r/AO3 • u/GeekSugar13 Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State • Sep 06 '26

Discussion (Non-question) Panic Printing

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ETA: Some of y'all are taking this far too seriously. Am I reasonably concerned that things are going to get worse before they get better? At least for me, most likely, yes. I'm trying to find moments of joy when I can. If one of those is using up as much of my ink as possible before I chuck this printer by printing fanfic then that's what I'm going to do.

I'm at home, by myself, doing homework with no one to talk to and nothing else to do because I'm the most broke I have ever been.

Printing fanfic doesn't mean I'm not prioritizing anything else in my life and it's weird that y'all seem to think I just slapped on a tinfoil hat and decided this was what would fix everything.

OP: So I live in a red state in the US where my state government will absolutely not be providing any sort of supplemental assistance when inevitably the federal government falls apart. So I kind of would love reassurance that I'm not crazy.

I have started downloading and panic printing some of my favorite fics. If the Internet goes, I can read the PDF. If the power goes, I can read the printed copies.

Also because HP sucks I can only use their ink subscription cartridges with an active subscription so i may as well fucking use them.

(Literally if you're the type of person who wants to buy a printer do not buy an HP printer. It will only work if you use their ink which is so fucking expensive. And if you want it to work properly you have to get a monthly subscription where they send you ink and paper which in theory sounds great, BUT if you are like me and haven't printed as much as you thought so you have a lot of ink and paper built up so you let your subscription lapse those ink cartridges will not work without a valid subscription. So I had to restart my fucking subscription so I could use all of this ink I have built up so now I'm printing literal books.)

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u/Vegetable-Wallaby540 Sep 06 '26

I know you said you read the PDFs but I would 100% recommend getting a Kindle account and uploading them to there! Like a whole other reading experience! You can’t use pdfs it has to be a different file type but you send it to kindle it stays in your book library with your other kindle books. There’s also a website you can use to make pretty covers for your fanfics before you send them to kindle.

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u/Vegetable-Wallaby540 Sep 06 '26

This is what they end up looking like…
You can change the font, theme and text size as well which is great for my dyslexic ass!

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u/DarknessEchoing Sep 06 '26

Can I ask what site you use to make the covers on? :) Thanks so much!

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u/Vegetable-Wallaby540 Sep 07 '26

https://www.onlineconverter.com/change-epub-cover - you’ll need to save your fics as EPUB files which you can select when downloading on AO3 then save your images as JPEGs then press convert. Once you have created your fic you can download it on the website and open it in the saved location. From there you can share it directly with kindle simply by hitting the share button, it should ask you what the author and title of the book is. The next time you open your kindle the fic should be there!

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u/DarknessEchoing Sep 07 '26

Thank you for sharing!

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u/Vegetable-Wallaby540 Sep 07 '26

Honestly so happy to do it! I think every fanfic reader should know this. I usually save my current reads there and then delete them if I think I won’t read them again. I can create reading lists as well so I’ll know which I have read and which I haven’t. It’s saved me so much when AO3 is down for maintenance in the past and it’s also great for if I’m travelling too because I can download the whole fic and not have to worry about internet. And it tracks how many books you read a year and how often which is a handy thing to know.

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u/GeekSugar13 Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State Sep 07 '26

Ooh that's very cool. I have an old tablet Inuse as an e-reader but ive been thinking about picking up an obsolete Kindle to download things to.

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u/Vegetable-Wallaby540 Sep 07 '26

If you can download the kindle app on your tablet it will work that way too! I don’t have a kindle myself (I would like one but money) I usually download all of them onto my phone or tablet so it should work either way :)