Thursday, November 13, 2014

See Your Name in (e)Print!

Well, my free Dublin eBook is just about finished. The body text is complete, and I've done one round of labor-intensive copy editing for typos, misspellings, and style inconsistencies. The first comb through was an unpleasant five-hour experience that I'd rather not repeat so...

I'm looking for volunteer crowd editors to take one more look through the text of my book before it goes to final formatting and e-publishing. I'm calling it crowd editing because I don't want to throw the whole book at a few people and ask them each to read the whole thing. I'm hoping to get a few dozen (fingers crossed!) volunteers, each to take a look at a manageable little chunk of the text. If all goes according to plan, each editor will have a couple of pages of text to read, and we may be able to have more than one editor look through each section, which would really be great!

Editing or writing experience is NOT required. Heck, I have neither. Anyone who can point out obvous typos, glaring factual hairrors, sentences unclear, (inconsistencies], and bad jokes can help. If you can read this page, you can help me get my work available at the highest-possible quality.

What do volunteer editors receive in return? Besides the warm fuzzies and good Karma of helping someone to help others, each editor will get credit in the acknowledgements of the book. No matter what kind of feedback you provide, you can get your name in this and every future edition of this book- forever!

Interested? Here's how it will work. Contact me (through the Contact page of the blog, email, Facebook, Twitter, a loud yell, any way you know how) as soon as possible and let me know you'd like to help. I'll reply with four things:
  1. An editing request asking you to take a look at a certain chapter or range of paragraphs in the text of the book.
  2. A link to a Pastebin page containing the ENTIRE text of the book. That's right, every editor will have access to the entire text of the book, stripped of all formatting and images WITH EACH PARAGRAPH NUMBERED. It'll make sense when you see it.
  3. The second link will be to a Google Form survey. This is to record your comments and corrections.
  4. A big, grateful digital hug.
When you get your request, open the Pastebin page, find the paragraph lines, and read away! If you have suggestions or corrections, try to make a note of the paragraph number for easy fixing later. Do not try to make corrections or notes on the Pastebin page. If you want to copy and paste it into another kind of document for easier reading, go ahead. Be aware that it will still have no formatting or images.

When you have comments or suggestions (even if it's just, "Looks great!") open the Google Form link and plug in the name under which you'd like to be credited (even if it's a pseudonym or anonymous), the range of the book you read, and your comments. Try to include paragraph numbers in your comments if you have specific suggestions. 

If you want to read and comment on more of the book, then bless you! Please feel free to read as much of the book as you'd like and give me as much feedback as you can. Your comments can only make this book better. If you decide not to edit the book after taking a look, no problem! You're volunteers!

If you know anyone you think might be interested or might be able to help, please let them know! Have them contact me through any of the above channels so we can have as many eyes on this thing as we can.

Let me know through the above channels if you have questions, comments, or want to help get this book out there!

If you're interested, here's a cover shot teaser!


7 comments:

  1. I'm in ! If you don't mind a non-native English speaker taking a look of course... In my defense, I'm a spelling and grammar freak and I often correct my Irish colleagues mistakes (they probably hate me for that)

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Email sent. Let me know if you don't see it.

      Delete
  2. I'd like to help out! I look forward to my digital hug.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. G+ message sent (including digital hug!). Let me know if you don't get it.

      Delete
  3. Would love to help, Cory! You know how to find me!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Email sent. Let me know if you don't see it.

      Delete
  4. If you're still looking for help, I'm in!

    ReplyDelete

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