Printed Fiction, Maybe Stuff, and Bronycon '19 (Or, this is an Important Blog about Potential Pipe Dreams, Please Read) · 9:52pm Mar 23rd, 2019
I actually haven't considered this, and maybe I really should have. Anyway, for months there's been talk of Bronycon organizing a bookstore where you can purchase fanfiction hard copies. Now, the idea of a fanfiction hard copy is really neat to me. I've always wanted personal copies of some of my stories! I still have no idea if I could make it to this year's Bronycon, sadly. I really want to, but the whole thing is up in the air, especially because I'm going to have a lot of stuff on my plate this summer and this year.
(Ice Star is gonna be a university boy, basically. That's obviously going to conflict with a pony convention for multiple reasons.
Though, one doesn't have to go to a pony convention to print their fan fiction. I have zero idea if anyone would actually want to buy my writing. Personally, it's never struck me as anything anyone would want to buy, in the context of my fanfiction. I also never considered that anyone might want to. (Or that, y'know, anyone would even know who I am if I did show up at the con selling something, hypothetically? I don't know. Hopefully you get the idea, yeah?)
I also have a lot of stories. Some are technically still ongoing (technically just a trilogy?) so I'm not sure which ones would be the most ideal to print, or the most wanted, in either kind of situation. As much as this blog is meant to gauge interest, I've also encountered a number of problems the more I think about the idea of just having the 'make copies; don't go the con, but sell books' situation:
- Printing still costs money.
- The first arc of Sombra stories are complete and would probably be the best things to print. Also, what I would like to print most.
- That's five freaking stories right there. Considering four are novellas, that means they would likely have to be combined.
- Let's do the math according to this dyscalculic, a calculator, and page numbers according to GoodReads: Crystalline: Her Destiny is 91 pages. Tomb of Magic is 146. The Company We Keep is 108. Divine Move is 119. That's 464 pages for a 'book one'.
- This also ignores that I would still probably throw the story Spare Him His Life in there too, so that's another 58 pages that aren't counted in any of the other numbers on this blog.
- Favorable Alignment, by the same source, is 1,232 pages. To put that in perspective for y'all, books about that length would include all the Lord of the Rings books, The Fucking Arabian Nights, War and Peace, and generally a lot of other classics. While this is an awesome accomplishment to think about as a writer, it can make for a bit of a predicament if I was 100% sure about doing this.
- This is especially true if I was to use the source of printed fanfic that most people on here use: LuLu. For store-bought paperback quality type of stuff for a book, it only goes up to 740 pages. I'm looking at about 1,696 pages of fanfiction, so do you see why that could be a problem if I could only print 740 pages of Word Stuff?
- Hardcover would be Too Expensive 'n' stuff.
- Formatting. People edit their shit to appear publisher-good before printing. I don't mean obvious stuff like grammar, I mean there's a way you put the story with font, spacing, and those kinds of details in order to make a more proper novel. If I just did the lightest editing and essentially printed (like, with an office printer) the stories in question, not only would a FedEx printing place cry for my blood, it would look different compared to a published novel that I put it alongside for a comparison.
- Of the stories, Divine Move lacks a revision. Revising it would take time away from current stories, especially when it isn't in any way bad, just not in 'print this as a fucking novel' state.
- There's also the matter of the stories that would be published are still up in the air. The Sombra stories could be accompanied by side stories and such.
- I wouldn't have any cover art to use. At all.
- Nice cover art is gonna cost an arm and a leg. Also, money.
- I've never published a piece of printed fiction before, fan or not. If it looks like shit, that's my fault.
- Foolish Ice Star, as described above, is not in the best place to print any books. Even if I was, nobody has ever shown an interest in it before, or even in a particular story.
Discussions, comments, thoughts, suggestions, and honestly whatever else would be welcome. This blog should be seen as more about the idea itself as it slipped into my brain than any kind of situation where I'm promising books.
Sounds an exciting idea, but be sure to find out all the costs before you start.
Good luck if you choose to go forward with it!
I believe I'm the original source for the page counts on those Goodreads listings. If so, they were calculated by downloading the fanfic using Calibre's "FanFicFare" plugin and then running the "Count Pages" plugin on them.
Naturally, estimating the physical page count of an ebook is a bit of a sketchy thing - layout and typesetting can change a lot. Just letting you know where those numbers came from so you can decide if you need a second opinion. :)