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Aug 22 – Aug 28, 2011 Edition Typoze Site a Valuable Publisher Resource

There’s a new website called Typoze.com that may serve as a valuable resource for publishers and authors. The underlying concept is pretty simple. Readers can go to the site as either guests or registered users, search for a book via ISBN and report any typos they find. Once registered, users can also maintain a virtual bookshelf of all the books they’re reading, plan to read, or have read. They can connect with friends, make book recommendations, write reviews and vote/comment on other users’ typo submissions. The site’s founders say their ultimate vision is to make Typoze.com a central clearing house for book errors.

Last March the founders were invited to present at the 2011 American Copy Editors Society (ACES) conference held at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Their session was called “Crowdsourcing Errors.” Now that the site has had some exposure within the editing community, the founders are working to establish relationships with publishers and authors. Their intention is to them with book errata data, so that corrections can be incorporated into subsequent editions. The reward to the Typoze user community is the knowledge that their suggested corrections may be immortalized in books one day.

Because of their interactions with each other, users are given the opportunity to learn about grammar, usage, style, etc., something the founders refer to as social learning. They firmly believe that user contributions will help improve the overall quality of books. Errors tend to repeat themselves in new editions since most publishers do not appear to have a systematic way to collect and track errors. This is especially true when it comes to textbooks. The founders are currently in talks with UC San Diego regarding the promotion of the site among its students and professors. The site has also been beta tested in school districts in the greater Seattle and Los Angeles areas.

The benefits of the site are not limited to the users. By partnering with Typoze, publishers and authors will benefit from having a robust mechanism for collecting errata data vetted and validated by the user community. Their books will be made visible to Typoze users, as the most recent typo submissions and books are featured on a dashboard view upon logging in. For questions and comments, contact John.DeLeon@typoze.com