Shortening submission to publication time?

[SimonDoom]

I've been doing this long enough that I should know the answer to this already, but I wonder: does it make a difference, in terms of hastening the time from submission to publication, whether one submits a story by copying the text into the textbox and formatting it in the text box, or by attaching it as a fully formatted .doc or .rtf file?

Let me add to that: I don't do any special formatting. No italics, no boldface, no nothing. In terms of formatting I think my stories are as vanilla as it comes.

When I pasted my rich text file into the text box all the spacing disappeared, and I didn't want to go through the whole thing and do the spacing, so I deleted it and just attached the story as a rich text file. In people's experience, will this cause a delay in publication?

I just submitted a story, and it's been about 24 hours now, and my stories typically take 4 days to publication, which I know is longer than some, even though my stories are usually pretty clean and not very long, and I've been doing this for 5 years, so it makes me wonder.

 

[oggbashan]

I copy, paste and submit as flat .txt files. In the past, I had to go through and sort out (or miss) some of the line breaks and paragraph spacing, but now I do two carriage returns between each paragraph they appear in the preview just as I want them (except for blank blank typos I have missed!)

 

[TxRad]

Everything I submit is a doc file. Time, usually three days at most.

Instead of doing the rich text file, save as text with line spacing. that should take care of the losing line spacing problem. I used to use that on another site that did not except word docs.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've submitted in the text box for the last two and a half years. Longest clearance wait - three days for a long story (40k words), 24 hours for a short one last month (3k words).

I think it's quicker, plus you get to see the Preview, so you can immediately see if you've cocked up html or paragraph spacing (which still happens to me occasionally, but I now catch it).

Faster processing, higher quality - it's a no-brainer for me. Use the text box, because that's what it's for.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Text box results in 24-48 turnaround for me. For some reason Lit hates any form of file I've ever tried giving it.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I've found that pasting text in the textbox goes quicker, sometimes < 24 hours from submitting to getting a date for publishing.

 

[Trionyx]

Pasting in the text box gets quicker results and, as mentioned above, one gets to preview things nicely. One caveat: if the writer has a lot of italics, be aware that with a LE page break, the italicized words revert to plain text at the top of the next page.

 

[MagicFingers]

Submission format

I used to have problems submitting HTML or Word doc formats.
Seems I used to have to go in and put in all the <cr><cr> for every paragraph and <i></i> for italics.
Now, I still Write and edit in Word, then copy the whole story as plain text and paste it in their box. Now, the CR, LFs come out perfect and I only have to put in a few italics. Works for me. Haven't submitted for a couple of years but did today. Story is 7800 words long, 42kb (Word). I'll let you know when it's released.

 

[Rustyoznail]

A couple of stories ago, I submitted one as a Word file. When it was listed as "Pending", I noticed that Laurel (or some code) did a copy/paste into the text box.

After that, I figured I'd save them a step and copy it across myself. Timewise, I don't know if it made much of a difference.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Losing formatting when doing a copy/paste usually means that you don't have your paragraph formatted properly.

For Word...

For Open Office...

Any other word processor should be the same.

You will have to put that extra line feed in, but just hitting return twice at the end of a paragraph isn't all that hard. You do it here in the forums all the time.

 

[jsmiam]

When you lose spacing, (I’m sure you did this, it’s just worth asking), did you go all the way to previewing the story? Depending on “stuff”, spacing is sometimes ok and predictive of how it will look posted.

I bet not in your case, but nonetheless, everybody should preview. I almost always find one more typo every time, even previewing the same story repeatedly. For me, there’s always one more mistake.

P.s. I author in word, I use zero (nothing) formatting, and paste into lit.

 

[oggbashan]

I write in Word 365 with Grammarly permanently on. I use Word's editor to check for spelling and grammar mistakes.

I copy and paste as basic text and then preview (Grammarly is still on). Grammarly highlights typos in the preview.

Even then I miss typos.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I always post in text box, so I can see how it looks with line spacing.

