[MOD POST] ANTHOLOGY PDF *AND* ANTHOLOGY AO3 COLLECTION
Hello everyone. Thanks to theif-raccoon's hard work, we now have a super shiny new pdf version of the anthology. It looks fantastic and very professional, so please do check it out. I can't thank her enough for her wonderful work in setting this up. You all are such amazing community members, and this is another in a long line of examples of your brilliance.
HIGH QUALITY PDF DOWNLOAD (43 MB):
Mediafire
Mediafire Mirror
LOW QUALITY PDF DOWNLOAD (7 MB- GOOD FOR READERS/PHONES/SMALL SCREENS):
Mediafire
Mediafire Mirror
Finalized PDF version of the Love Across Time Short Story Anthology is here! (Sorry for the wait!)
Changes:
-Title pages for every story and Illustration
-Image pages with borders
-Redone Table of contents with page jump links (Please note that the page numbers are different from previous editions since the book increased in size from the added title pages!)
-List of Illustrations with page jump links
-Hyperlinks back to the Table of Contents on story pages and Title pages (the red hearts)
-Hyperlink to the Community page on the name USxUK@livejournal.com name on Cover page
-Pinch hit image added for the story that was missing one
-Larger font size for ease of reading on a digital screen
-Page numbers
-Formal Back cover with publishing logo
Editions:
-Lower Quality version is 7 MB (fine for small screen reading)
-High Quality version (print suitable) is 43 MB
-All should be compatible with most pdf readers. I tested it on three different pdf readers and the hyperlinks worked on all of them, but I can’t guarantee they will work on all of them. It should be the only feature that might get disabled. [Tested on Acrobat Reader 5+, Adobe Mobile Reader, Quick Office mobile), and Aldiko (Android eReader).]
Images:
These may have received slight cropping at outer edges if they were oddly sized and could not be reduced or expanded to fit in the vertical 8 ½ x 11 format. Great care was taken to minimize this and not crop out any vital details. This is why a couple of horizontal images were reduced in size and combined with their story title page. If the size had been increased for better visibility and to fill the vertical page allotted to it, then the image would have required significant cropping. The other option would have been to split those images between a two page spread. Neither would have been fair to the artists and their images. It was decided that combining them with their title pages in those instances were the best option. We hope you will agree as well.
Stories:
There was little changed from what Haro originally mentioned. Fonts for the book were set at Times New Roman and increased to the 12 point size for the body of the stories. Theif-raccoon worked hard to make sure that italics, bold face, spacing and other critical elements remained the same. Chapter breaks noted by a line or asterisks were changed to one universal style as a short line em dash.
Regarding the notation of “The End” in stories; these were removed from any story that had them. This was done because stylistically it was something that would need to be added to all stories or added to none to keep a consistent style for the book. Since the embedded page numbers, individual story title pages, and Title of Contents page links should remove any confusion as to where each story ended and the next began it was decided to not include “The End” with any story.
A Note on the Format:
(This is a bit of a long explanation, but hopefully it will address any questions or complaints about the format chosen.)
This final edition is being released as a PDF only. What about an EPUB? Well the option of creating an EPUB was reviewed, but the research indicated that the EPUB format works best with material that is just one story and not an anthology with numerous authors, stories, and illustrations where the desired reading style is generally nonconsecutive, skipping from story to story rather than reading the book from the beginning page to the end. EPUB readers use a type of Flowing Text Cascading Style Sheets. This is so the text can adjust and flow to the size of the screen without the user having to constantly zoom in and out on the text or side scroll. Even though PDFs may force a user to do that if reading on a small screen, the EPUB was still not an optimal format for the type of anthology we were putting together over the PDF format. While it is possible to anchor images, create hyperlinks and so forth in EPUBs, it often means a lot of time intensive backend programming work to achieve the same results easily achieved in a PDF. Even after doing all that programming your EPUB file still may not work properly in all EPUB digital reading devices.
For example, the Indesign EPUB file export is not compatible with e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle or the Overdrive software for example. The file would then have to go through a secondary conversion where the style sheets carefully programmed in could be lost and the user/reader would still be left with a jumbled mess of text and images as the text flows to wherever the software for the e-book reader decided to place it. (I noticed this when I did a trial test of an EPUB on several different digital reader apps. It would look fine on some and horrible on others.) So creating just one EPUB file is not sufficient. A couple of variations/conversions that will cover at least the most popular devices are needed. Yes, things are getting better and more files can be read cross-platform without a lot of tweaking, but it’s certainly not anywhere near universal yet among the numerous e-book apps and devices.
However, the PDF file format is a proprietary software format of Adobe Systems that has been adopted by a majority of businesses here in the US and worldwide, so there are many free readers out there for it aside from the official Adobe Reader that is available for free download from the company in a variety of software platforms and languages. Thus it was decided to stick with a PDF due to the fact the file format is static; locks in the styles originally set, and since the software is proprietary, all the e-book readers and PDF applications have to be based on the same type of programming, so the text and images will read and work the same as originally encoded despite whatever digital PDF reader you may be using
ENJOY!
These links have also been added to the original anthology post HERE!
SECONDLY- I have set up an Archive of Our Own collection for our anthology oneshots! If you have already posted your fic to the site you can just go into ‘edit’ on your story and you’ll see ‘post this to collections/challenges’ as an option. Just type in “usxuk_anthology,” and it will bring it right up so you can add it. If you have not, when posting your fic you'll see what I've just described as one of your options in the initial posting process. If you do not have an AO3 account and wish to post your fic over there/use the site, I do have a couple of invite codes. First anthology participants who ask get them. ;)
THE AO3 COLLECTION IS HERE!
