Further Your Career as a Volunteer

Further Your Career as a Proofreader or Editor

Like all Catch-22 situations, to become an editor, you need editing experience. And to my mind, a great place to start is with Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is the original site started to digitize books in the public domain to make them freely available world-wide.


However, as always, take care if you want to offer any of these books as a free download from your own site. What may be in the public domain in one country may not be public domain in another.


The site is always looking for volunteers to help with the proofreading and editing of each new book added. If you can commit to proofreading at least one page a day, you may volunteer as a proofreader and gradually work your way through to more advanced layers of editing. 

There's strong support on the forums and even if you don't need the extra credits, it's a brilliant way to help out a great cause. 


Further Your Career as an Audio-book Reader
  
Like Project Gutenberg is LibriVox, providing free  audio recordings of books in the public domain. Their aim is to cover each and every book in the public domain.

All you need to volunteer is a computer, free recording software and a microphone if you have one. There are no auditions or speaking tests. Every possible question you might have before beginning is answered in the FAQ sections of the forums.

Other opportunities can also be found advertised in different sections of the forums. You may be working as an unpaid volunteer, but you will be gaining valuable experience and making cyberfriends interested in the same topics.


Further Your Career as a Library Cataloguer


Hoping to develop a library with one web page for every book, The Open Library  already has over one million titles listed. Not all are free e-books, however, though you can also use it as a link to borrow many twentieth century e-book titles.

You can add books, edit pages, report any inaccuracies, add book descriptions. Again, it has a comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions.

And if they're not already added, why not add your own books and a list of website addresses where they can be obtained?


That way, you can further your career as an author too.

Jo Linsdell Demystifies Live Twitter

 One thing we Slow and Steady Writers have time to do is build ourselves an author platform well in advance of our book's release,

Welcome Jo Linsdell, organiser of Promo Day, to explain how and why to use Live Twitter.

 Over to Jo...

 Why you need Twitter

Twitter has grown a huge amount since Jack Dorsey (@Jack) sent out the first tweet on 21st March 2006. The micro-blogging site is now considered one of the most popular and powerful social media sites on the web and boasts over 100 million active users across the globe.

This free viral marketing machine is perfect for writers and authors wanting to spread the word about their latest releases. Don't be put off by the 140 character limit. You can do a lot more with the site than you might think.

LIVE interviews (also referred to as tweeterviews or twitterviews) are just one way you can use Twitter to extend your message and reach the masses.

The twitter character limit can also be a good thing as it forces both the interviewer and the interviewee to be clear and concise.

How to Follow Live Twitter

 

There are various ways you can go about following a LIVE interview:

1. Use twitter search to follow a hashtag #
2. Use one of the numerous monitoring tools to follow a hashtag e.g. http://www.monitter.com/
3. Use one of the sites out there made specifically for LIVE interviews like http://www.tweeterview.com or http://www.tweetchat.com

I prefer to use http://www.tweetchat.com/ for a number of reasons. It's available to everyone and you can easily sign in with your twitter account. Just type in the hashtag you are using (for my current tour it's I4Ttour) and tweetchat will automatically add it each time you tweet. You can see a LIVE stream of everyone using your hashtag and by using the reply button people can see the question you are answering.

How to Advertise your Interview

For the best results you should advertise the interview in advance and send reminders prior to the event. It's also a good idea to let your followers know what you're doing during the event by occasionally tweeting "This is a LIVE twitter interview with @username".

A twitter interview provides with the perfect opportunity to keep the conversation going and to interact with your followers. Plus it gives you material for other features e.g. you can post the transcript to your blog or other social media sites.

 More About Jo

Jo Linsdell is a freelance writer living in Rome, Italy. She writes articles for websites, newspapers and magazines. Her books Italian for Tourists and A Guide to Weddings in Italy are currently available from various online bookstores including; www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com. They can also be found at www.lulu.com/jolinsdell along with her various e-books.

She organises PROMO DAY,an annual online event each May for people in the writing industry.

Writers On The Move: Optimising Social Networking for Authors

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