Hello lazyweb!

[melannen]

I have two questions for which I desire input from the collective wisdom of Dreamwidth. Can you help?

1. When I uploaded all my fanfic back catalog to AO3, lo these many years ago, I only included stuff that was at least a thousand words and a "real" story. Since then I have generated more short bits (some of them on Tumblr, and therefore even more impossible to find.) At this point I would like to get them all compiled together on AO3 with my other stuff. What is your favorite method (As a reader and/or writer) for putting a ton of tiny bits of fic on AO3?

The options I have seen are:
1. Post them the same way as any other fic
2. Post them as individual fics, but in a ficlet collection or series
3. Post them as chapters in one work, which you then tag with everything
4. Post them as chapters of various works separated by fandom/pairing (i.e., an "HP drabble challenges" work, a "les mis injokes" work, a "misc. poetry filk" work, etc.)
5. Post them as chapters of one work but don't tag everything (so they would be on AO3 to link to, but nobody could find them via tags)

These all have things I really don't like but I don't know of any method I actually do like. (My kingdom for a "scrapbooks" option on AO3!) What do y'all think of them? Any other ideas?


2. So when I resolved to read one complete recent fiction magazine or equivalent a month, I thought my library got some and I could just read them through it, but it turns out they stopped getting them early last year.

Does anyone have recs for currently publishing, pro-paid, online original fiction magazines/equivalent (any genre, really), preferably ones that would not require giving anyone my credit card number in order to read the most recent issue?

(I know, paying people for their work is important, but I really want to know how badly it's going to suck before I commit. And given my last few attempts at reading pro-published fiction short stories... >_< The most recent issue of Analog my library carries had two stories about how heroic and tragic it was to be an elderly white dude with no friends. And I don't mean the elderly white dude did anything special, getting old while a lonely white dude was apparently sufficiently heroic to require two stories lauding and rewarding them for for being so brave as to be elderly and so annoying their family won't talk to them anymore. I guess that's what Analog's demographic needs, idek.)

Comments

[alasse_irena]

I would be inclined to post them as I would any other fic, or possibly as members of a collection, if you want it to be easy to find them all at once. Putting them as chapters of a work seems kind of...unnecessary? They are short individual fics, after all.

[melannen]

Hmm, yeah, I just dislike that when they're posted as individual fics, they can drown out longer stuff. Both as a reader and in terms of what it would do to my works stats. (I have literally hundreds of Harry Potter drabbles tucked away somewhere, for example.)

I guess one compromise would be to take the stuff I have lots of (like Harry Potter drabbles, crossover notfic and Les Mis fandom injokes) and post them as chapters in themed works, and then let the rest stand on their own.

[naraht]

Personally I would go for 1 or 2. There's nothing worse than thinking you've found a long fic in a rare fandom and then it turns out to be 100 words in a 100k collection. It also annoys me when I'm sorting by hit counts in a fandom, to have one outlier like that.

[melannen]

Yeah, but on the other hand, I would say that it's almost worse to think you've found a treasure trove of dozens of fics in a rare fandom/pairing and it turns out to be all drabbles. By the same person.

They're both annoying! Which is why I haven't done it yet.

But on the other hand it's also annoying to look for that one really neat drabble you remember from lj but it's not on AO3 because a lot of people don't put drabbles on Ao3.

Dilemma!

[snickfic]

1, all the way. If you're worried about clogging up the tags with short things, you could backdate them. But putting them up as a chaptered work means no one will ever look at them (except possibly to shake their fist at you as they try and fail to find the particular kink or pairing they want).

I haven't been reading much SFF for a while, but when I was, Lightspeed was the new kid on the block, Strange Horizons was the venerable oldster on the block (pretty much guaranteed not to tell you stories about the tragic lives of white men), and Clarkesworld always had solid work, although mostly shorter. Oh, and there's Beneath Ceaseless Skies, too, which is secondary world fantasy only and a little less inventive than the others, I feel? But, definitely plenty of secondary world fantasy.

