Fighting For Our Right To Party

[zvi]

So, I am not actually directing you to go talk to people in an anon meme, but there's a long discussion about posting a story podfic first, text delayed, in the Inception anon meme on LJ.

It raises a few interesting questions which you might care to discuss.

Some questions:

1) How do you convince people to give podfic a try, if they don't intuitively grasp why it might be cool?
2) If a story only ever gets posted as podfic, are you keeping something from people who prefer text?
3) What are the arguments for and against simultaneous release of podfic and text versus podfic first release?
4) How do you present the idea to people of a staggered release without annoying them? How do you let the people who didn't want to listen to the audio that the text is finally available?
5) If a story is released podfic first, is that first podfic of it the canonical version of the text?
6) How do you write a story to be read?

Comments

[facetofcathy]

My patience timed out trying to get the anonmeme link to load, so I'm just going to answer the questions without that background.

1) I know that podfic is cool. I know this having never listened to one, because all sorts of people love it, love making it, love listening to it, and they say so in their journals and in places like this. I don't want anyone trying to convince me to try it. I know how my brain receives verbal information, and I know that a fanfic is too complex an item and at the same time, a reading of a text is too, hmmm, all of a sameness in presentation for it to work for me. (Also Ubuntu doesn't want to play sound through my headphone jack.)

For people not like me, but who are hesitant to try podfic, my advice is to make some small samples that can be embedded in a journal post and are one click to listen to. Tantalizing samples of new works with lovely cliff-hangers.

2) If a story is never posted as text you are keeping something from people who can not, choose not to, may not or prefer not to access fic any other way. I'm not saying that's morally wrong, necessarily, I'm just saying yes you are, and it's not all about preference.

3) I can absolutely see the point of promoting podfic as an art form by having some podfic only fic releases, or podfic first fic releases. I can see the point of that as strengthening community for podfic creators too. I'm not someone who believes everything in fandom is for everybody--er, just don't advertise yourself as universal if you're never going to try to be. Simultaneous release is less controversial. Sometimes controversy is the price of the thing you want to achieve.

4) Oh, well, know up front that being annoyed is just how some people do fandom. But, explain in simple terms somewhere in the first nine paragraphs of your announcement post (there is some science that people drift off after 9 paragraphs in news articles) how easy it will be for us textophiles to access the text of the story and when that will happen. How? Make sure it will work for anons as well as people who would like an email or comment letting them know.

5) I have no opinion.

6) Oh, someone please answer this! I find this idea fascinating. I read aloud my stories at final edit stage, and that surely helps with a story meant to be read, but is there a style of writing that works, or some that don't? How does knowing you're writing to be read change the work?