New web app features

Let's face it - it has been a while since I showed the My Writing Spot web app some love. I've been busy with the very popular apps for iPhone and iPad, and with porting the app so that it is available on Android devices such as the Kindle Fire and the Nook. All through this, the web app has remained fast and stable, even though it now supports thousands of users daily.

Well, I'm pleased to say that I have taken some time over the past few weeks to add a few nice new features to the My Writing Spot web app. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but these are some things that you've asked for, and that should make the web app that much more useful to us all.

• There is a new Download All button in the toolbar. Clicking on this button will bundle up all your documents into a ZIP-compressed file, and download that ZIP file to your local computer. There is still the option to download a single document, but the Download All feature makes backing up your work to your local computer a snap. Or should I say a click?
• The Email Document feature now emails your document as an attachment instead of as the body of the email. The document is attached as a plain text file, which should be able to be opened by most any word processor or text editor in existence.
• The web app now supports longer document names. Document names can now be up to 40 characters.
• There are a few super-secret background features that have been added to support some coming features in the mobile apps. I can't say much about them now, but watch for updated mobile apps in the coming weeks.

Please keep your feedback coming in. Your comments and suggestions help to shape the future of My Writing Spot. Thanks for your support in making My Writing Spot the best writing app available.

 

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My Writing Nook is now My Writing Spot

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Peter de Tagyos

Email: mywritingspot@gmail.com

NOOK PROVES TOO UNCOMFORTABLE FOR WRITING APP. ESCHEWS CRANNY AND HITS THE SPOT.

Independent developer changes app's name following bookseller's sabre-rattling.

Independent software developer PT Software Solutions is announcing a name change for their popular writing app My Writing Nook. Henceforth, the app will be named My Writing Spot. This renaming is in response to pressure from an ignoble bookseller pushing a device whose name is a common English word. The updated web app goes live today at http://www.mywritingspot.com, and free updated releases of the mobile apps are available for iPhone/iPod/iPad and Android today in their respective app stores.

"We've chosen to look at this as an opportunity," said developer Peter de Tagyos. "With all the features that we've added to the app in the latest release and over the past year, we've outgrown our little nook. Our current apps really do hit the sweet spot for writers, providing a fast, distraction-free writing environment that is easy to use anywhere. We'll leave the nooks to the little guys."

My Writing Spot also has a shiny new logo (as seen above) to go along with the new name.

For more details about the My Writing Spot name change and a bit of snark, visit http://www.mywritingspot.com/whats-in-a-name

My Writing Spot (formerly known as My Writing Nook) is a popular web and mobile app dedicated to helping writers "write simply anywhere." The free web app can be found at http://www.mywritingspot.com, and there are mobile versions available for iOS and Android devices.

If you'd like more information about this, or to schedule an interview with Peter de Tagyos, please email Peter at mywritingspot@gmail.com

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Publishing on a shoestring budget

For the longest time, there were only two paths to publication.

The first was the so-called "traditional" route, in which an author spent months or years searching for an agent, who then spent months or years shopping the book around to various publishers, in the hope that one of them would purchase it and publish it after several more months or years.

For those that did not want to wait that long, there was the self-publishing option. However, this option was an expensive one, and the upfront expense was entirely the author's responsibility. Most authors could not afford such an endeavor, and so they put their dreams of publication on hold.

Thankfully, the past few years have brought around a revolution in the publishing industry. The Internet, eBooks, and the rise of print-on-demand publishers have helped to remove the financial barrier to self-publication.

Lack of money is no longer a barrier to publication. To be published nowadays, one merely needs to invest the time.

Here are some tips for publishing on a shoestring budget. These tips assume that you have already done the hardest part of the entire process - you've finished writing your book (perhaps using something like My Writing Nook?) and are ready to share it with the world.

Layout, Formatting & Cover Design

The layout and formatting of your book depends on how you plan to publish it. If you are planning to use a print-on-demand company, you'll need to layout your manuscript in a format suitable for publishing. Thankfully, these companies make the process as easy as possible. For example, Lulu provides a template for designing your cover as well as a Word document template with the margins and spacing already configured. CreateSpace offers their layout guidelines here.

If you don't have Word or another word processing program that allows you to format your document, I'd suggest checking out Google Docs. You can upload your manuscript, format it appropriately, and even export it as a PDF document file.

