[Kirok]

The producer of the Twelve Trek Days of Christmas asked the Director of Publishing and Media for TrekUnited (a handsome chap but I'd hate to be married to him) if TrekUnited would like to host a day of eBooks on TrekUnited and, after checking with the management, has been given the go-ahead.

What this means is that we will provide the webspace and organise it FOR ALL COMERS. You don't have to be a TrekUnited member to get published. This means it is open to any Star Trek fan fiction writer whether they are independant or a member of a group like alt.startrek.creative, Star Fleet International or The Omega Sector.

Basically we'll take a manuscript and ...

• Host and, depending on response, help arrange a cover graphic that can also be downloaded as a mini-poster
  
• Host a link to a "Print on Demand" ready pdf in A4 and US Letter.
  
• Host the book in an embedded Issuu browser, so that it will be available on the Issuu network
  
• Lodge the pdf on the Scribd network giving it a potential audience of 20 million monthly visitors worldwide!
  
• Link to a downloadable eBook in Mobipocket format. NB eBooks can be advertised on the free eBook forums.
  
• Link to a downloadable eBook in eReader format, which makes it downloadable to the new iPhone.

As with all of the Twelve Trek Days of Christmas projects there are some criteria that must be adhered to. If you feel your work cannot fit into this then you are still free to excercise your right to publish privately - we will make our experience here freely available to other groups if they want to do something similar themselves - and we wish you all the best!

• As a fan production it will be published with adequate copyright disclaimers to acknowledge the rights of the copyright owners but TrekUnited makes no claim to ownership of your work - the original aspects of your work remain yours and we will support your moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
  
• The Twelve Trek Days of Christmas is family-friendly so we must ask that your content be no more than moderate in impact, for example M according to Australian classifications. However in the spirit of IDIC we support the GLBT Trek community and would welcome a story that shows how a Star Trek future could be free of all prejudice.
  
• As a fan production, there can of course be no paid or sponsored advertising however contributing authors will be offered space to publicise the organisation or fan production group of their choice. Authors work will be accompanied with a biographical paragraph unless they wish to preserve their privacy.
  
• Space will be allowed for accompanying graphics at the editors discretion
  
• The deadline for the Twelve Trek Days of Christmas is Dec 1st with half of December for leeway. There will be a "second string".

What we won't do is copy edit the manuscript - we have neither the time nor the resources to do that - spelling, grammar and style are the responsibility of the author.

Works will be chosen competitively, ie the best get's published, but I will try to get at least one per organisation, to try to get a good spread of contributions. However if I don't get contributions of sufficient quality, I'll be bending that rule - I'm not going to knock back a good story just to publish a Mary Sue from the USS Good-Ship-Lollipop RPG group!

The criteria I will be judging submissions on will be style and originality but seasonal, Christmas content will be a definite point in your favour. I'll use the Dean Wesley Smith method of culling: after reading the first page I'll split submissions into two piles, second read and rejection. In my case the only cause for automatic rejection after first page is gross misuse of spelling and grammar and rejection after second read will only be because of spelling/grammar or it doesn't fit the M - M15+ category.

Ideally I will be looking for 7 - 11 novella (17,500 - 40,000 words) and novel (over 40,000 words) length works and will be advertising extensively outside TrekUnited for authors. I'd like to point out though that this should not be seen as a excluding our own members - you write something that you want people to read and I'll do my best to help you get it to them by publishing it in the appropriate manner.

This project will act as a test bed for our publishing programme for next year and if demand from authors and readers is as expected we will be continuing it in 2009 with regular publication of a wide range of fan fiction in the cutting edge media that is available today.

Comments, queries and suggestions can be posted here or PM'd to me and submissions should be emailed to me at kirok@trekunited.com. I look forward to seeing your work!

Kirok of L'Stok

PS - Don't forget I'm also looking for shorter works for Hailing Frequencies Open!

[SLWatson]

Here's a thought too; how about for authors who write shorter stories, we maybe consider putting together anthologies? Kinda like Strange New Worlds.

