[UPDATE: I think I’ve finally gotten all the books under curation - but if you’ve an idea for a PowerShell-related ebook, and would like to co-author or even be a principal author (I’ll help out with logistics), still hit me up.]
As you may know, PowerShell.org hosts a number of free ebooks that have, to date, been written mainly by me. But I’ve recently been delighted to welcome some co-contributors - Forums regular Dave Wyatt has contributed new content to “Secrets of PowerShell Remoting,” for example, and Matt Penny has volunteered to organize the forthcoming “Community Book of PowerShell Practices.”
I’d like to try and sign up “curators” for some of our other free ebooks, including the forthcoming “Big Book of PowerShell Error Handling” and the “Creating Trend and Analysis Reports in PowerShell” titles, as well as - and this is one I’m really interested in getting someone for - the “Big Book of PowerShell Gotchas.”
What’s a curator do?
Mainly, incorporate community feedback (typos, etc) into future editions, as well as integrating new content. That content might be written by the curator, or contributed by someone else. We use a very simple Word template, and you’d use Calibre to produce PDF and EPUB from that. I provide cover art images and whatnot - this is mainly an “assemble, organize, and deal with the errata” process at a minimum. If you are passionate about the topic, you can of course become a co-author with me and add your own content (and I’m happy to help you do so). That’s especially true for the “Gotchas” title, which is mainly a series of short articles that cover some of the shell’s biggest speed bumps.
A copy of Word, Calibre (free) and a GitHub client (free) are needed, plus a few free hours every few months and the willingness to take on the job. You’ll truly be helping: I often can produce extra content now and again, but actually spell-checking it, putting it into the book, making the EPUB version, and so on - believe it or not, that stuff takes me more time and is one reason the ebooks don’t get updated more often. Sigh.
Hit me up if you’re interested in helping out!