The saying goes "Don't judge a book by its cover," but the fact of the matter is that most people do. An amateurish cover design may cause people to dismiss your book outright.

If you have an artistic flair, you can design your own cover using a free image editing program such as Paint.NET. If you prefer an online option, check out Pixlr.com.

If art isn't your thing, you can visit sites like 99 designs or crowdSPRING to crowdsource the design of your cover. These sites won't get you a cover design for free, but they allow you to control the entire process, and really provide a great bang for your buck.

Publishing

Publishing a book requires very little upfront money. There are several different options for publishing your book.

You could choose to publish your book via a blog. Many authors have started to publish their novels online as webserials. If you choose to this route, there are several blog platforms to choose from. Blogger is the platform run by Google, is easy to use, and has the best integration with Google's other services, such as AdSense, Analytics, and AdWords. WordPress is another strong option. If you'd like to host your blog on your own site, WP is probably the best way to go.

If you'd like to publish real, physical books, then print-on-demand publishing is the way to go. PoD publishers will store your book in digital form until someone purchases it, at which point they will print a physical copy of the book and send it to the customer. The author can set the price of the book, thus determining how much in royalties they earn per sale. Royalty rates from PoD publishers are much higher than those from traditional publishing companies, with the author earning a greater portion of the proceeds (as it should be!). PoD books can have their own ISBN, and can be listed on sites such as Amazon or B&N.

There are two big players in the PoD space these days. Lulu had been around a bit longer and is very author-friendly, providing downloadable sample templates for cover and book layout. CreateSpace is newer, but is owned by Amazon, arguably the biggest book-related company in the world.

If you're looking to publish eBooks, both Lulu and CreateSpace offer this option. If you're looking to target the Kindle, you can publish your eBook via a catalog like Smashwords, or you could get in the Kindle store by working with Amazon directly.

Once you've gotten your book published, it's time to let your audience know about it. If you don't already have an audience, you need to grow one. That means marketing, which calls to my mind well-dressed, fast-talking, brash young salespeople. People-people. If you're the type of person that thinks "I could never be in sales," I'll help to disabuse you of that notion in my next post.

In my next post, I'll tackle marketing yourself and your book on a shoestring budget. Stay tuned!

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Profiles in Web Fiction: Nancy Brauer and Vanessa Brooks of Strange Little Band

Today's featured authors are Nancy Brauer and Vanessa Brooks of the webserial Strange Little Band. They've been publishing SLB since May of 2009, and the story is really hitting its stride as we enter 2010. Updates are published twice a week, with a bonus story every other week or so.

This is the fourth interview in the Profiles in Web Fiction series. The other interviews in the series can be found here.

The authors describe Strange Little Band as dark, paranormal romance. It follows the lives of Shane and Addison, co-workers whose lives are forever intertwined by their employer, the unscrupulous Triptych Corp. To make things more complicated, both Shane and Addison have paranormal abilities, which turns even their most trivial interactions into epic mind games. Toss in a healthy dose of hormones and you've got the recipe for an intriguing story.

Nancy was kind enough to answer my questions via email.

How and when did you start publishing online?

Strange Little Band debuted on May 1, 2009 at http://www.strangelittleband.com. Vanessa and I have quite a bit of web design experience, so setting up a self-hosted WordPress site was easy. We'd written together previously, but this is the first time we've published a web serial for public consumption.

Why did you decide to publish your work as serial fiction on the web?

I was the one who pushed to publish SLB online. The more I read about the time and effort required to get literary agents' and publishers' attention, the less inclined I was to play the game. The fact that Vanessa and I had already written 140,000 words of the first draft helped, too. Most of the work has been editing, filling in gaps in the storyline, and lots and lots of promotion.

What are the benefits of publishing online? What are the drawbacks?

The number one benefit of publishing online is reader feedback. Interacting with the audience is fun. They tell you when you're doing something right, and when you're not being clear. Vanessa and I primarily communicate with readers through SLB site comments, Twitter, and the SLB forums.

The number one benefit of publishing online is reader feedback. Interacting with the audience is fun. They tell you when you're doing something right, and when you're not being clear.

