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

[lavvyan]

4) How do you present the idea to people of a staggered release without annoying them?

I don't see why I would have to try not to annoy people. It's fandom; being annoyed by random nonsense is what people do. Some people will break their fingers on the back button if someone uses "dick" instead of "cock" in a fic. It's their prerogative to do their thing. It's my prerogative to do mine.

Besides, the general assumption seems to be that once something is posted on the internet, the original creator holds neither title to nor control over it. That may be so. But with podfic vs. text, the original creator (one half of them, at least, if narrator and author aren't the same) retains control over how something is posted, and in this particular case, when. I can see how that would go against the sort of fannish entitlement that sees authors as writing machines (I'm sure George R. R. Martin would find the discussion at the meme somewhat entertaining), but frankly, that's the readers' problem.

melannen's argument for accessibility makes sense (though I can't be the only one remembering that unfortunate post about podfic as an accessibility tool for those whose eyesight fails them, which did make a few good points among all the bad), but in terms of a staggered release, those who rely on text versions would only have to wait a slightly longer period of time. Seeing as how text versions make up the vast majority of fandom, I don't see how this would be a major issue. Putting both versions out there seems like the obvious way to go to include the largest-possible portion of fandom, but usually the text gets released way before the podfic, and I don't see anyone make a fuss there.