Seeking Curators for PowerShell eBooks
[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!
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The PowerShell Conference Book volume 3 is here!
The third edition of the PowerShell Conference Book is now available and on sale at the discounted price of $19.99. But you need to hurry because the discounted price is only available until Friday evening!
What is the PowerShell Conference Book?
The book is designed to be a representation of what it’s like when you attend a conference. Traditional books have a singular topic, such as “Windows Server 2019” or “Mastering Ansible”. But this book is not geared towards a single topic. Instead, much like a conference, it’s a collection of ideas all focused around a general theme. All the chapters are related in some way to PowerShell and DevOps.
The book contains over 20 different chapters, each written by a different author. The authors of the book are community members and subject matter experts who have graciously donated their time and knowledge for a good cause. Each chapter is similar in length and focus to what it would be like if you attended a conference and listened to the author present their topic to a live audience, except now it’s in written form. Imagine if you were able to capture those sessions and lock them into a format that you could refer to over and over again. It’s a conference in a book format!
PowerShell Conference Book Volume 3 Call For Authors
EDIT: We have extended the CFA to May 25th!
The _ PowerShell Conference Book Volume 3 _ Call for Authors (CFA) is now open!
The timeline for this process should be as follows:
Close submissions on Monday, May 4th, at 11:00 PM PDT
Notify everyone by May 25th
Final drafts will be due by June 1st
Finalize publication by September 30th
We are looking for one chapter per author on the topics of PowerShell, DevOps, WinOps, Open Source, or IT Careers. Topic depths can range from novice to expert. Chapters can be technical or cover cultural aspects. Authors can be new or well established. The book will be written in American English, but non-native speakers are welcome (our editorial team will support you)!
PowerShell.org Free eBook Transition
Over the past few weeks, Matt Penny has been busy moving our free eBooks into their new home on Penflip. Code, when available, is located in our GitHub repo, and modules will soon be available in the PowerShell Gallery for downloading via Install-Module.
Penflip is a Markdown-based editing system backed by GitHub. This means anyone can contribute corrections, additional material, and so on - which will make it easier to maintain these great books over time. You can download ebooks directly from Penflip in a variety of e-book formats. We’re now focused on electronic formats, rather than traditional page-based layout, although PDF is still an available download option if you want to make a hardcopy.
The conversion from Word to Markdown was challenging and largely manual, so if you run across formatting problems (especially with code), we absolutely appreciate your help in fixing those. Simply “branch” the book, creating your own copy of the project. Make corrections, and then submit those back to the master branch. Approvals are manual, so give us a few days to review what you’ve done and merge it into the master.
Massive thanks to Matt for all the long hours making this conversion happen, and to the folks who’ve submitted cover art for the new books.