Helping scholars & publishers balance sustainability with self-care in their digital projects.
I’m Cheryl E. Ball, a digital publishing consultant with 30 years experience helping academics create digital publications with a difference.
Whether you’re an author, editor, publisher, platform builder, or university administrator, I can help you create sustainable digital media projects or support your teams working on them. I assist with everything in the digital publishing workflow, from ideation to creation, publication to preservation. I offer courses, consulting services, one-on-one mentoring, proposal writing, training, and documentation workshops to support your digital publishing needs.
Schedule a 30-minute consult so we can discuss how I might help you realize your digital publishing dreams! And check out my bio if you want to know more about me and how I bring WOO to your work!
What They Say…
You have been a most valuable, most critical, most vital advisor, with expertise I can't access anywhere else. The work you do continues to instruct me in how to do the right thing, how to be a good person and a smart publisher.
— Veronica Stanich, Managing Editor, Ground Works
“It’s not just Cheryl E. Ball,
it’s Cheryl E. BOMB!”
— Christopher Andrews, Managing Editor, Kairos
How Can I Help You?
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Authors
Building your first or fifth digital project and feeling the pressure? Trying to figure out where to publish your born-digital work? Worried about getting a job/tenure with your experimental digital research?
I’ve been there myself and have helped thousands of authors successfully navigate this same path. Let’s talk.
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Editors
Want to incorporate multimedia into your digital journal or book series? Ready to migrate your journal online and stuck on next steps? Need to streamline your editorial workflows across multiple users? Ready to integrate DEI principles into your publishing?
I have worked with hundreds of editors facing these questions, and I can help! Contact me.
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Publishers
Stuck on creating digital workflows suitable for your press? Need training in editing enhanced eBook content? Want to work with your faculty editors to update best practices? Ready to integrate DEI principles into your publishing?
I have worked with dozens of university and library presses to tailor the best solution to their digital publishing needs.
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Academy-Owned Platform Builders
Need advice on integrating multimedia into your digital publishing or preservation platform? Need help with grant writing? Want to collaborate with other OSS but not sure where to start?
My heart is in open access and open source, and my experience building platforms and collaborating with academy-owned OSS developers will save you time and money.
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University Administrators
Want your faculty to write better grants? Have a group of scholars requesting digital project support? Having trouble navigating digital T&P issues?
I have consulted with higher education institutions in the U.S. and internationally since 2007, and can help you, while framing the issues from both faculty’s and administrators’ perspectives. Let’s chat.
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Scholarly Societies
Have pending changes to the board or journal and no transition plan? Grazing by without appropriate Codes of Conduct or DEI policies? Do your bylaws and governance documents need updating? Need a strategic plan, stat?! Need mediation to get through a sticky situation?
I have experience in walking your organization through these events in a strategic way. Let’s discuss how I can help.
Find Your Digital Feet
Do you need immediate help figuring out the next steps in your digital publishing project? Download a free checklist (below) to guide you on your scholarly publishing journey! This is a great document to use as you begin planning (or revising) your digital humanities project, enhanced eBook, webtext, or digital archive or collections website. Based in plain-language rhetorical principals, I created this guide to help authors figure out how to scope their projects, collaborate with external stakeholders, and decide on what, exactly, their project can and needs to accomplish, and for whom. Not just for authors, this checklist is also useful for librarians and publishers working with digital and digital-media-based projects.
Go Deep With f2f Support
Want to work in a small group environment with me to plan and prototype your digital project? If you’re just beginning or stuck in the early stages of building a digital humanities project, webtext, enhanced scholarly eBook, or a digital collection, KairosCamp is the place to get deeper support! This one-week workshop offers small group and individualized support that ensures your project meets the needs of your research aims, your audience, and your press/publication venue.
