Crowdsourcing the TeleBlog—from writing to WordPress help

The post below—on Baen‘s crowdsourcing of its e-slush pile—made my Sunday. Why?

—First, Michael Harris showed the wisdom of trying new editorial models. I like the traditional model as a major alternative despite its many flaws—would Moby Dick have survived crowdsourcing of manuscript selections?—but it mustn’t be the sole choice. Go here for more on the crowdsourcing phenomenon—farming out complex tasks to a number of people.

—Second, in the interested of sustainability, my goal is for there to be less David in the TeleRead Blog, so imagine my delight when Michael, an associate professor of information systems at an Indiana university, pitched in with his post. It’s enough for a challenge just to keep up with e-book news, and we especially cherish contributions like Michael’s. He took the time to gather facts and present them in a coherent, polished and credible way, just as he did in his explanation of the Zotero personal card catalog.

How to volunteer

Read on, then e-mail us if you know and love e-books and would like the additional exposure for your writing, or can contribute WordPress-related technical help. We’re reaching hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a year, from K-12 students to a PARC researcher and executives at such major houses as O’Reilly, Penguin, Oxford University Press and Simon & Schuster. Michael’s latest informative article—and, of course, he’s just one example of the caliber of our contributors—was worthy of them all.

Readable and authoritative

Other than adding subheads and making a few minor tweaks in spelling and the rest (no, my copy isn’t perfect, either, and volunteer copyediting is always welcome), I left Michael’s work alone. We’re trying to strike a balance here. The goal for the TeleBlog is to publish authoritative articles, in plain and lively English, that a global audience can enjoy and understand. That is how we maintain our Google ratings to preserve our value as a forum for views you won’t find elsewhere. Sometimes post are important and beautifully written but just need a a little tweaking for our particular needs.

At the same time, I don’t want us to be slick and predictable, which often happens when five or six editors must sign off on an article, MSM fashion. Actually we’ve got thousands of editors—our readers, whose comments add considerably to the value of the original posts. I’m especially grateful to Garson O’Toole for the many hours he’s spent not just writing for the main part of the blog but also for his helpful and constructive comments filling in the gaps or, yes, offering another viewpoint, sometimes at my expense, which I want if I’m wrong.

The nuts and bolts of helping out

But commenting isn’t enough. I hope more people will think about writing for us on relevant, e-book-related matters. See our writer’s guidelines. Yes, we have standards, but they’re not that difficult to meet for well-informed TeleBlog community members who genuinely have something to say. You can even do a little of your own crowdsourcing in advance and try your TeleBlog contributions out beforehand on your friends; even one critique is better than none.

If you’re a student, we’re open to some remote interning possibilities and other arrangements. Just this afternoon, Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, an editor, poet, novelist and TeleBlogger who teaches at Emerson College‘s graduate school of publishing, told me she planned to have her students contribute their appropriate writings to the blog.

We’re less interested in formal credentials than in knowledge and enjoyment of e-books—whether as technology or literature. If published here, you’ll be in excellent company. Later today or tomorrow, we’ll be running yet another post by Richard Herley, a prize-winning U.K. novelist.

Beyond writing: Tech help needed

Finally I’d remind people of all the work that Robert Nagle has done, on the WordPress side and related matters. He’s taken on new commitments and I’m trying to reduce the demands on his time. The big issue now is getting CARP-generated headlines back on TeleRead.org’s home page. Any volunteers? Long term, I’m interested in WordPress-hip people who can deal with all the plug-ins I’ve installed over the years. This is not your typical WordPress blog. Significantly, some of the most important plug-ins are related to interactivity, such as the plug-in we use to display reader comments.

Photo credit: CC-licensed image from Luc Legay. It’s volunteer-related in the generic sense, not TeleBlog-related.