Comments on: How to download properly-formatted fanfiction the easy way

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:20:08 +0000

Chloe, Andy did mention it, and I tried it out. It doesn’t add a working Table of Contents on mobi files, so it’s not ideal for me. But it did look like a good option for people who aren’t as picky as I am.

By: Chloë

Chloë — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:15:41 +0000

By far the easiest tool I’ve seen (and used many times) is FLAG – https://www.flagfic.com/ – I’m surprised nobody has mentioned it yet!

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:21:21 +0000

Chris, now that I think about it, that’s probably where I learned about it.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:00:08 +0000

I also mentioned this utility on TeleRead back in 2009.

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:24:43 +0000

Andy, as far as I know, the AO3 download function works on Mac. It also works beautifully from mobile browsers.

Fanfiction downloader has a web-only version that should work on Mac. No Mac here, so I can’t confirm it.

Yes, quality is an issue. I find AO3 to be generally higher quality than ff.net, and it does depend on the fandom. BBC Sherlock and Doctor Who (my two favorites) seem to have a better than 99:1 ratio. Maybe more like 95:1 When I find a good author, I grab everything and then check that person’s favorites, bookmarks, etc. That usually uncovers more decent stuff. Tumblr has some fic recommendation accounts I follow, which helps to separate decent from horrible.

Flagfic looks good. It handled my “test” fic (where the author screwed up so many things that the entire mobi file is replete with unprintable characters when downloaded directly from AO3). However, it doesn’t add a functioning Table of Content on a mobi file, so it won’t replace my current methods.

By: -Andy-

-Andy- — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:33:23 +0000

So, that’s PC only?

Personally, for most of my fic downloading needs ( unless a fan fiction archive has its own ePub output generator) I use flagfic.com. It doesn’t support multitudes of ebook formats but it does the common ones. And supports some specific fic archives. Works great from my iPad. Lets me download ePub files directly into my favorite ipad ePub reader – iBooks, Stanza, etc.

Good luck finding a download tool for LiveJournal based stories. Using LiveJournal to archive fiction (fan or otherwise) is painful and a serious square peg in a round hole endeavor. Trying to extract anything from that mess requires too much manual effort since there are no standards. And most serious ficcers on LJ are moving to AO3 anyway.

And.. Did I miss a warning about fan fiction quality? Sure there’s good stuff out there but Sturgeon’s Law applies – Squared! (90% of everything is crap. And 90% of the remaining is also crap! So, approximately 1% of all fan fiction is readable. Fortunately, there are millions of people churning the stuff out for free, some even with a firm grasp of grammar and how to use a spelling check.

By: Frank Lowney

Frank Lowney — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:41:50 +0000

Since I have a Mac with Pages installed, I tend to use the Safari browser’s “Reader” feature to separate the wheat from the chaff. With the text in view, I simply copy it to the clipboard and then paste into Pages. This usually grabs any illustrations as well as the fonts and styles used. I can then re-do that if I feel the need. I often capture several article like this placing each one in a separate chapter so that my students have a package of related material in the form of an ePub. The Pages.app has an excellent ePub export function.
There is another option that Mac users have but may not be aware of and that is the MacOS X Services in version 10.7 and later. Here’s a good description of the ePub service in MacOS X: http://www.macosxautomation.com/lion/epub/index.html
Once configured, just select text and invoke the service via the contextual menu (Control-click) and an ePub document is created.