It’s a time of creativity, chaos, angst, nerves, procrastination, excitement, and sheer folly, a colossal celebration of passion for the written word.

It’s also a time, let’s face it, of some text in dire need of copy editing.

Of course, when you have to pump out 1,700 words every day, there’s no time for copy editing: much like Lot’s wife, Nanowrimoers are counseled against looking back; to think of the next sentence, not the one before.

That’s where Book Oven and Bite-Size Edits come in. Because, chances are, your Nanowrimo novel will need a bit of work when you are done. But what if some of your friends could help you clean up your novel as you go? A team of cheerleaders / proofreaders, who edit just a few sentences every day to make sure your howlers get cleaned. The beauty of it is: they don’t have to read the whole chapter or the whole book! Just random sentences. If you have 15 people helping you, they just need to edit 10 sentences a day; 10 people just need to edit 15 sentences. So you don’t need to be (too) embarrassed by your unpolished prose.

Here is how it works:

1. Go to http://bookoven.com and register for an account
2. Create a new project, and tag it “nanowrimo” (you can make your project public or private)
3. Invite a group of friends, or fellow writers to be proofreaders
4. Every day, post your finished Nanowrimo text into a new chapter
5. Turn on Bite-Size Edits
6. Send a message to your team of proofreaders, letting them know a new text is ready for editing (be sure to include the URL to Bite-Size Edits for the project)
7. When Nanowrimo is done, you can accept/reject/modify the edits made by your team
8. And then, when you’re ready to look at the novel again, you’ll have a clean copy of your text ready to polish into something wonderful (or to make you shudder with shame!)

If you’d like to try out Bite-Size Edits, you can play around with Andrew Dobbs’ book, “Traveler”:
http://bookoven.com/projects/225/bitesizeedit/

Or David Nygren’s book, “Boy/Girl” (probably rated R):
http://bookoven.com/projects/233/bitesizeedit/

But, there’s a whole host of missing names, so here is my list of:

“15 Other Twitterers I Follow for Insight about the Future of Publishing.”

I’m missing some more names for sure, but these are a great start. Also, an up-front disclosure: I’ve gotten to know, and like, many of these Twitterers over the past year. I’ve even met a few of them in person.

The List

@jafurtado: The Human News Feed. José Afonso Furtado, Portuguese university prof and Director of the Gulbenkian Foundation, has been called the “Associated Press” of digital books. His twitter stream catches just about every major event, announcement, and interesting blog post about the future of publishing before anyone else. Essential reading for anyone wanting to keep tabs on new developments in digital and books.

@booksquare: Defender of the Reader. Kassia Krozser writes the BookSquare blog, and is a passionate defender of “the reader” in the debates about the future of books. She was one corner of the sadly-demised Quartet Press. Not sure what she’ll be up to next, but she’s always worth reading, if only to remind everyone in publishing that in the end, it’s the readers who matter most.

@eoinpurcell: The Small Publisher: Eoin Purcell is a driving force behind digital publishing in Ireland, and a and thoughtful blogger about the changes as seen from the inside of the industry.

@liza: The Queen of epub: Liza Daly is doing more interesting work in pushing the future of books than just about anyone I know.

@andrewsavikas: Vice President of the Future, Now: Andrew Savikas is the VP of Digital at O’Reilly Media, the most digitally innovative publisher in the world (followed by Harlequin). Andrew preaches the successful future of digital, from the perspective of the “canary in the coal mine:” O’Reilly looks now like most (surviving) publishing houses will look in ten years, and many of the questions we all have are being answered as we speak by Andrew and the folks at O’Reilly.

@mdash: The Off-Centre Thinker: Mark Bertils is a Toronto blogger who continues to write some of the most incisive posts about what publishing will look like in the next decade. Mark always seems to come from a fresh angle, and poses questions no one else seems to be asking.

@jane_l: The Romance Reader: Jane Little ostensibly reviews romance novels on her blog, but like many romance readers, she is deeply engaged with technology. Connecting readers to writers is what publishers ought to do; new technologies help them do it; and Jane is a prolific advocate for doing just that.

@katmeyer: The Perfect Hostess: If Mike Cane is the crazy uncle, Kat Meyer is the perfect hostess guiding you through the future of books. Another corner of the missed-before-it-arrived Quartet, Kat’s mission is connecting readers, publishers and writers together, and finding new ways to use the web to do it.

@brianoleary: He Who Knoweth What DRM Hath Wrought: Brian O’Leary seems to be the only guy in the universe who has asked, and tried to answer that all-important question: “Well, what is the impact of DRM?” He didn’t just start writing moralist screeds – as everyone else on either side of the question seems to do – he actually studied empirical data. But is anyone listening? Not yet, it seems. But it ain’t all Digital Rights Management & data with Brian: he’s also among the more entertaining pub-mates in the digital book game.

