It seems as if it has been a very long time since I have blogged...and though I am normally a summer 
slacker,
particularly as the harvest really starts coming in, I have been absent
for a very different reason. This summer, I am co-authoring and editing
a new book: Grocery Gardening, published by Cool Springs Press. And in fact, it is already available for pre-sale on Amazon. Click on the above link and it will take you there.
Now, you know I am not one to write a standard gardening book. So
while this covers some familiar topics, it does so in a very different
way. First, we started by writing the book in a true collaborative
process. I corralled 3 of my favorite garden writers and convinced them
to try this new style of writing.The fearless gardeners are Robin Riley of Bumble Bee Blog, Amanda Thomsen of Horticulture Magazine and Kiss My Aster fame and Teresa O'Connor of Seasonal Wisdom.
We started with a 60 day deadline...yes, 60 days...which ends on
September 1st, 2009. (Generally, books have a year to 18 month cycle.) After roughing out the book layout and dividing
the work, we started madly writing away.We used an online collaboration tool called Wiggio, which while it wasn't perfect, was helpful in scheduling, file sharing and communicating. I wrote a post about a couple of weeks ago if you want to learn more...
We are now in the second part of our process, crowdsourcing content.
We are asking our followers across multiple networks to join in the writing process with us. I whipped up a Grocery Gardening Ning for
just this purpose. After the book is published, we will keep our little
community going so members can interact with the authors and each
other.
When I wrote and self published my last book, Growing Food: A Guide for Beginners, I tried something similar. I used Facebook groups and Twitter to collect recipes and planting information. I still visit those groups and interact with folks...and that was fine. But this book is a much bigger undertaking. It is the first crowdsourced, interactive gardening book published by a major garden publisher (Cool Springs Press).
For this book I decided building a Ning group would be advantageous for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, we have more control of content and membership than we do on Facebook. No one will be showing up to suddenly delete our group, profile, or whatever. Second, we really want the synergy of our own community to boost the quality and quantity of our content. So far, it is steadily building in both membership and contribution.
This new way of social authoring and publishing is really appealing to me. I love the community that it builds and the development of our collective wisdom. I am sure I will have much more to say on the other side of this experience, and so will post about it again then. In the meantime, if you want to hear me speak about social media and garden writing, I will be giving an all day training at the National Garden Writers Association Symposium in September. Hope to see you there!
