But, I think I have finally hit the wall of how much I can manage. Or perhaps it is something to do with "when it rains, it pours". For the month of January, we had so much work to do with our book, that I have found myself increasingly behind, and as a consequence not able to meet deadlines.
I have finally caught up, but I am sure this moment of relief will be short-lived.
The chapter that I am writing with 3 contributors is about to enter its final draft. Almost all chapters are near completing the peer review phase. Seems hard to believe that we may meet our deadline of April 30 for the completed product. Just less than 3 months now.
At this point I would note several items that I would recommend should you ever wish to edit a book:
- Use an email address that has been created only for the project. That way you can keep everything in one place. I have found it difficult to manage a work/project account. Also, I changed jobs halfway through this project, another reason why a separate email address would have been helpful.
- Work with at least one other person, and preferably someone who has a different skill set than you. I am super enthusiastic at the beginning of a project and eager to get started. I do start to fizzle towards the end however, so it has been useful to have someone who can keep me going as we trudge along towards the finish line.
- Organize your folders by author, not by process. We currently have contributor, chapter, and peer review folders. I think it would be better to organize by author and/or chapter and then keep everything from that chapter in the same place. Or create sub-folders within the main folder for the different processes.
- We have a file naming procedure that I think has been very helpful. For example: 27_Environmental Scan_Maddison. It helps us to keep everything straight. When we receive a peer evaluation we then would use 27_1_etc and 27_2_etc to identify the separate files.
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