Bewildering Stories discusses
PDF Versions:
Reading on the Road
with Don Webb
A veteran contributor raises a question that may be of interest to our readers and contributors alike. Our friend likes to read BwS while riding the bus to and from work. But the bus has no wi-fi connection. What to do?
Now, Bewildering Stories has no print edition; it’s designed to be read on line. That’s why we make such a big deal about our “long road” guideline and our 3,000-word page limit. They help readers keep their place while reading on a desktop or tablet screen.
Suppose you can take a tablet with you on the bus. What’s the best way to store some Bewildering Stories on it and read them at your leisure?
Copy-paste the text from your browser into a word-processor file, save it, and upload it to your tablet, whatever model you use.
Simpler: Have your browser convert the page(s) to a PDF file and upload the results to your tablet.
Simplest: Save the browser pages to your tablet as webarchives.
What is the main advantage of PDF? It makes multiple-page stories and serials easy to save as a single file. But there are a few considerations:
One must be able to string multiple pages in sequence into a single PDF file. That should be easy to do.
Exporting browser pages to PDF may save the headers and footers along with the text. They will be a little distracting but hardly a problem.
Serials are normally proofread and corrected one issue at a time. You can sometimes read ahead of the schedule, but the results won’t be “official” until the conclusion appears in a regular issue.
Authors may want to make PDF versions of multiple-page stories and serials available for download. We see the advantages and are willing to accommodate our contributors and readers. Of course, such a file must reproduce the on-line text, and the conclusion must have appeared in a regular issue, to ensure that readers get the proper version.
A reminder to contributors:
- Please do not send submissions in PDF; the format is very hard to work with.
And please do not send a PDF version to accompany a submission in word-processor format; we can’t use it. Remember, we can accept PDF versions that reproduce complete multiple-page works after they have concluded in a regular issue.
Sorry, there’s no point in authors’ sending us PDF files of single-page stories, essays or poems. Since a single browser page can be saved easily, we’ll leave it up to the readers to choose to make their own PDF versions, webarchives, or word-processor files, as they wish.
Personally, I would love to make The Other World available in PDF, but the novel is formatted in HTML and Javascript. It makes best use of the Internet. At the moment, I’m trying to figure out how to make hypertext notes toggle between display="none" and display="block". If PDF or any e-book can handle that sort of thing, I will be quite impressed.
Copyright © 2016 by Don Webb
Managing Editor
Bewildering Stories
