Hi everybody. Since I know we have several awesome book submitters
on these lists who don't validate books, I thought I'd write a short
post on how to get your books approved quickly. If you have a
Bookshare friend who doesn't use the lists, please let them know
about this too. I know of 4 small but important things you can do to
get your book submission into the express lane. Even making one of
these small changes will greatly improve the speed at which your book
will be added to the collection. Ready? Here we go!
1. When possible, submit your book in rtf format. Bookshare does
accept books in formats like Openbook and Kurzweil. However, many of
our volunteers don't own those programs. That means your book hangs
out on the validation page until someone who owns your program can
get to it. Rtf is a format that almost all of the volunteers can
handle easily. Both Openbook and Kurzweil can save your book as an
rtf file. If you need help with this, just ask for help on the list.
2. When you submit your book, please give it at least a short
description in one of the synopsis fields. When a volunteer can find
out what your book is about, they are often more interested in
reading it. Most volunteers prefer to work on books about subjects
they enjoy, so your synopsis about the book matters. It doesn't have
to be fancy. Just pretend that you're telling a good friend what the
book is about.
3. When you submit a book, you will see a field for comments right
before you submit the book. If you will put your email address in
there, the person who validates your book can contact you if there is
a problem with your book. Otherwise, if your book has a problem, the
validater will either have to reject it, try to find you through the
list, or has to spend his or her own time going to a library to get
the print book to fix the problem. Can you see how this can slow
down approval of your book? This isn't an official Bookshare
requirement. It's something you do so you can work as part of a team
with the validater for your book.
4. Lastly, when you've submitted your book, post about it to the
list. Letting people know the book is available may get a
volunteer's attention. New books don't always appear at the top of
the list of books awaiting validation, so this simple step is a
powerful way for you to let people know about your book.
I hope these ideas help you. I appreciate the work that each of you
does in building Bookshare. I'm looking forward to validating more
of your books in the future, and I'll keep an eye out for those of
you in the fast lane. (grin)
Monica Willyard
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