Ebooks

This post is to help anyone who'd like to modify the style or look of the epubs downloaded at the A03 Archive.

I made a new "Extra CSS" code to use in Calibre to convert the A03 epubs to epub. I also found out how to remove underlines on the Chapter links and turn the font back. The purpose of the reconverting is to remove the blank paragraph space and replace it a indent at the start of a new paragraph. During the tests I also found out how to remove the underline on the Chapters so it looks more like a heading and less like a link. That was something I found kind of neat because the links still work. :) But they don't look like links.

Here is the code:

body { margin: 0; }
a {text-decoration: none; color: black;}
a [href] {text-decoration: none; color: black;}
p {margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; padding: 0pt; text-indent: 15pt; text-align: justify;}
h1 { text-align: center;}
h2 {text-align: center; }
h3 { text-align: center;}
h4 { text-align: center; }
h5 { text-align: center; }
h6 { text-align: center; }

And here's more information on the Look and Feel section of Calibre.

I've found that converting epub2epub gave me the best results.

I wasn't sure if I was the only one that preferred indents over the space but just in case I thought I should share.

The Archive of Our Own has released new code for the archive that'll allow users to export stories into epub, mobipocket, html, and pdf.

I've done some testing and I love what they've accomplished. The stories retain the correct metadata, such as author and title, there is a working Table of Contents, and based on your user preferences, the user can select how the file is named when it downloads. (which I thought was awesome.) :)

The only downside at the moment is that I don't think there is any way to customize how the epub will look before the story is exported onto your computer. Though I'm confident in time there may be options to pick your preferred font, font-size, and whether or not you want spaces between your paragraphs or indents. Based on how responsive the coders and the A03 team have been before I think it's possible customization features may already be in the works.

I'm very excited about this new feature because it opens the door to reading a lot more fan fiction without having to go through a lot of effort.

This weekend I added another 12 stories mostly Supernatural Big Bang fics and I think two Star Trek stories.

I've also spent a lot of time creating a new skin for the site. It's titled ebookarchive2. I know not very original...I've tested it on Firefox and on 15 inch monitor as well as a 22 inch monitor it looks good there.

For some reason, it's not working so well on IE7 and older versions, but someone did let me know from IE8 and up it displays properly. Unless someone knows css better than me...it looks like it may be like that for awhile because I can't figure out why it's mis-aligning on IE7.

The new skin is open to constructive criticism and suggestions. It's been a year since I've worked on another layout but I liked the idea of having the featured stories and random story easily seen. Before people would have to scroll down a lot to see them. However, for the recent story list..some scrolling is involved too.