I am hoping that by early to mid-September, I will have completed and readied for review my follow-up to Writing Operating Procedures, my original foray into writing for continuous improvement. Writing Operating Procedures, which I gave away for free (!) received a positive response (maybe the price had a thing to do with that), and also a positive review from the Society for Technical Communication in their journal in late 2013.

The new book, which I am calling Beyond the Writing of Operating Procedures, addresses an issue that the STC review brought up: that I had not discussed revising and other issues related to the “procedure life cycle.” I considered that to be a good point. In fact, I had noted in Writing Operating Procedures there was more to discuss. I just did not anticipate the topic expanding to a second book.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be addressing some of the issues related to (and discussed in) the second book, including the topic, Who is the audience for the second book?

Unlike Writing Operating Procedures, I will not be able to offer Beyond the Writing of Operating Procedures for free. The intention of the second book will be to find a paying audience. (At that time, I will also have to cease distributing Writing Operating Procedures for free.) But I am interested in hearing from people in the technical communication and related professions who would like to read and provide feedback and review comments on the book. I apologize in advance I cannot offer compensation other than a free pre-release version of the book and the possibility your comments will be included in the book or here in my blog. You may also reap the satisfaction of helping me to refine my approach to the topics addressed in Beyond.

If you are interested in being considered for review, please write me at mrprocedure@gmail.com. Include a brief description of your position and organization, if you are an STD member, and any other information that may be useful in my selection process. I don’t have any hard and fast criteria for reviewers, but I do hope to gather a good cross-section of people with varying experience to comment for review’s sake and comment for improvement’s sake. I expect I will select around 30-40 reviewers, if indeed I get that many offers.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the technical communication community. I look forward to expanding my discussion of operating procedures “beyond!”