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Proposal,

Weekly program, a book that is available for free, in ebook format only (no print edition is known to exist) is posted as the book of the week. A link to it is provided. After reading, we review it for content and formatting errors.

  • An author can only have one work per year on the review
  • Book must be available without paid membership or cost for the book

  • Critique of formatting errors, may include solution to address

  • Each Month we post a meta question, for suggestions. The top voted book in the answer that is not already been reviewed is posted on the main page as the book of the week.

  • The book is posted on Monday (June 2014, there would be five books of the week 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Hopefully several users with different ereaders would read and review each book. By including formatting errors across devices (probably different on different devices) we would help to increase the body of knowledge about ebook formatting.

2 Answers 2

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While I think that's a great way to learn about ebooks and educate people about best practices, it doesn't seem like it really fits the format of this site—critiques aren't questions. We could find errors and then ask questions about how to fix them, though, which may be what you had in mind. My suggestion would be that we pick a Creative Commons (or other open licensed) book to go over. Rather than doing full critiques, we post the issues we find as questions. We can then link to the relevant book, and have no worries about duplicating code or content in posts because of the open licenses. This would keep the discussion more within scope, while still giving people the opportunity to point out problems in various reading systems.

I'm curious: why the restriction to only books not in print? It seems like that would cut out a number of easily available Creative Commons-licensed book.

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  • The restriction was proposed was "no print". While I agree that it is not a perfect fit for the site format. If we don't do something soon, there will not be a site format to worry about.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented May 23, 2014 at 22:56
  • Oops, yeah, I meant "no print" not "print only"
    – Tom
    Commented May 23, 2014 at 22:58
  • My thought was to try and keep it as close to in scope as possible. I realize the edge this proposal is on, and you have pointed to. Keeping it to no print, felt better when I made the proposal.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented May 23, 2014 at 22:59
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    Gotcha. To me, it seems like if we did present issues we found in ebooks as questions on the site, rather than as critiques of ebooks, I think we'd be keeping to the scope of the site. I'd suggest that we restrict to Creative Commons (or similar open license) books just to be sure there are no issues with code samples, though I would bet that we did post would come under Fair Use in the States.
    – Tom
    Commented May 23, 2014 at 23:04
  • That sounds reasonable, do you want to edit your answer around this comment? I was also thinking we would post to where ever we got the book from on what we were doing.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented May 23, 2014 at 23:16
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    I am not sure there is enough energy left to do anything here. Only 19 people have even looked at this suggestion.
    – James Jenkins
    Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 10:56
  • @JamesJenkins Well, it's now been over 7 and a half years, and 57 people have now viewed your post (including my view right now). That's not too bad, is it? ;)
    – End Antisemitic Hate
    Commented Mar 1, 2022 at 10:21
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Seems a nice proposal. No print or print-only comments bring to light the diversity of opinion that prevails here. See, almost everything that was ever printed is attempted to be brought online (no-print). Regarding readership, there is already a lot of stuff out there, some intellectuals fear that there is the danger of having more writers than readers.

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