The flexibility of online publishing is another huge plus. If you find a typo, you click "edit," make the change, hit "publish," and you're done. You're free to change your posting schedule. Want to change the look of the site? Go for it. You can experiment with integrating reader suggestions, creating character Twitter accounts, and more. The only thing holding you back is your time, desire, and web skills.

The big drawback is having to do everything yourself. Unless you've got a substantial budget or an army of fans willing to work for free, the author is responsible for all of the stuff a print publisher usually handles: developmental editing, copyediting, cover art, marketing, advertising, data backups, etc. All of this take a lot of time. The effort is considerable, especially if you have a day job.

Do you monetize your work? Why or why not? If so, how?

Vanessa and I are working on monetizing SLB to cover costs. Our primary goal is to find our audience for future works. Any profit we make is gravy. :)

Revenue comes from three sources: donations through the SLB site, bids from Project Wonderful advertisers, and sales from the SLB Zazzle store. It's a grand, ongoing experiment which is alternately fun and frustrating. We're learning as we go.

What do you think web serials will look like in five years?

That's a tough question. I think there will be a lot more, much like the explosion of web comics. Serials will probably split into two categories: "professionals" and just-for-fun types. By "professionals" I mean those whose authors rely on serials as a significant portion of their income. It's easy to put a donation button on a website. Convincing readers to donate or buy merchandise takes a lot more creativity and effort.

It's hard to say where web serials, video webseries, and other online entertainment will be in five years. So much is in flux right now. Print publishers are struggling, eBook readers are trying to go mainstream, and piracy is rampant. It remains to be seen if consumers will find enough value in digital media to spend money on it. In general people value tangible goods. For some, if you can't hold it in your hands it's okay to grab a copy. I don't mean to stir up a digital rights management (DRM) debate. It's just that writing and publishing anything online takes time. Unless the writer is extremely frugal or independently wealthy, he or she will likely need revenue to justify the time and effort of publishing.

Your web serial is different from others in that it's a collaborative effort. I'm interested in how exactly you and Vanessa collaborate. How do you divvy up the workload?

We wrote the first draft of SLB via email a few years ago. It was a giant email volley with Vanessa writing primarily from Addison's point of view and me from Shane's. We shared the other characters as necessary. The whole thing was made up on the fly! Editing is crucial to keep the voice consistent and not give the readers whiplash from POV changes.

Although we're in editing and revision mode, we still rely heavily on email. I do the editing for the main SLB story posts. Vanessa's writing the bonus stories. We both fill in gaps in the storyline. Who writes the new bits depends on the POV for the new section and my and Vanessa's schedules. Typically we email each other drafts in the body of an email message. We plot and plan by email, IM, and sometimes Twitter direct messages. We've only spoken once by phone!

What tips would you share with others interested in publishing serialized fiction on the web?

First and foremost, be patient. Unless you can throw a lot of money at an advertising blitz, it'll take time for readers to find you. Make it easy for them. Think about who might like your story. Connect with them, be it on Twitter, forums for similar web serials, or other ways. To get started, check out successful web authors like MeiLin Miranda, MCM, and Alexandra Erin. Novelr and WebLit are warehouses of good ideas, too.

It's also important to plan your story ahead and have a posting buffer. By the latter I mean have two or three posts ready to go at any given time. Unfortunately, I don't always follow my own advice on this front, so the day before posting can be stressful. At least I usually have the first draft done, so it's only last-minute editing.

Be sure to check out Strange Little Band's website.

Read the other interviews in the Profiles in Web Fiction series.

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Profiles in Web Fiction: MCM

Today we interview MCM, author of the novels The Vector, Fission Chips, and countless others. Actually, the word prolific doesn't even begin to describe this author - in 2009, MCM achieved his personal goal of publishing 12 books in 12 months, making something like NaNoWriMo look like a walk in the park.

His most recent work, The New Real, is an example of livewriting - he wrote the entire story over the course of 48 hours, posting a new chapter every hour. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this was the way that he involved the audience directly in the creative process, allowing them to provide real-time feedback via Twitter or a special website he built specifically for the purpose. He's also built his own online reader, which you can see in the image to the right.

