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Proofreading and editing can now become a conversation between readers and writers.
Proofreading and editing can now become a conversation between readers and writers. Photograph: Alamy
Proofreading and editing can now become a conversation between readers and writers. Photograph: Alamy

Crowdsourced editing: e-publishing’s next frontier

This article is more than 9 years old
How the innovative startup Advance Editions is turning book editing into a conversation

Publishing is an increasingly crowded field. This summer Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake became the first crowdfunded book to make it, via Unbound, on to the Booker longlist. Some publishers are crowdsourcing their slush piles: Swoon Reads, a YA imprint, lets readers vote on which manuscripts should get book deals.

Now, a publishing startup has entered a new frontier: crowdsourced editing. Advance Editions aims to “make good books better” by drawing on the wisdom, knowledge and proofreading skills of readers around the world.

An Advance Editions title is professionally edited before being soft-launched as a low-cost ebook, with the first half available to download free. Readers are then invited to suggest ways the author could improve the book, before it is finally published a few months later in ebook and print versions.

Its founder, Hector Macdonald, whose thrillers have been published by Penguin, has bravely put forward his own book as a guinea pig.

Comments on Rogue Elements so far have been polite and helpful, ranging from points of fact (“There aren’t any privates in the Coldstream Guards. You’d call him a Guardsman”) to considered discussions about plot and character motives. The other launch title is Dispatches from the Kabul Café, a memoir by Canadian journalist Heidi Kingstone. Reader-editors with particular knowledge of Afghanistan are being sought, although anyone can have their say.

With the author and other readers encouraged to respond to suggestions, the editing turns into a group conversation, potentially creating a real buzz in the runup to publication. Advance Editions won’t be for all writers (I can’t see poetry working that well), just as it won’t be for all readers, but by opening up what has historically been a closed process, it shows how digital can supplement – rather than replace – traditional publishing.

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