Thank you all!
-haro
HIGH QUALITY PDF DOWNLOAD (43 MB):
Mediafire
Mediafire Mirror
LOW QUALITY PDF DOWNLOAD (7 MB- GOOD FOR READERS/PHONES/SMALL SCREENS):
Mediafire
Mediafire Mirror
Finalized PDF version of the Love Across Time Short Story Anthology is here! (Sorry for the wait!)
Changes:
-Title pages for every story and Illustration
-Image pages with borders
-Redone Table of contents with page jump links (Please note that the page numbers are different from previous editions since the book increased in size from the added title pages!)
-List of Illustrations with page jump links
-Hyperlinks back to the Table of Contents on story pages and Title pages (the red hearts)
-Hyperlink to the Community page on the name USxUK@livejournal.com name on Cover page
-Pinch hit image added for the story that was missing one
-Larger font size for ease of reading on a digital screen
-Page numbers
-Formal Back cover with publishing logo
Editions:
-Lower Quality version is 7 MB (fine for small screen reading)
-High Quality version (print suitable) is 43 MB
-All should be compatible with most pdf readers. I tested it on three different pdf readers and the hyperlinks worked on all of them, but I can’t guarantee they will work on all of them. It should be the only feature that might get disabled. [Tested on Acrobat Reader 5+, Adobe Mobile Reader, Quick Office mobile), and Aldiko (Android eReader).]
Images:
These may have received slight cropping at outer edges if they were oddly sized and could not be reduced or expanded to fit in the vertical 8 ½ x 11 format. Great care was taken to minimize this and not crop out any vital details. This is why a couple of horizontal images were reduced in size and combined with their story title page. If the size had been increased for better visibility and to fill the vertical page allotted to it, then the image would have required significant cropping. The other option would have been to split those images between a two page spread. Neither would have been fair to the artists and their images. It was decided that combining them with their title pages in those instances were the best option. We hope you will agree as well.
Stories:
There was little changed from what Haro originally mentioned. Fonts for the book were set at Times New Roman and increased to the 12 point size for the body of the stories. Theif-raccoon worked hard to make sure that italics, bold face, spacing and other critical elements remained the same. Chapter breaks noted by a line or asterisks were changed to one universal style as a short line em dash.
Regarding the notation of “The End” in stories; these were removed from any story that had them. This was done because stylistically it was something that would need to be added to all stories or added to none to keep a consistent style for the book. Since the embedded page numbers, individual story title pages, and Title of Contents page links should remove any confusion as to where each story ended and the next began it was decided to not include “The End” with any story.
A Note on the Format:
(This is a bit of a long explanation, but hopefully it will address any questions or complaints about the format chosen.)
This final edition is being released as a PDF only. What about an EPUB? Well the option of creating an EPUB was reviewed, but the research indicated that the EPUB format works best with material that is just one story and not an anthology with numerous authors, stories, and illustrations where the desired reading style is generally nonconsecutive, skipping from story to story rather than reading the book from the beginning page to the end. EPUB readers use a type of Flowing Text Cascading Style Sheets. This is so the text can adjust and flow to the size of the screen without the user having to constantly zoom in and out on the text or side scroll. Even though PDFs may force a user to do that if reading on a small screen, the EPUB was still not an optimal format for the type of anthology we were putting together over the PDF format. While it is possible to anchor images, create hyperlinks and so forth in EPUBs, it often means a lot of time intensive backend programming work to achieve the same results easily achieved in a PDF. Even after doing all that programming your EPUB file still may not work properly in all EPUB digital reading devices.
For example, the Indesign EPUB file export is not compatible with e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle or the Overdrive software for example. The file would then have to go through a secondary conversion where the style sheets carefully programmed in could be lost and the user/reader would still be left with a jumbled mess of text and images as the text flows to wherever the software for the e-book reader decided to place it. (I noticed this when I did a trial test of an EPUB on several different digital reader apps. It would look fine on some and horrible on others.) So creating just one EPUB file is not sufficient. A couple of variations/conversions that will cover at least the most popular devices are needed. Yes, things are getting better and more files can be read cross-platform without a lot of tweaking, but it’s certainly not anywhere near universal yet among the numerous e-book apps and devices.
However, the PDF file format is a proprietary software format of Adobe Systems that has been adopted by a majority of businesses here in the US and worldwide, so there are many free readers out there for it aside from the official Adobe Reader that is available for free download from the company in a variety of software platforms and languages. Thus it was decided to stick with a PDF due to the fact the file format is static; locks in the styles originally set, and since the software is proprietary, all the e-book readers and PDF applications have to be based on the same type of programming, so the text and images will read and work the same as originally encoded despite whatever digital PDF reader you may be using
ENJOY!
These links have also been added to the original anthology post HERE!
SECONDLY- I have set up an Archive of Our Own collection for our anthology oneshots! If you have already posted your fic to the site you can just go into ‘edit’ on your story and you’ll see ‘post this to collections/challenges’ as an option. Just type in “usxuk_anthology,” and it will bring it right up so you can add it. If you have not, when posting your fic you'll see what I've just described as one of your options in the initial posting process. If you do not have an AO3 account and wish to post your fic over there/use the site, I do have a couple of invite codes. First anthology participants who ask get them. ;)
THE AO3 COLLECTION IS HERE!
Thank you all!
-haro