MCM is certainly one to watch. He's constantly pushing the boundaries of web fiction, and experimenting with new techniques for the form. His technical background combined with his zany wit and writing prowess allows him to craft a compelling story and integrate it with the web to create a form of storytelling that is completely new. It's exciting to watch the future of web fiction develop, and MCM is one of the people that's going to create it for us.

He was kind enough to reply to my questions via email. I found his answers to be interesting and insightful, and I think you will too.

How and when did you start publishing online?

I honestly don't remember when I first started, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll say around the middle of 2006, when I released my first book, The Pig and the Box. That was just a PDF... I hadn't really looked at the options for books online, so it was a learning experience the whole way along. At the start of 2009, I moved to a new system that allowed me to post books straight to web pages, and started filling in content from there. I've done 11 books this year so far, and I've been evolving my methods constantly... my first serialized web fiction (Fission Chips) started in May, and my first livewriting book (Typhoon) was in October. Each one of those would be a "start" for me, because they're all so different than what came before.


Why did you decide to publish your work as serial fiction on the web?

The purest answer is that I really wanted the immediate feedback. My first such project, Fission Chips, wasn't a straight serial, because the audience got to suggest and vote on "what happens next" every week, and I had to create it on the fly. That kind of interaction can't work anywhere else. I didn't have much interest in going to traditional publishers (for a variety of reasons), but even so, the interactivity of the web makes it so much more interesting to write here. Writing is a dialogue, and the fewer delay mechanisms we have between the author and the audience, the better.


What are the benefits of publishing online? What are the drawbacks?

The benefit, for me, is the unpredictability. For my livewriting projects (Typhoon and The New Real, written in real-time over 3 and 2 days respectively), I got to tap into the collective insanity of the internet to help craft my story. The atmosphere during those events was just electric... you write a chapter and see the reaction immediately, and it gives you the push you need to do more. You can't do that anywhere else. It's just not possible.

The other major benefit is that you can reach more people online than you can anywhere else. True, holding on to them is harder, but there are no restrictions. Offline, you might be buried in the back of a bookstore, or you might not even be IN the bookstore, and you have no way to change that fact. Online, you can drop a link to your work anywhere, and you never know who'll see it, find you, and stick around for more.

The drawbacks, of course, are that very few people take you seriously. Being self-published in print gets you an eye roll, but publishing online makes people back away slowly. It's the "nephew art" curse that affects web designers... "Oh, what you do is nothing special. My nephew makes websites all the time!" Anyone can publish to the web, and anyone can write a story, so what sets you apart? In the end, there's nothing you can do about those people. If you do great work, and catch an audience, it doesn't matter what the world thinks of you. You're not doing it for universal recognition, you're doing it for the ones who call themselves your fans.


Do you monetize your work? Why or why not? If so, how?

I do, in various ways. For The Vector, I released under a Serial+ system, where a new chapter was posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with a note at the end that said "it will take X more weeks to finish... if you want to read the rest now, you can upgrade for $5". I had pretty good conversion that way, I think because it gave everyone a chance to reach their personal tipping point. They held out until they couldn't hold out any more!

All my books also have donate options in them, with a few options listed for convenience. I've found that if you leave it too open-ended, people won't donate. If you say "here are the choices," you get a lot more conversions.

On occasion, I convert some of my works to print books (for those that say "I really want to read it, but I can't stand computer screens!"), but I'm definitely moving more and more to the online-only approach.


What do you think web serials will look like in five years?

I think they'll look less like something, and more like anything. I think there's something to be said for hybrid books... part prose, part comic, part movie (if done well). I personally want to explore the livewriting concept some more... doing

"...the interactivity of the web makes it so much more interesting to write here. Writing is a dialogue, and the fewer delay mechanisms we have between the author and the audience, the better."

something living and dynamic, rather than just pre-planned chapters on a schedule. I know some people are experimenting with "choose your own adventure"-type architectures, adding programming tricks to do cool new things. I think that sometime soon, the technology and the momentum will let people put their writing into the format that makes the most sense, rather than writing something in a certain way because that's what's expected.

I also think that in five years, the Kindle and iPhone will have made the idea of e-fiction more palatable to the broader world, and traditional print publishers will still be resisting the change. That means the innovators and superstars of web serials will have a chance make their mark... if you have this device meant for reading, but there's very little to read (because publishers are waiting until the hardcovers have been out 6 months), you'll go looking for something else. Web serial writers need to be that "something else." We've got a year, maybe two to get there. So we've got to get cracking.

