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

[paraka]

So the basic argument against no release (or delayed release) of the text of a fic is that you’re denying (or delaying) people the ability to consume a story how they want/need, when you don't have to.

I'm curious what the reaction would have been if the circumstances were different and people were saying that authors saying no when people ask to podfic their fic were denying podfic fans access to their works in their desired medium, that authors were making their works inaccessible to those that have issues with text.

[anatsuno]

this.

[melannen]

Well, I personally judge those people too.

Although (as I mentioned above) text-to-speech programs are much more advanced than speech-to-text, and also the bandwidth/tech/format problems aren't there, so the accessibility issue is somewhat less in that direction. In ten years, maybe not.