
If enough people would like to contribute a brief synopsis for texts in the collection, we already have a place in the catalog they can go. (although I don't know about the mechanics behind it)
What we don't have are links on the book's Web page which say: Add a summary Add a review When/if this gets implemented, I strongly recommend that the person's contribution is posted automatically and immediately. People want to see an immediate benefit from their effort (however modest), rather than remembering to check back to see if their voice was heard. To minimize spam, the software could email a copy to a gut-comments-verification list (or some such), and any authorized person could go in and delete/edit if needed. Note that I'm inverting the usual process: instead of requiring every contribution to be approved, only require extra effort in the rare case of spam or other problem. FWIW, I also think a simple registration system would be fine, e.g. verify that a commenter is a member of any gut* list, or just do a simple round-trip to verify that they are supplying a valid email address.
When I tried to make a few of these myself, I found that writing a good brief syopsis of a novel was harder than I would have thought.
True, but we shouldn't let that stand in the way of easy cases. Sometimes it's enough to copy or excerpt the preface. For example: 13032 The Book of Noodles
From the Preface: My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources, many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers, the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of popular fictions from country to country. --
Cheers, Scott S. Lawton http://Classicosm.com/ - classic books http://ProductArchitect.com/ - consulting