What technical advances (current or near-future) are you most excited about experimenting with or applying to web fiction?

I'm really interested in integrating AJAX goodness into the writing, but I'm still not 100% sure how it'll be done. Mike Cane and Piers Hollott have these notions of rich reading experiences with deep metadata, and I'm really interested in the "branch" effect of writing: select a word or a sentence and comment on that, or expand on it, or made a side-story... as much as possible, I want web fiction to be a starting point, not a final product. There's already so much discussion that goes on around web fiction, but it's highly fragmented. If we can at least create smarter windows into those conversations, it will probably mean a whole new world in terms of what is created.

I can't wait for the new things we'll be able to do with HTML5. My next-gen site (currently in development) is already pushing boundaries... I'm trying to examine different interaction methodologies, see what I can get away with... but when we can embed video, or do offline storage easily (so essential for web fiction! imagine having a web interface that full downloads the text so you can read any time and not need a connection!) and audio or... well, it'll really change how the game operates. I come from a video background (in addition to web) and the one thing that kills me is that it's still too difficult to properly integrate subtle animation into page design on the web. I want to crack open After Effects, do some motion design, and really enrich the experience. Maybe in a few more years... hopefully...

Who do you consider innovative in the web fiction space today? Who else is pushing technology in new directions to enhance the storytelling process?

Right now, I'm very excited by an upcoming project by A.M. Harte. Her technique is very subtle (to the point of invisibility), but if it works, it will be a great new sub-genre for authors to explore. I can't say more, because I'm sworn to secrecy :) Also, Brian Spaeth really pushes the limits in a lot of ways at once... one of his new concepts will really be a multimedia tour de force, and when you couple it with his insane "alternate reality that may not be alternate" vibe... I'm certain it will blow your mind.

What tips would you share with others interested in publishing serialized fiction on the web?

Don't be constrained by architecture. There are different tools out there to do different things, and some will fit better than others. Think beyond the page. Think of new units, new transitions, new schedules and interactions and presentations and all that. Don't make "a printed book on the screen." So many people (myself included) are chained to that notion, and it's hard to change once you've started. If you're just starting out, find a boundary to push, and push it. Hard. The internet has endless possibilities, and we're only using a fraction.

The trick to this game is patience. You'll start off with two readers, and they'll both be your offline friends. Four months later, you'll have one reader, and you won't even be sure they're really reading. But four months after that, you'll have ten readers, and then twenty, and then forty... Word of mouth takes time, and you have to remember the number one way to kill it is to release something sub-standard. You're only as good as your last chapter... but if that chapter is amazing, you'll be okay.

I'd like to thank MCM for taking the time to discuss his work with me. The stuff he's doing is truly inspiring, and he's definitely got me thinking about the future of storytelling on the web.

Be sure to check out The Vector, and all his other work at his website: 1889 books. To read more about the future of web fiction, check out 1889 Labs.

Read the other interviews in the Profiles in Web Fiction series.

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Profiles in Web Fiction: Darien Meredith of Phantasia

We're kicking off this series with a profile of Darien Meredith. He has only been publishing his webserial Phantasia since March of 2009, but has been developing the story since 2005, and it's clear that a lot of work has gone into it.

To see the other interviews in the series, visit this page.

Phantasia follows the journey of a faerie named Phantasia Celeste who is struggling to discover herself. She feels out of place in the faerie world, and travels to the human world in an attempt to understand who she is and the power she holds.

Once in the human world, Phantasia enrolls in school and is immediately confronted with the full barrage of angst that is the human teen experience. Can innocent Phantasia cope with the harsh reality of the human world?

Something that sets Phantasia apart from other webserials is the multitude of illustrations, drawn by the author, which lend a nice touch to the story. The website itself is laid out nicely, with clear navigation to all points of interest. The webserial is updated at least once a week.

Darien was kind enough to answer my questions via email. Without further ado, here's the interview.

How and when did you start publishing online?

I first wrote a web serial in 2000 for around a year and a half, but it wasn't very good and I lost interest. I started developing Phantasia in 2005 and began publishing it online March this year after deciding I couldn't keep revising it forever!

