesn’t appear in the paperback. like, the chapter just ends in the paperback but it keeps going for a while in the ebook. neither has any mention of being abridged, and the paperback is a more recent printing, so you’d think it’s be more complete.
the kicker: the ebook-only section begins with a bunch of really garbled text even by the usual bad OCR standards, and is about two characters descending into a cave.
Start of the ebook-only part:
Persephone became aware now of the sound of water, down somewhere in the darkness to their right, and it was not long before he made her stop and look between the tree trunks, upon whose rough surface he threw the light of his flashlight. There she saw a single bright lamp burning, throwing morbid shadows upon an expanse of grass. By this radiance a link la^n v.itl. rbairs and tables set out became apparent, al! tii^e tiling rji’^ij^s and deserted, looking ghostly, and even gka-tlv ih« •:••.*. **I k *op it lit,“ whispered Philip in her ear. Thert* was nu n:>;-i- ^ -ri^d for him to whisper. It was hard to raise his \rov j,;rt ihtn. ”It’s my electric plant. That’s where we serve tea to vi-it.jrs. I expect you’ve been there yourself, only \u;i came in a diiierent way.“
They went on again, the path they followed growiii^ *tea<iilv narrower and steeper. They walked closely s-ide by side mid presently Philip without a word possessed himself of her hami. At last she saw before her the upward rise of a precipitous r,;< k. covered with moss and last year’s ferns, and right befo:e them, at the base of the rock, a little square doorway. Philip took from his waistcoat pocket a large key, like the key to a drive gate, and using his flashlight turned it in the lock and pushed the door open.
mildly creepy thing from today: i have a used paperback copy and also a pirated (imperfectly OCR’d) kindle copy of the same book (a glastonbury romance). i’ll read the kindle copy if i’m in bed and it’s too late to have the light on. i was trying to sync up where i am in the two copies, and it turns out there’s a whole multi-page section in the ebook that doesn’t appear in the paperback. like, the chapter just ends in the paperback but it keeps going for a while in the ebook. neither has any mention of being abridged, and the paperback is a more recent printing, so you’d think it’s be more complete.
the kicker: the ebook-only section begins with a bunch of really garbled text even by the usual bad OCR standards, and is about two characters descending into a cave.