I’m trying an insane proof-reading experiment with Public Enemy Zero. I’ve got over 20 people looking for spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in the draft copy on Google Docs. We’ll see how the system works.
I’ve sent out invites to the document to those that offered. When they open it this is the message they see:
Thanks for offering to help out. All you need to do is look at 3 chapters. I’ve got 20 other people helping so it should be an interesting experiment.
When you open up the doc you’ll see a list of chapters 1-59 (below). Pick three at random and then have a look at them. Put your name next to the chapter in the list at the top of the document when you’re done checking.
Make your corrections directly on this document.
Feel free to read the whole book if you like and check other people’s work. Add your name to that chapter if you’ve looked it over too.
When you’re done, add your Twitter handle under the list of chapters and I’ll include it in the finished version.
The idea is to make it easy for people to digest it in small chunks and to look over other people’s work. A proper editing by a proofreader with several passes would take about a week. I want to see if we can get that down to a few hours.
Too crazy?