@danwagstaff: The Book Fetishist: Dan Wagstaff, of Canadian book distributor Raincoast Books, has one of the prettiest blogs about books: Casual Optimist. He occasionally takes to task the self-anointed digital punditry (me included) for not being sufficiently knowledgeable about the actual constraints of running a small publishing house.

@stml: The Mad Genius: Brit James Bridle should be celebrated high-and-low for his brilliant experimentations in the future of publishing, but he seems to fly under the radar of the mainstream. James is behind such initiatives as: Bookkake, Bkkeepr, BookSeer, BookCampLondon, the first Tweet Book.

@naypinya: The Radical Librarian: Peter Brantley, Director of the Internet Archive, is the best kind of librarian: he defends access above all else, embracing technology as a means for people to get, and interact with text in new ways. He’s also picked a public fight with Google’s book project, arguing in favour of what might be called the bookish public option. Some call him “the most powerful man in publishing.”

@ljndawson: The Trusted Advisor: Laura Dawson, a consultant who works with writers, publishers, big companies, and little guys. She seems to get just about everything going on in publishing.

@mtamblyn: The BookSeller: Michael Tamblyn, is VP of Sales and Shortcovers, a digital book reading platform and bookstore (owned by Canada’s big retailer, Indigo). Always thoughtful and energetic, and you have to cheer for the little guy, eh, in the context of the big gorilla in the digital book retail space.

@anjelajames: The Editor: Angela James is an editor who is “passionate about digital publishing.” That just about sums it up.

So, that’s 15 more that I suggest you follow. How about you? Who are your 15? (Or 5 or 10?).

The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet. Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices. BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books. [more...]

Book Oven, particularly my colleague Stephanie, has been deeply involved in the working group of the BookServer project, helping organize the crafting of standards to make this all happen. In the long run, it will make it easier and cheaper to distribute books throughout the universe, and capture the conversations around them.

Looking forward to the official public launch tonight.

Inkmesh is an ebook search engine that collects data from multiple websites to make it easier to find new and interesting ebooks in the right format and at the right price.

Here’s a typical entry, this one for Murakami’s After Dark:

What does that mean for books?

What does that mean for books?

Great turnout at

Nick Bouton from Taunt Media / Protagonize and Hugh McGuire from BookOven; When readers are more than just readers … Publishing in a connected network. A look at how the writing communities help authors to build an audience.

Looking forward to:

Deanna McFadden from HarperCollins Canada; Content Would Be King…Making your words work on the web: suggestions, learning, and discussion.

And:

Brendon J. Wilson; The State of the Electronic Book: A discussion around eBooks and how they are affecting readers, authors and publishers.

And much more.

Come on by:
SFU Harbour Centre 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver [map].

Because he was self-publishing some titles, he could play with the price-point. And here is what he found:

We can draw some simple conclusions looking at these numbers.
* Ebooks priced at $4 sell an average of 1100 ebooks per year.
* Ebooks priced at $8 sell an average of 342 ebooks per year.
* Ebooks priced at $2 sell an average of 4900 ebooks per year.
It doesn’t take a math whiz to see that the biggest profit is with low priced ebooks. [more...]

Read the rest, it’s well worth it.

So: do you write French well? Let’s see if we can help this translation, shall we? We’re taking a poetic chapter from the book: Montreal at the Crossroads, putting it into Bite-Size Edits, and asking you – if you have les chops – to translate a couple of sentences from English into French. As many sentences as you like.

So, here’s how it works:

1. Go to this page: Bite-Size Translation of Montreal at the Crossroads
2. Replace the English sentence with a French translation
3. Click on “Suggest changes”
4. If you are not yet registered/logged-in with Book Oven – you’ll be prompted to register
5. Once you are registered you’ll be returned to the page
6. Translate as many sentences as you can – if just a handful of people spend 10 minutes each, we should be able to finish the work quickly.

See below for an image to see how it works.

We’re not sure what’s going to come out the other end, and in any case the translation will be redited – but we’d like to try this out. And we’d like your help.

Here is a little more about the book:

“Montréal at the Crossroads: Superhighways, the Turcot and the Environment” takes on the government’s plan to overhaul a major highway intersection, projecting a 10% increase in traffic volumes by 2016. The books editors want to see an about-face on this project, including a massive investment in public transport in the East-West commuter-run corridor, and a 20% reduction in traffic volumes. “This is not the time to be investing in the car: we have to be changing our traffic patterns if we want to be sustainable.”

But as Concordia Urban Planning professor Pierre Gauthier, who is also an author of a chapter in the book, says, “An English book on an urgent question of Quebec public policy? ca fait pas de sens!”

So let’s see how quickly we can get Chapter 3 translated. We’ll let you know how it goes!

Translate it now!

For more information about Montréal at the Crossroads, contact:
Jason Prince, tel. 514 398 5404 or email him at Jason(dot)prince(at)mcgill(dot)ca.

If you attended the event, you can hear the audio here.

Not sure if that will be made available to the wider public eventually?