Booktrope's goal of getting online books to as many people as possible (for free!) was a project right up our alley, fitting nicely with our open source foundation.
From the beginning, we were challenged to turn the site around as quickly as possible, and then refine after launch. From start to finish, we launched the site in 4 weeks. We created a custom import script to preserve individual book pages for commenting/annotation purposes, while allowing books to be loaded into the site a chapter at a time. We helped the client find the best combination of WYSIWYG editors and import techniques to strip out spurious HTML from Word and WordPerfect. We built a custom theme for the site, and consulted on what social media features were the "low hanging fruit" to implement first.
Working closely with Ken Shear (Booktrope's founder and publisher), we think we've produced a great way to accomplish this and it's truly been a pleasure to facilitate such great ideas. If you haven't already started reading some of the books on the site, check it out for yourself!
