Questions on d/l'ing and storing fic w/Calibre

[shesgottaread.livejournal.com]

Hi folks!

I'm trying to decide how to organize some of the fic I save from the web. Primarily I use a combination of Calibre w/the fanfic downloader plugin and the Firefox extension Grab My Book these days to save fic. However, I've got a big backlog of stories that I've saved from sites over the past several years, some of  which is no longer available online. 

So, do you combine all parts of a story into one big file and then import it into Calibre? Do you prefer stories by one author to be collected into one e-book or each story stored seperately? And what about several stories that are part of the same universe of a particular author, would you combine those or just assign them as part of a series?

Mostly, I've been combining several stories into one big collection, but have been re-thinking that approach this past week, and thought I'd get input from the group before I go trying to make any significant changes. For instance, I saved chilly_flame's Small Favors universe (Devil Wears Prada featuring the Miranda/Andy 'ship) in one e-book, while other stories she's written are in additional e-books. If it makes a difference, I primarily read these either with Calibre or on my Nook Color.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice you care to share. And thanks for the contributors to this group. I've picked up a couple of good ideas from reading older posts.

Cheers!
--sgr

Comments

[josieb1.livejournal.com]

From the replies it sounds like I am an old fashioned girl, I save all the parts of a story (unless I get it in stages, like time stamps etc) in a word doc, convert that to RTF then load the RTF into Calibre,from that I create a mobi or ePub as required. This way i have the story on my PC in word as well as the ebook, it gives me the greatest control.

If I have a load of small stories by one author then I might save the as one document, but generally its one story one word doc. I then use the cover generate plugin in to create ebook covers

[hollys_tree]

I go the doc - html - epub/mobi route too. I'm particular about how my ebooks should look like and this way I have most control over it (especially blank lines and white space; and I always add my own notes to the header). It takes longer but I'm not reading that fast anyway.

[chamekke.livejournal.com]

What you said :-)

I'm sure there are ways I could do it that would be quicker, but I like to be able to adjust the text's readability. Especially if I'm copying fics from Livejournal... some of my favourite authors only post here, and they often struggle with hinky formatting.

[kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com]

Squee!Book (http://www.squeebook.net/)should take care of some of the formatting issues for you. I often use it to collect multiple part LJ fic, copy to a word document to make more formatting changes, then paste it back into the text box to create an ebook file.

[shesgottaread.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out Squee!Book. I'll have to take a look at that.

[shesgottaread.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And yes, when I first joined LJ (and before I got the Nook) and started reading fic posted here I did something similar--copy/pasting into rtf and then converting to html after tweaking the formatting a bit. Never wanted to read the editable file since I might inadvertently wipe something out or make changes. Finding Calibre was wonderful for that since I no longer had to keep a 4th browser installed just for reading. (Yeah, that's a whole other story. lol)

Eventually, I'll go back and import those saved doc, rtf and htm pages into Calibre. (Rediscovering old favorites along the way, I'm sure.)

[mremre.livejournal.com]

I do that too sometimes especially if it is an lj-only woo or when I find so many misspellings or such that I have to make minor edits in order to enjoy the reread... anyway not the point!

the point is that there's a plugin that lets calibre convert docx files so you can skip the rtf step completely. I recommend it highly!

as for the collections vs individual ebooks debate, I have found that having fewer overall files makes my Sony T1 run that smidgen faster since it doesn't have to index 10000 books. And having a book with 1000 pages is not appreciably slower on page turns than one with only a hundred. I have series collections, author collections, theme collections... the day I discovered epubmerge was a happy one indeed.

[josieb1.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the mention of the docx plug in, that's awesome. I downloaded it and used it tonight, fabulous, thank you