Plaza Forum

I'm experimenting with offering all the Plaza stories as downloadable eBooks (free of course), for reading offline.
As a first step, please could you download this TEST BOOK and let me know how well/badly it works on your ereader app, software or device:
(removed link - testing has finished)

the book is in epub format, which works on almost all devices (iPhone/Pads, Android, Nook, Kobo, computers, etc). For help with ebooks this page looks useful https://www.wikihow.com/Open-EPUB-Files (https://www.wikihow.com/Open-EPUB-Files).

If you use a Kindle, you'll need to use this mobi format file instead:
(removed link - testing has finished)

Any problems? I'll need to know exactly which device and which version of the ereader software you are using please.

(My plan is to build this feature into the existing story search engine, so you can find a selection of stories by your favourite author, or with certain tags, and then download a custom ebook of just those stories.)

This is great idea! (I download stories I want to read and manually convert them anyway).

I usually use Bookfusion (both as web app and mobile apps) as reader.
Bookari (android reader app which I also use)
Both works fine with test epub file.

Works fine with Android 6 Marshmallow and Moon+ Reader Pro. Good idea!

I also think this is a great idea, so far I have used the default reader in Windows 10 and had to hunt one for Chromebook and found an extension called EpubReader  that works well.

 Love this idea thank you.

The trial book worked fine.

Sending Mobi to Kindle is quick and simple. There are no problems reading the book.
Gabrielle

Love the idea, looks good. Some of the to-forum links are broken but they are broken on the actual page in the site as well (specifically, the forum feedback link in "Belinda's". Other than that, outstanding.

Seems fine in Nook and Calibre

How soon this feature will be in production? What can we do for it?

Quote from: taurired on April 29, 2019, 10:35:18 AM
How soon this feature will be in production? What can we do for it?

Pretty soon! I was just waiting for more feedback from users about whether they'd use it, and what type of ereader they had.

One thing that would really help is if someone can contribute a graphic to use as the ebook covers? It should be a 1618px wide x 2500px high PNG, and have room for me to automatically add the book title/author name. I was thinking perhaps a larger version of the "bottom + handcuffs" graphic that is used on the Plaza pages, "Gromet's Plaza" in large text, and "Adult"/"18+" graphic? But that is just an idea.

(The same graphic will be used for all downloaded ebooks, so at the moment there won't be a different cover graphic depending on what type of stories they are.)

Just to get a bit more interest, I've now added a little 'download as eBook' button in the search page results. Is it obvious enough?

(https://grometsplaza.net/img/ebook.png)

(All it does at the moment is bring you to this forum discussion.)

Windows 10, self-loaded into MS Edge.
Not problems

Suggestion: why not add it not only to search engine to but to stories themselves (if story is multipart one - all currently published parts should be downloaded)?

Quote from: taurired on May 01, 2019, 05:52:37 AM
Suggestion: why not add it not only to search engine to but to stories themselves (if story is multipart one - all currently published parts should be downloaded)?

Good idea, thanks  :) I'd like to add that sort of thing, as well as generally improve the navigation within multipart stories.

This is my attempt at an ebook cover:

Quote from: webnik on May 01, 2019, 03:10:42 PM

Quote from: taurired on May 01, 2019, 05:52:37 AM
Suggestion: why not add it not only to search engine to but to stories themselves (if story is multipart one - all currently published parts should be downloaded)?

Good idea, thanks  :) I'd like to add that sort of thing, as well as generally improve the navigation within multipart stories.

Btw, can something be done with stories like Weekend Maid? it's listed as 1-2-3-4-5-6a-6-7... but story logic is 1-2-3-4-5-6(end), 6a is alternative to part 6 and part 7 follows 6a and not 6

The "ebook download" icons on the Plaza search page should now be working?  :)
Epub format only, no mobi format for Kindle users yet. Sorry.

It will build you a custom ebook of up to 100 stories from your search results. The ebook title/subtitle are fixed for now, but the next job is to allow users to edit that text to whatever they like.

Please let me know how you get on trying it.

just tried this, did a search and parred it down to 41 stories, so i clicked on the download ebook icon, downloaded file, when i went to open in win10 just says cant open, in the chrome ext for epubs i got this error " Unfortunately an unexpected error occurred opening the ebook. Please send the following error message to epubread@gmail.com. Thanks!: prepare 5: TypeError: Cannot read property 'getAttribute' of undefined"

let me know if i can help test any further.

ace

It's working great for me - I love it! Unfortunately, I can't search on the tag "stories Shok really liked" but I'm working around that.

Being naturally vain, I made a book of my own stories as a test; and being unsupervised around Photoshop, I ended up making a book cover for it!

(http://chocmess.com/pix/random/trashcan-stories-shok.jpg)

Love it  ;) Shokolada, looks good.

So the question is this . . .

Gromets Plaza has permission to use the stories submitted for the website. That doesn't mean there is permission to upload stories to an online downloadable entity. This seems a trifle presumptuous to just create a load of downloadable stories.

I didn't see a poll for the writers asking if they were okay with this idea.

The ebooks are meant for personal use only and should not be posted anywhere else without the authors permission. They can be read on ebook readers like kindle I believe. It was just an easy means of viewing the stories and not something to allow them to be posted anywhere online.

Hi Gromet.
Thanks for the clarification.
Emma x

Is it still possible to download books to Kindle to read offline?

I'm afraid not, the functionality that supports it didn't survive a security update to the server software, and it's not trivial to resurrect.

Too bad. It would be nice to be able to read it offline.

Okay, so the ebooks feature has been resurrected. It's still got a bunch of issues, depending on which stories you download, but it should be back to as capable as it was before.