Cardano for the M₳sses

The 3rd 'Chang' edition¹ was published on 3rd Jan 2024, under an open-source licence. If there is interest from the community, the plan is to have an update for the actual Chang hard fork scheduled for later in 2024.

Guidelines for contributors

'I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead'

• The book should as concise as possible. Earlier editions were too long. Many sections have been cut to make it more concise and readable.
• Everything is done in 'markdown' files, see here² for a cheatsheet
• Keep it short as possible, can a paragraph just be sentence? Do you need long sentences when a shorter simple one will do? Don’t say 'sesquipedalian' when you can just say 'long'.
• 'Measure twice cut once'. Target of 10 chapters of roughly equal length 15-25 google doc pages. Does your contribution fit into structure and tone of the rest of the book?
• Write for intended audience, ie. Someone who just heard of Cardano. This book should be the less technical 'story of Cardano' that preps readers for more technical 'Mastering Cardano' book coming soon.
• Best to share the book as is, we can merge all the changes in the next edition.

To do

• Add style guide
• May be a low stakes way of stress testing Cardano Ballot and GovTool to choose a cover, etc…
• Model for bootstrapping has always been self-sustaining with no Catalyst funding, etc. Hundreds of books have been given away already at conferences and meetups since Aug 2022. For now, more sales equals more giveaways... Amzn ‘author copies’ p&p allow slightly discounted distribution to events/meetups.
• Working on an Audio book - abridged version + quotes mp4 edited with audacity
• Guidelines for KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing³ are useful rules for all publishing platforms. Would be nice to get it out on more platforms like book.io, etc

Translations

There has already been significant progress made on a Spanish translation by Humberto Rojas Serrano and Joe San.

A Japanese translation⁴, funded by Catalyst, is already complete and available.⁵

A Vietnamese translation is being led by Hoang Phuong Linh, with team from - http://Cardano.Vn, book title in VietNamese: "Cardano For The Masses - Cardano Bible" which received Catalyst funding in Fund11⁶

If you are interested in translating this book, the plan is to set up a team of volunteers at Transifex⁷

Licensing

Cardano for the Masses - Chang Edition by John Greene is licensed under a _Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.⁸ The terms of that license apply.

Footnotes

1. Cardano for the Masses - Chang edition, amazon.com/dp/B0B912X5G6 ↩

2. Markdown cheatsheet, github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet ↩

3. KDP Guidelines kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GU72M65VRFPH43L6 ↩

4. Cardano For the M₳sses - Japanese Book, lidonation.com/ja/proposals/cardano-for-the-marasses-japanese-book-f10 ↩

5. Cardano For the M₳sses - Japanese Edition, amazon.com/dp/B0D44MG8RJ ↩

6. Cardano For the M₳sses: - Vietnames translation, www.lidonation.com/en/proposals/cardano-for-the-marasses-age-of-voltaire-edition-f11 ↩

7. transifex.com/cardanobookcom/cardanoforthemaases/ ↩

8. Creative Commons License, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ↩