[Kirok]

SLWatson, on Oct 26 2008, 09:57 AM, said:

Here's a thought too; how about for authors who write shorter stories, we maybe consider putting together anthologies? Kinda like Strange New Worlds.

Tempting! Very tempting! For the purposes of this project, the eBook day, I want to make each download a significant size - over 40,000 words. However that's not to say that the volume might not be made up of shorter works.

The only thing I'd stipulate would be that the volume as a whole would have to have a unified theme or subject, it could be a canon character, a communally written storyline, episodes of a virtual season, shorts about a ship, an era or a subject-based theme in the vein of Starfleet Corps of Engineers or The Captain's Table books.

As a sneak peak of our initial programme for 2009, over a three month season we are looking at publishing something different over each month ...

• Jan - Two FanFic short stories
  
• Feb - One FanFic novel
  
• Mar - One Fanzine - Hailing Frequencies Open
  
• Apr-Jun Repeat Jan-Mar

This is an achievable schedule with the resources we have at the moment - ME! - but depending on response, and it's gathering speed quickly, we can increase the programme.

K

[SLWatson]

Era would be the most broad. If people want to go and write new works, though, across a theme... that would be an awesome way to promote more community and cross-community creativity. IE, we have a weekly challenge for a character or specific theme (courage, honor, duty, or whatever), and then we compile the works?

[Terilynn]

okay - so Heritage (book I) is finished and Retribution is not. I think PMs are in order...

This post has been edited by Terilynn: 26 October 2008 - 09:01 PM

[SLWatson]

Terilynn -- already working on Heritage's Book One for you.

[Terilynn]

*wiggles happily in her swivel chair*

Squeak!

Kirok - poor thing....I think I may have overloaded his little portable whatevermathingy he uses to read fanfics....

(I'm such a technonoob)

[SLWatson]

Up to about fifty pages or so at 5 1/2 by 8 1/2, and I'm not even through the first forum page. ::laughs::

[Terilynn]

Yeah - I think it ended up being like 450 in Word. *is embarassed*

This post has been edited by Terilynn: 26 October 2008 - 10:35 PM

[Cptn_Krunch]

Congratulations Mdm T'Lynn...aye

~Her favourite Cptn swipes tear from deadlight wit' bloodied bandana~

[Terilynn]

Why you cry Cptn?! (Is worried)

[Cptn_Krunch]

Terilynn, on Oct 26 2008, 10:48 PM, said:

Why you cry Cptn?! (Is worried)

Tears o' joy fer ye me awsome authoresse

[Terilynn]

Cptn_Krunch, on Oct 26 2008, 09:55 PM, said:

Tears o' joy fer ye me awsome authoresse

Awwwwww - thanks! *HUGS* I swear though - I never would have posted anything without your first words of support Captain...Seriously.

[Kirok]

When I fed Heritage into my iPaq through the data cable it inflated like a helium balloon and instead of walking around with it in my pocket, I had to hold onto it like a kids balloon! Umm, not that I'm saying that Heritage is light reading but ...

I have my first entry for the eBook day! From Kapact I have the first of three episodes from his "Enterprise Virtual Season 5" which is an example of a larger work made of three smaller ones of aprox. 6,500 words. Remember this is a submission which is not a guarentee of acceptance however after saying this it sailed through the first read - technically well written - and stylistically and conceptually (which is part of the final acceptance criteria) it is a very entertaining read!

I detest the idea that as the editor of a 'zine (two actually!) and the publisher of the eBooks I'm going to be placed in a situation where I'm going to have to grade works competitively when that goes against the whole idea of fan fiction - at the end of the day what counts is that you have fun writing it and that others get a kick out of reading it! However (hopefully) I'm going to be offered more fiction than I can publish and there are some that are definitely more deserving to be read than others!

Actually it'll be the ones who don't make it that I'll be offering more critique to than the ones who do because they're the ones who need it and I'd hate to feel that I'd discouraged someone!

I'd never make it as J. Jonah Jameson! Gotta run! Got some updates to make to the TU Fan Fiction archive!

K

[Terilynn]

Hey - are you calling me fluffy?