[melannen]

I don't actually know if I care if anybody will ever read them, as long as I can find them (or point specific people toward them) There's a reason I don't consider 'em "real" stories. And even backdating will clog the tags if it's not a very busy tag. And it will my works page so messy :/ So far that does seem to be the preponderance of opinion, though.

And thank you! Those all look really neat.

[lannamichaels]

1. Post them the same way as any other fic

This one. Last time I was doing backlog stuff, I tried to post them all as quickly together as I could, so they'd all go out in as few e-mails as possible so I didn't spam my subscribers. But as someone who gets the e-mails, I'm totally fine with getting a lot, I just hit the archive button and go "yep, that person is uploading their backlog, I emphasize".


. (My kingdom for a "scrapbooks" option on AO3!) What do y'all think of them? Any other ideas?

Make a collection? I do those for my drabbles and for things that are thematically similar but aren't serieses.

[melannen]

Collection was one of the options I listed. I'm not really sure what use that is, though, unless they really are significantly thematically similar - really the only functional use of collections is if people want more of the same, and you can do that with tags, too, if they're not in a particular order.

[isis]

I have the same issue as you (all my HP drabbles omg) and am interested to see these opinions!

[melannen]

I am glad you are interested but that does not help me decide! :P

[stellar_dust]

1 and/or 2 (if you do 1, you might as well do 2).

Or 4, which is basically what I did with my XF drabbles. But, like, I had a whole series of drabbles that if you read them in the right order become a halfway decent MSR-getting-together fic, so it kind of worked? And I had a few quasi-stories that I could build that way? Don't do it if your category is just "here are all my HP drabbles," then it might as well just be 3. (I'm not sure if mine are chaptered; someday I will make sure.)

But if you really only just want them as a linkable archive that no one will ever randomly find, then do 5, and leave off ALL the tags. except "drabble collection" i guess.

Or you could put them in a series instead of a collection or chaptered work i guess.

Or some combination of 4 and 5.

But whatever you do, do NOT do 3.

[melannen]

Yeah, I'm thinking a combo of 4 and 5. What I have learned from all this good advice is that I really really don't want to do 1. :P

[alexseanchai]

IIRC Lightspeed (of Women/Queers Destroy Science Fiction) is free online except for most recent issue.

[melannen]

Thank you! That will definitely go on my list.

[katherine]

Personally I can't stand unrelated short things posted as chapters.

[melannen]

I don't like it either but I also really really hate the idea of all these random small bits and pieces cluttering everything up. *sigh* maybe that's a sign that I shouldn't put it up on AO3 at all yet.

[white_aster]

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/ seemed to have a good deal of itself up for free reading, last I looked?

I tend to be more unhappy when I see something I think is a fic that turns out to be a drabble, so I lean more toward the "make a story with different drabbles as chapters", so that it keeps all the tiny things corraled and I don't confuse MYSELF by having to name each thing and have it clog up my works page. I am less concerned about tags, just because I don't navigate by them and don't really have a sense of how well people find my stuff by them. If I have enough things that are in the same fandom, I definitely break them out (I've got a Transformers drabbles fic and also an..."everything else" drabbles fic. :P) and will try to tag them, then give the chapters intelligent names (Non-transformers drabbles - "Chapter 1-Loveless-"hairporn"-Soubi/Ritsuka" sort of thing.) *tosses in my $0.02*

[melannen]

I think that's the same as Lightspeed, which alexseanchai posted above? It does look interesting! And has a fair amount of free from each issue.

And THANK YOU!! *clings* Finally, somebody else who feels the way I do about lots of separate drabbles on AO3! :D

[amadi]

Whatever you do, I beg of you, do not post drabbles/WIPs/short pieces from multiple fandoms as one work. Nothing aches more than sorting by fandom and trying to sort by relationship but finding relationships from other fandoms cluttering the list because of a drabble dump.

[melannen]

Yeah, if I do make chaptered fics, I definitely won't tag them with multiple fandoms (unless all pieces in the work are crossovers between the same two fandoms... which knowing me and crossovers could happen. >_<). Which may make stuff hard to find, but eh, this is the stuff I don't consider showpieces anyway.