The time to publish has been from two days to as long as seven. I think it has to do with their workload and when you posted in relation to others in the building queue. I noticed the longest time (seven days) was just after they published a long list of audio stories. So, I think audio stories take them longer to review, since they can't speed-read past inconsequential parts.

 

[SimonDoom]

Zeb is right. I write all my documents using Word 365, and with this particular document the formatting was incorrect. That's why the spacing disappeared when I pasted it into the text box. I should know better.

 

[Bazzle]

Just out of interest, is there actually a human checking each of the hundreds of stories?

Or is AI type thing?

B

 

[NotWise]

Just out of interest, is there actually a human checking each of the hundreds of stories?

Or is AI type thing?

B

Seems to be a combination of text filters and human oversight.

 

[SimonDoom]

In answer to Bazzle, I think there is a human, but I'm not 100% sure and I can't imagine she has that much time to review each story. Others might have a better idea about what is involved in the review.

The good news is I just found out the story is approved for publication tomorrow. So, it took just under 48 hours for approval, and it will be about 2 1/2 days from submission to approval. That's faster than normal for my stories.

Thanks to Zeb for the reminder about formatting. That was dumb on my part.

 

[LexxRuthless]

I posted this in February last year, under the thread "How long is it taking to get published?":

I asked Laurel about this in a PM last week. She replied:
"If you're hand-adding the HTML, then there's no need to upload a doc. The only real reason to upload a Word .doc or .rtf is if you are using Word to "bold" or "italic" text and want us to do the conversion to HTML. If you are confident in HTML enough to add the bolds and italics, you should definitely cut and paste the text in rather than uploading. It saves us many steps and decreases the time it takes to get the story live."

It was the first time I'd seen this question answered, which is why I made sure to share it.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I posted this in February last year, under the thread "How long is it taking to get published?":

I asked Laurel about this in a PM last week. She replied:
"If you're hand-adding the HTML, then there's no need to upload a doc. The only real reason to upload a Word .doc or .rtf is if you are using Word to "bold" or "italic" text and want us to do the conversion to HTML. If you are confident in HTML enough to add the bolds and italics, you should definitely cut and paste the text in rather than uploading. It saves us many steps and decreases the time it takes to get the story live."

It was the first time I'd seen this question answered, which is why I made sure to share it.

Thanks for that. It's what I suspected, but couldn't prove.

 

[Bazzle]

Perfect, I've put up a long read in the fetish section 2 days ago, by uploading. I wasn't going to copy and paste 60,000 words into the box reformating it as I went.

I will see how it gets on.

B

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Perfect, I've put up a long read in the fetish section 2 days ago, by uploading. I wasn't going to copy and paste 60,000 words into the box reformating it as I went.

I will see how it gets on.

B

That's why you take the time to format it in whatever word processor you are using plus add the HTML tags. That's what I do and it take no time at all to add the tags as I go.

I do only use, in most cases bold and center tags but I also might include an italics tag here and there.

Then I just copy and paste. I have several stories that are over 60,000 words that I did this with. No problem. The text box can take... probably take up to 4 gigabytes of data. 60,000 words is a spit in the bucket.

ETA: Thanks Simon and you're welcome.

 

[SyleusSnow]

I write in MS Word format then covert to basic HTML before pasting into the Lit text box.

Previously I used Convert Word DOC to HTML at Text Fixer. But it doesn't convert em dashes, which Lit now seems to change to two dashes.

Now I use this macro. It converts italics, bold and underline, and now also changes em dashes to the correct HTML entity. It works- the em dashes and italics were all preserved in a story I posted this week.

More details about this on my blog for anyone interested.

 

[MagicFingers]

It's Released

I used to have problems submitting HTML or Word doc formats.
Seems I used to have to go in and put in all the <cr><cr> for every paragraph and <i></i> for italics.
Now, I still Write and edit in Word, then copy the whole story as plain text and paste it in their box. Now, the CR, LFs come out perfect and I only have to put in a few italics. Works for me. Haven't submitted for a couple of years but did today. Story is 7800 words long, 42kb (Word). I'll let you know when it's released.

Just saw a message saying my story was released an hour ago.
So, 2 days, 3-4 hours. That's great!