[Captain_Hair]

Terilynn, on Oct 26 2008, 11:34 PM, said:

Yeah - I think it ended up being like 450 in Word. *is embarassed*

Embarrassed? Why, because you wrote a story with engaging characters and storylines and it ended up being long?

[Kirok]

OK, I've made up my first draft of a pdf novel to work out what format it should be in. Captain Hair has graciously allowed us to use the first volume of his Star Trek: Aldrin series "The Enemy Within" into the first TrekUnited published novel.

The question I have to work out is: what are the best options for providing this to you the readers in? One of my obsessions is to get stuff for free and by definition these books must be provided for free for copyright reasons. However I'd like to provide them in a form that can be printed out. There's something about holding a book in your hands, seeing it on your bookshelf or being able to lend it to friends that makes it a special possession.

What I need to ask for the ebook project is: what form should we provide the books in that is most likely to be printed by the readers? After discussion with Derek, Terilynn and especially SL Watson I see two options ...

* Home-printed on either US Letter or A4 then for binding either in a loose-leaf ring binder, spiral binding or at a printing shop perhaps with a glued spine. Be aware that we are talking about a 200 - 300 page novelthat you will have to bind, display and store? Such a big print-run would not be free: paper, printer consumables and wear-and-tear ... Home printers are not built for long print runs, they are slow, noisy and the moving parts are not the industrial grade that even an office would have.
* A print-on-Demand job where you send the file to a company that prints it out and binds it to look exactly like a hardback or paperback book. It would be quicker, less labour intensive for the end-user but the prices are marginally more expensive than a mass-produced book from what I've seen. In this case you are paying for professional quality, for example the hardback and softcover bindings are something that only an amateur with bookbinding knowledge and experience and a lot of time on their hands could only duplicate.

What I need to know is preferences - assuming that you wanted a hardcopy of a fan fiction book, would they prefer to get it as something that you could actually print out yourself at home or as something that you could have printed out professionally.

I see the POD (Print-On-Demand) ready file as the "deluxe" option for someone who wanted something to show off on their bookshelves (or in a club library?) anyone who wanted to read it for free has the options of pdf, online browser or eBook. The added advantage to a pdf based on a POD file is that it would be the best looking online format, either as a pdf or on one of the online browsers like ISSUU or Scribd - Killing three birds with one stone!

All I need to do after setting the pdf version up is to set up the eBook editions. In case any of this is setting of legal alarm bells I stress that no money is being diverted from the copyright owners - the "book" would be written and produced for free with neither the writer nor Trekunited getting any money, the printing firm is simply providing the reader, the end-user, with a service in printing and binding their file.

Gotta get some sleep. Might post this on the forum.

Alan

[Kirok]

Ladies and gentlemen -

This is the status of the eBooks project as of NOW! We have five in various stages of production. These are, in alphabetical order ...

Embers of Fire
Author: Sam Redfeather
Editor: S.L.Watson


Star Trek: Aldrin; The Enemy Within
Author: Derek Kessler
Editor: Derek Kessler


Star Trek: Dominion
Author: Charlotte Kebbell
Editor: Kirok of L'Stok

Star Trek: Enterprise; Virtual Season 5 [Provisional Title]
Author: House Abukoff
Editor: Kirok of L'Stok

Star Trek: Heritage; A Break With Tradition
Author: T.L. Shull
Editor: S.L.Watson

I want up to six more submissions and I'll be posting on alt.startrek.creative, SFIWriters, The Guardian of Forever, The Omega Sector to give them a chance to be in on this. Again I emphasise that I'll be releasing the instructions on how we did this (when they let me out of the loonie bin in January) to all interested parties so that other groups can do the same thing if their members want it.

If anyone is worried about loosing control of their work (not that anyone has legal, commercial ownership of a Fanfic but you know what I mean) I've defined the editor job as being to create a book that reflects the wishes of the author within accepted standards - if they want it in pink font on a black background it ain't gonna happen!

I'm going to start processing the first eBook shortly - I'm tending towards formatting it for Mobipocket and for either eReader or Stanza (which uses ePub) both of which can be read on mobile phones like the iPhone.

My thanks to everyone for their patience and hard work. Regards

Kirok