How to present a book on Facebook?

July 16, 2015 12:14 AM

I'm currently writing a book on a dedicated Facebook page, but the chapters appear chronologically in the page's Timelime without the possibility of navigaging from one chapter to the next. So basically, to read the entire book, you need to drill down to the bottom on the Timeline and work your way up. Since there is and increasing followers base, I want to make it easier to browse. Is there a feature on Facebook that can help me do that?
posted by Kwadeng to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

This sounds like it is going to get very complicated very fast. Facebook is absolutely terrible when you want to go back and not miss anything. The interface jumps back in time and misses out intervening days/weeks/months unless the user is very meticulous.

I am sure that you have a good reason for choosing facebook over any other online format, but you are going to have to deal with these issues. There's no fix unless you used some external userscript/browser plugin to mess around with the structure of the page.

One thing you could do, which is a bit of a cheat, is manually 'backup' the entire facebook stream each time you post a new chapter using Evernote.

So, you would scroll back on the page until the entire history of the book is showing, and then save using the Evernote 'Clip to Evernote' feature. This will make a backup of the entire page that looks exactly like the entire page. You can then 'share' this through the app and share the URL with the world.

This might cause some privacy issues, especially if your users leave comments etc. But you could maybe edit out user names etc. It's a compromise, but then, you are writing a book on facebook. It's going to be messy.
posted by 0bvious at 1:41 AM on July 16, 2015

Best answer: How about:
- Collect the permalinks for each post, in the correct order. Get them by clicking on the timestamp for a post, and copying the URL - it'll look like
https://www.facebook.com/___yourpagenamehere___/posts/986366001397383
- Post on the FB Page a post with all the links in the right order, and a message like "To read the book starting from the beginning, use these links".
- Pin* that post to the top of the page so it's always the first thing people see.

* Click the down arrow \/ in the top right of the post, then click Pin To Top.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:50 AM on July 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

The idea EndsOfInvention has would work, since you can edit that post to update it with new chapter links.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:26 AM on July 16, 2015

Notes, maybe? You could compile a bunch of chapters (or eventually the whole thing) into a Note, which seems to be Timeline-independent.
I used to use them for longer posts, but I've gotten out of the habit of doing so.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:51 AM on July 16, 2015

Compile a RTF/ epub/ pdf of the book and leave the chapters or collected ebook in a Dropbox or Google Docs folder, or whatever you'd like best. Leave a link to the folder at the end of each post and your About page.

Facebook is awful for displaying information, and there's a good chance that posts will not be displayed at all. If someone comes to your profile and sees Chapter 25, scrolls down to see Chapter 23, Chapter 22, Chapter 19, Chapter 21 (because someone commented on it) and Chapter 17, it's not going to help you in the least.
posted by sukeban at 4:25 AM on July 16, 2015

It may help if you could describe the reason why you chose to use FB to do this. I am sure there is a good reason, but some background may help us come up with a solution that doesn't compromise the critical function of your project.
posted by 0bvious at 4:26 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

After you post each chapter can you go back to the previous chapter and add a link to the new post? So when you post chapter 6, edit chapter 5 with a link that says "click here to keep reading chapter 6."
posted by that's how you get ants at 6:18 AM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also add a link to chapter one to the bottom of every post.
posted by that's how you get ants at 6:20 AM on July 16, 2015

Another idea would be to do them as image posts. You can arrange them sequentially as an album, and then people can easily click back and forth to flip through the book. When someone wants to read the whole book, it's easy for them just to click on the album and go to town; much easier than trying to wade through your entire posting history, for all of the reasons listed above.

This could have other benefits too. Image posts get prioritized over text posts*, so people would see your posts more often. Especially if you had some cool images to go with your book, you could use them to encourage your readers to share the posts with their friends.

I'll nth what others have said above, that in the long run, Facebook might not be the best format for this. If you created a separate blog, you could still post a link to each new chapter on your Facebook so your readers could still see it and share it on their Facebooks. But we don't know your reasons for wanting to do this on Facebook.

* Don't quote me on this. This was true last time I was using Facebook professionally, but that was a few months ago and Facebook changes its algorithms all the time.
posted by roll truck roll at 7:56 AM on July 16, 2015

Best answer: Facebook is absolutely the wrong place to do this, IMO. Aside from the very nature of Timeline operating completely opposite to the way you want to present your story, Facebook's terms state:

"[Y]ou grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

I understand you want to leverage your connected followers, but I'd suggest publishing on a more traditional blogging platform like Tumblr and linking each piece on FB.
posted by mkultra at 9:24 AM on July 16, 2015

Just create a Tab for your Page. A "tab" (the name comes from when they were still actual tabs) is basically an external source you can link to your page. That external source can be a webpage or a PDF where you can lay-out your book exactly how you want. You can feature it prominently right under your cover photo.
posted by monospace at 10:34 AM on July 16, 2015

Response by poster: Thank you all for your contributions. I tried EndsOfInvention's suggestion and it worked perfectly.
posted by Kwadeng at 4:51 AM on July 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Good luck with your Facebook novel. It sounds maddening
posted by 0bvious at 8:50 AM on July 26, 2015