Why did you decide to publish your work as serial fiction on the web?

I've grown up with serialised stories and I've always preferred them to standard novels. Writing a novel has just never appealed to me and everything I've ever written has been in a serial format. When I first published one it just felt like it was the best way to get it to people (most of my friends at that point had left for university) and only found out about other web fiction a short while afterwards.

What are the benefits of publishing online? What are the drawbacks?

For me I don't think there's any other option! If I sent the concept for Phantasia to a publisher, they would reject it. If the story didn't put them off (or its length!) then the diverges into illustrated territory would. Its one thing to have a Generic Fantasy Cover, it's another to have a chapter cut from text to a scene drawn like a comic... The internet, of course, allows me to do whatever I want! No one telling me "this won't be marketable" or "readers won't like this development".

The major drawback is the workload. Having a weekly deadline to meet and knowing there are hundreds of people waiting for you to update can be stressful! Then there's the illustrating, the web design, the bonus content, the advertising and promotion, the interacting with readers... It's not like just writing a manuscript.

"Ultimately it will be like Tolkien's collected works on Middle Earth, only far more navigable"

Interacting with the readers is an advantage, though. It gives you direct feedback (and encouragement!) as the story is progressing. There's always the possibility it could reverse, though, and a reader might get irate at a development they don't approve of. It's a niggling worry, but I'm stubborn (arrogant?!) enough not to write just to pander to and please the readers.

Finally, being on the internet means I can add a load of extra bits and pieces that you wouldn't get in a book (well, you could, but it wouldn't work as well). Currently I'm still working on a extensive database of information that will provide background detail on a lot of things I can't cover in the text (without segueing into awful blocks of exposition anyway!) and I have plans for short and side-stories that deal with minor characters or mentioned events that aren't key to the main story. Ultimately it will be like Tolkien's collected works on Middle Earth, only far more navigable. (no one can say I'm not ambitious!)

There are other advantages/drawbacks, but I'm rambling enough as it is.

Do you monetize your work? Why or why not? If so, how?

Not currently. The little money I make from adverts goes straight back into helping pay for my own advertising costs. I'm still in this little bubble where the idea of making money off my work seems absurd, even though it's rapidly developing into a full-time job and people tell me I should be making money off of it! I'm contemplating doing some kind of donation-incentive system like webcomics use, and developing some kind of tie-in merchandise (again, like webcomics). I'll get around to self-publishing collected volumes sometime in 2010 too.

What do you think web serials will look like in five years?

I'd like to think they'd be in the position webcomics are now, but that will depend on how the tide turns and who's riding the waves. Once e-readers are commonplace, I expect the e-book format to go a similar way to the mp3 (but not as popular, since music is more popular than reading!). I don't see the mainstream grabbing on to serials or web fiction just yet though, as the stigma of "online fiction = not good enough to be published" is going to be difficult to scrap.

What tips would you share with others interested in publishing serialized fiction on the web?

Don't go into it with the mindset of it making you popular or that you might make a living from it: do it because you enjoy it (but hey, that's a tip for any creative venture!). Of course if you do want to take things to the next level, you need to be prepared to do the research and spend money. DON'T just copy what's popular. I'll admit I've avoided - ignored even - the currents of the webserial communities and just followed my own instincts. It's done me fairly well. I expected to have 10 readers after a year, by next March I'll probably be closer to (or over) 1,000 if current trends are any indication. Then again I have no idea what readership figures are like elsewhere - a thousand could be pittance compared to other serials. But yeah, just trying to mimic what makes another serial popular will get you nowhere: work out what your story is, what its strengths are, and work with them. Don't be afraid to experiment or do your own thing, because that's what will make you stand out in the end.

Oh, and remember that a serial is different from a novel. Learn the differences in the way their narrative is structured. Think about the differences between a TV series and a film, for example. Make the most of the advantages the serialised medium gives you, like the wait between chapters and reader debate over what might happen (or what they want to happen). Long-running Japanese comics are a good inspiration for serialisation, but then I've grown up with such things and may be biased.

~~

Thanks to Darien for taking the time to answer my questions.

To check out his work, be sure to visit Phantasia.

Read the other interviews in the Profiles in Web Fiction series.