[synecdochic]

My preference is for each fandom gets its own work, as chapters of a work with the first chapter being links to all the others indicating which tags apply to what chapter. There is nothing I hate more than hitting a run of 200-some drabbles all uploaded at once when I'm browsing.

[melannen]

I think I'm leaning toward something like that, yeah. I think for fandoms where I only have a couple short things I'll either upload them separately or put them in a work with almost no tags. (if the info's in the chapter summaries, site search will still find it if someone's really desperate, iirc.)

[jadelennox]

1. I prefer reading as individual works (standalone or in a tumblr bits series) because it means I'm commenting / kudosing the individual works.

2. I read http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ and http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/ Neither has the excess of white dude problem. Paying is optional for both.

[melannen]

Hmm, yeah, that is an issue.
On the other hand I don't really foresee getting a whole lot of kudos/comments for any of these...

And thank you! (Although excess of white dudes isn't the only problem I've had when trying to explore the magazines, it's certainly the easiest one to whine about...)

[lotesse]

if you backdate uploads, do they show as a dump on the fandom's front page, or is that a functional workaround?

as a reader, I like to have short fics from the same general universe placed together in a series.

[melannen]

Backdated uploads will go under the date of the backdate if you're sorting by "date posted" (not sure what happens if you're sorting by date updated) but can still show up like a dump with smaller fandoms or if people sort by something other than date.

I'm not sure if I have any unposted ones from the same fanfic-universe (most of the times when I've done that I've already cobbled them together and posted them as a 1000+ words work) but I probably will group ones in the same canon-universe, idk.

[genarti]

I have made a series for my short little bits of stuff, and then I do the individual-chapters-of-a-work thing for connected stuff like responses to the same meme, or very short drabbles within the same canon, or whatever, so that if I want to (say) upload a dozen tiny ficlets at once they won't suddenly take over my entire Recent Works list. It has its downsides, but it's the best system I've found for my personal writing patterns.

As for online magazines, I second all snickfic's recommendations, and would add Crossed Genres magazine and Daily Science Fiction, and of course Tor.com (which publishes a whole lot of stuff, but excellent fiction among the rest.)

[melannen]

Yeah, that sounds like it's probably the best compromise solution - I'll have to finish compiling it all and see what I actually have, I guess.

And thank you for the magazine recs! I knew this was the right place to ask.

[jae]

I also have a bunch of shorter older pieces that I've just never bothered to put up at the AO3, probably for similar reasons. I guess I'm in no hurry to? If people want to find them, they can still go to my website (and none of them are particularly exciting that people who like my writing NEED to read them).

-J

[melannen]

Yeah, it's not so much that I want them up on AO3 as that I want to be able to find them myself (especially the more recent ones that have been written directly into tumblr replies, sigh) and sadly AO3 seems like the most stable solution to that right now. I could drop them all into DW posts I guess - a lot of the older stuff was posted directly to LJ communities so it's not on here either - but my DW tagging is *almost* as much of a mess as on Tumblr, and it's not really designed for that either.

[zlabya]

Analog's had issues in the recent (last 8 yrs or so?) past with posting some sexist stuff. There are exceptions in their stories, but it's still a white man's preserve to some extent. They do publish some good hard s.f. and things by women and non-white people.

I'm afraid I haven't read any prozines in a while but if I come across any names I'll let you know. Also, the various anthologies that come out, notably "The Year's Best Science Fiction" and "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror" tend to be fairly true to their titles and with a good number of authors other than straight white men.

[melannen]

They actually had a story in the issue I read by a non-white woman but I fear I wasn't terribly impressed by it either (although it did stand out as the only story in the magazine where a woman got to do stuff more important than being a love interest for POV dude.) It's kind of sad when I read old issues of the same magazine that were published in the 1950s and I feel less excluded by them. :/

[grey_bard]

Here's a cheat: make a new sub-pseud. "Melannen's minifics" or something like that. Create it as part of your master account and it won't clutter up your other index or stats, yet will be visibly you and easily seen and found on your profile, not to mention showing up in the inboxes of your subscribers.

[melannen]

Ooh, excellent cheat, thank you so much! That would solve the cluttering up inbox problem, why did I knot think of that!