Grand Text Auto is a blog, but it's also at the forefront of a new method of editing print publications.
University of California at San Diego communications professor Noah Wardrip-Fruin is publishing his in-progress manuscript on the blog - which he helps run - in addition to submitting it through the traditional peer review system at MIT Press.
But Wardrip-Fruin's approach to the pre-publication process has generated debate within the publishing industry.
By posting his book, Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies, online, Wardrip-Fruin said he hopes to receive feedback from other computer-technology experts.
But some, including University of Pennsylvania Press publicist Ellen Trachtenberg, are critical of that method.
"I don't know that I would ever suggest posting the entire book online because it undercuts its value," Trachtenberg said. "You are giving away too much."
She added that authors can gain attention on the Internet, but she is "worried about rights and permission issues. You can't control who is going to take [your manuscript] and use it for purposes that you don't necessarily want."
Wardrip-Fruin, however, said a problem with the traditional process is that only two or three people generally edit manuscripts before they go to press.
"If one person says they found a section a problem, it's hard to know how much weight to give it," Wardrip-Fruin said. "Does it only bother them, or everyone else?"
Using CommentPress, a tool developed by The Institute for the Future of the Book, Grand Text Auto readers can add online notes to the manuscript.
Wardrip-Fruin said his approach has been helpful thus far, adding that the 200 comments that have been posted are generally of high quality.
Though other authors have posted entire manuscripts online, this is the first time an author has posted his or her manuscript on a blog with such an established and active readership.
John Jackson, a Penn Communications and Anthropology professor, said he agreed that the most valuable aspect of Wardrip-Fruin's blog-based review is that many experts can give feedback.
"If I had a project that could gain from this more open dialogue during the editing and constructing phase, I would jump on the opportunity," Jackson said.
Ben Vershbow, editorial director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, said the implications of this project go beyond being a peer-review experiment.
"Bringing the developmental state of the editing out into the open" with the community that will read the finished product is the most important part of the project, Vershbow said.