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Small update to My Writing Nook web app tonight

I deployed an update to the MWN web app this evening. If you look closely, you'll see that there is now a logout button in the toolbar.

I've also removed the Google AdSense ads and replaced them with ads from Project Wonderful. For some reason, AdSense couldn't seem to figure out what the site was about and displayed ads that were of no interest to the people visiting the site. The folks at Project Wonderful have come up with an interesting alternative, so I thought I'd give it a try. We'll see how it goes. I've left the AdSense ads on the blog because they seem to be fairly relevant to the content.

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Copy-editing - can it be crowdsourced?

A popular trend in Web-land these days is called crowdsourcing. In a nutshell, crowdsourcing is using the collective efforts of a really large number of people to tackle a specific problem. As it turns out, the Web is a fantastic tool for gathering large numbers of people from around the world and focusing them on a task.

A notable example of crowdsourcing occurred recently in Britain. The British government released a set of documents detailing the expense reports of all its MPs. The publicly-available documents amounted to roughly 459,000 pages, presenting a monumental task to anyone that might want to figure out exactly what their government is spending money on.

The Guardian, a UK newspaper, put up a website that allows visitors to review these expenses one page at a time and flag any that seem questionable. If an expense is flagged by multiple people, it becomes a candidate for investigation by the paper.

The Guardian realized that its own small staff would never be able to scrutinize such a mountain of paperwork, so they decided to crowdsource the problem. So far, that decision has paid off. Many questionable expenses have been brought to light, and the people responsible are being held accountable for their actions.

Recently, I started thinking about how one could apply crowdsourcing to writing. Writing is traditionally a solitary pursuit, but I think that there are opportunities here. While it doesn't make sense to crowdsource the writing of a first draft, some of the other steps in the process might be viable candidates for help from the crowd.

The research process has already been greatly assisted by crowdsourcing. Sites like Wikipedia, Ask.com, or even Flickr are excellent resources, and are actively maintained by thousands of users worldwide. 

Manuscript review lends itself nicely to the application of help from others. In fact, there are already several websites that use the power of crowds for the purpose of reviewing manuscripts or short stories. I will talk about a few of these in a post to follow in the next few days.

I started thinking about other steps in the writing process, and realized that copy-editing might be an excellent opportunity to utilize the efforts of the crowd. Like wading through mountains of government expense documentation, copy-editing an entire manuscript can seem like a near-impossible undertaking. 

What if there was a website that allowed writers to submit their manuscripts (or short stories, or articles) and have others copy-edit their work? I'm just brainstorming here, but I'm thinking that the process might work something like this:

1. Writer submits their work to the site for copy-editing.

2. The submission gets chopped up into page-sized chunks of about 500 words. These chunks are anonymized, so that editors can be impartial, and also so that no one can piece together the entire manuscript.

3. Other users of the site volunteer to copy-edit. I'm thinking that most of the users on the site will be writers, and the expectation will be that one should copy-edit the work of others if one expects others to copy-edit for them. An "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" sort of arrangement. Or perhaps a writer would need to accumulate a certain number of points or credits (earned by editing the work of others) before they are allowed to submit their own work for editing. 

4. A user requests work to copy-edit. They receive a single page-sized chunk to edit, which is a reasonable amount of work to deal with. They copy-edit the page and modify the text so that it is correct.

5. When the editor has completed the edits, they submit the edited page.

6. The original writer receives status updates via email, and can log in to view the editing that has already been performed. They can compare the original page with the edited page, and can therefore see exactly what copy-edits have been suggested.

7. The writer can take all the editing suggestions they've received and apply whatever edits they deem appropriate.

So what is the carrot here? With crowdsourcing, there needs to be something to entice people to contribute their time and energy. In the example above, the Guardian played on people's innate distrust of government to turn them into watchdogs. They also turned it into a bit of a game, adding a "leaderboard" that tracked the most productive users. The copy-editing site could do something similar - have some sort of points system and reward the top-contributors with recognition or some other perks. Or it could be that you need to do some copy-editing of other submissions if you want to get your own work copy-edited.

That's the basic idea. Now I'll do a little crowdsourcing of my own: what do you think of such an idea? As a writer, do you think the site would be something that you would use? Something you'd contribute to? I look forward to reading your comments.

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