Do you like free books? Do you like words?
We’ve just launched a Featured Author program on Bite-Size Edits, a wordish game that connects authors to fans and readers through the craft of writing.
Players get points for editing and commenting on random sentences from writers. High-scorers can win free books (!), and points earned in Bite-Size Edits will be redeemable for for discounts on books and other goodies… a little down the line.
Visit Bite-Size Edits to start playing.
Announcing Bite-Size Edits Featured Authors
We will be regularly adding new Featured Authors to Bite-Size Edits, published authors who put up texts to be played with and edited. We’ll give away books by Featured Authors, and some Featured Authors will be adding exclusive content, to be accessed with Bite-Size points.
Our first slate of writers cover a wide range of genres and talents:
* Web thinker Clay Shirky (Penguin) submitted an essay he’s working on about changes in news media.
* Maureen Ogle (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), historian and non-fiction author of “Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer” has put up sections of her upcoming book “Carnivore Nation: Meat in America, 1870-2000.”
* Catherine McKenzie (HarperCollins Canada), author of the best-selling chicklit novel “SPIN,” added a work-in-progress about a young lawyer whose trip to Africa leads to many mysteries.
* Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press) added “Sexing the Pheasant,” a wry short story from her collection, “Love in Infant Monkeys.”
* Author and entrepreneur Rajesh Setty (Ashoka Books) uploaded text from a work in progress, “DISTINGUISH! Be Remarkable NOW.”
* Scifi author J.C. Hutchins (St. Martin’s Press) chose a novella that has been published only in audio form.
* Authors Teri Vlassopoulos and Ian Orti, (both of Invisible Publishing), added works from books that will be published in the fall of 2010.
Why Bite-Size Edits?
Readers hunger for more connection with authors, while writers and publishers are increasingly exploring online engagement strategies. Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Forums, Blogs are all wonderful tools, but passionate readers want richer connections with the authors they love.
Bite-Size Edits connects writers and readers like nothing else, engaging them through a shared passion for the craft of writing.
And of course it’s not just published writers who can play at Bite-Size Edits: any kind of writing can go into the system. Perhaps you have something you’d like to add? Or maybe you are happy helping edit a friend’s work.
In any case, we’d like to hear from you!
5 Comments
I like free books. And I like words.
Are points subtracted when trolls log on, enter some random jibber-jabber in the text box, and submit it in an effort to rack up a high score?
The trolling bit has yet to be fully worked out. But we’ll allow writers to flag editors (meaning they get no points from that particular project & no longer be able to work on that author’s stuff), and points are overwhelmingly weighted in favour of accepted edits.
Maybe a series of flag-systems – an editor can be flagged positive/negative(/neutral?) based on
1) writer’s judgement of editor’s intention (i.e., an effort made to edit, and not just jibber-jabber toward quick points)
2) writer’s judgement of editor’s editing (is it an improvement? does it make the text stronger?)
Three flags, editor is closed out from that writer’s work; nine flags (perhaps within a certain time frame) and the editor is cryogenically frozen – no editing for a month. Something like that.
Having a system for flagging the writers might also work – so that, should a writer appear to be punitive to an editor, that editor can flag the writer as such – that way, if some ill-intentioned writer comes in and drops red flags all over the place, a series of flags in return would have some sort of penalty (having work removed from the site, perhaps.)
Might be helpful to look to eBay’s seller rating system for ideas; or that similar tiny-fee-for-tiny-service program that Amazon has set up.
This kind of carrot and stick system might not work in such a tangible field like author-editor relationship. Moreover, I suspect it may not be applicable to the many of the cases when the BSE system misfunctions sometimes. The best solution seems to provide some kind “Resubmit” feature for a snippet. This also might work for cases when an “editor” does not edit but simply copies your phrase into sugested edit box.
Hi Anatoly,
I saw your notes on our feedback system & will reply there as well …
Were clearly suffering from confusion about different use-cases for Bite-Size Edits … partly due to our messaging, partly due to the stange nature of what we’ve built.
In the case of established authors, the prime reason for using Bite-Size Edits is to engage with readers and fans in an interesting way … and the edits that come out the other end are certainly not likely to replace, say, the editor at a publishing house. Rather, it’s a way for a publisher writer to get some feedback, to get some engagement from potential fans and readers, and also to clean up a text.
This is somewhat different from your usecase, which is a genuine desire for editing.
Regarding “editors” who do not edit but simply copies your phrase into suggested edit box…. I believe this a bug and a result of some strange line spacing problems in our parser … if you do edits, you often see things with bad line formats, eg:
“The lazy dog
jumped over the quick brown fox and ran
for several miles until he was just too
tired.”
When you “edit” that to become:
“The lazy dog jumped over the quick brown fox and ran for several miles until he was just too tired.”
… the system shows it as an edit, but there is no difference in the eyes of the person reviewing the edits.
We’re working on this bug, because it is very annoying! I agree.