Advice on Formatting Illustrated Story?

[benfan]

I've written a multi-part story that I'd like to share on Literotica, with illustrations. I've read the guidelines and FAQ, and looked at other illustrated stories in that category, but still have questions about the formatting. One of the FAQs suggested I post such questions here. Most chapters of my story are already up in my gallery at Deviantart, where I've been active for many years. Is it cool to post a link here to DA, for the purpose of showing you what I'm talking about? All my galleries are free.

My story is set in 1904, and I've spent a fair amount of time formatting it to look like the pages of a book to give readers a 'vintage' feel. It's posted at Deviantart as a PDF. I can do similar formatting in Word, as Literotica requires---but the illustrated stories I've seen here all have much simpler formatting. Should I reformat my story with a simpler layout, in particular without page breaks?

Most of the illustrations were commissioned by me from pro artists. I own the right to share them, but they are not "my own original work" as required in one of the FAQs. They retain the actual artist's watermarks. Is it ok to include them?

I did not see a limit on file sizes for Word files. Most of my chapters are ~20 pages long, as PDFs, and with the illustrations some of them are ~5mb. Not sure what size they'll be as Word files. Is there a size limit?

Thanks!

 

[CalBishForNow]

I've written a multi-part story that I'd like to share on Literotica, with illustrations. I've read the guidelines and FAQ, and looked at other illustrated stories in that category, but still have questions about the formatting. One of the FAQs suggested I post such questions here. Most chapters of my story are already up in my gallery at Deviantart, where I've been active for many years. Is it cool to post a link here to DA, for the purpose of showing you what I'm talking about? All my galleries are free.

Yes. But if an account is required to view it, then don't get your hopes up about responses, regardless of cost.

My story is set in 1904, and I've spent a fair amount of time formatting it to look like the pages of a book to give readers a 'vintage' feel. It's posted at Deviantart as a PDF. I can do similar formatting in Word, as Literotica requires---but the illustrated stories I've seen here all have much simpler formatting. Should I reformat my story with a simpler layout, in particular without page breaks?

Yes. See this for a guide to what kind of formatting Literotica supports. You won't be able to make a whole story look like a 1902 printed book, but a dozen or so excerpts in the Illustrated category, who knows.

Most of the illustrations were commissioned by me from pro artists. I own the right to share them, but they are not "my own original work" as required in one of the FAQs. They retain the actual artist's watermarks. Is it ok to include them?

I'd say no, but it's a good question and unusual situation. Maybe send a note to Laurel to ask?

I did not see a limit on file sizes for Word files. Most of my chapters are ~20 pages long, as PDFs, and with the illustrations some of them are ~5mb. Not sure what size they'll be as Word files. Is there a size limit?

I don't know. If there's a limit on word count, it's over 100,000. I don't know if there's a limit on file size, but if so, I'd bet it's over 10 MB, just because of invisible metadata that can be included in Word files that the system doesn't have problems with. But I'm sure large documents with lots of images could get well past that. Good luck.

 

[nice90sguy]

I've written a multi-part story that I'd like to share on Literotica, with illustrations. I've read the guidelines and FAQ, and looked at other illustrated stories in that category, but still have questions about the formatting. One of the FAQs suggested I post such questions here. Most chapters of my story are already up in my gallery at Deviantart, where I've been active for many years. Is it cool to post a link here to DA, for the purpose of showing you what I'm talking about? All my galleries are free.

My story is set in 1904, and I've spent a fair amount of time formatting it to look like the pages of a book to give readers a 'vintage' feel. It's posted at Deviantart as a PDF. I can do similar formatting in Word, as Literotica requires---but the illustrated stories I've seen here all have much simpler formatting. Should I reformat my story with a simpler layout, in particular without page breaks?

Most of the illustrations were commissioned by me from pro artists. I own the right to share them, but they are not "my own original work" as required in one of the FAQs. They retain the actual artist's watermarks. Is it ok to include them?

I did not see a limit on file sizes for Word files. Most of my chapters are ~20 pages long, as PDFs, and with the illustrations some of them are ~5mb. Not sure what size they'll be as Word files. Is there a size limit?

Thanks!

Ive posted a number of illustrated stories here (many of which have now-removed nude images).

I had a lot of polite, but slightly frustrating chats with Laurel (who publishes all the stories here) about formatting, and faced a large number of issues. Here's some important poiunts to consider:

Checking and preparing a story is a very manual process for Laurel with illustrated stories, and expect a wait of at least a month, maybe more, before it goes live.

There's a 2Mb file size limit, and the story WILL NOT upload if it's any bigger.

Use MS Word, and insert the pictures at the right point of the story. Don't expect text to flow around them, or for image alignment to be honoured. Don't expect their published dimensions to match what's in the word file.
Reduce the image files' size in bytes by lowering their quality.

You should NOT use any tags in the document, but rely solely on MS Word to provide formatting -- italics, bold, center and horizontal rules.

No AI art.

No nudes (of course).

 

[benfan]

Thanks for the replies. I will clarify with Laurel the point about the commissioned art, and follow your advice when reformatting. If I need to, in addition to reducing the image resolution / jpg quality I could divide the story into shorter chapters to keep individual files under the 2mb limit.

Here's a link to the first chapter of the story, as a PDF on Deviantart. It's free to view, though an account is required---only because an account is needed to view Mature content on DA. My story is actually only marginally "mature," compared to a lot of stuff---there's no explicit sex depicted in the text, and no nudity in the art (so far).
https://www.deviantart.com/benfan/art/Scots-Grey-Book-I-1159477399

 

[nice90sguy]

Yep, I have a DeviantArt a/c and I took a look at the story. Nice!! -- That story shoudlnt present any major issues - and the images will probably be stretched full-width as you already have them. You could even ask readers to set the typeface (which readers control) to something old-syle like Times.

My guess is that you could get that story < 2Mb without losing image quality