Professor Charlotte Smith, an up-and-coming young entomologist, decided to write a textbook for the always-popular, upper-level course on spiders. After putting out a few feelers, she submitted a proposal to Six Legs Press, a leading publisher of books about insects. Six Legs loved the proposal and offered Professor Smith a contract. Charlotte was so abuzz with excitement—”tenure, here I come!” she yelled—that she signed the contract without even reading it.
5 Textbook Authoring Time Management Tips
Manage your time well and you can maximize your efficiency, allowing you to meet or beat deadlines and still have…
Maintain an open ‘ancillary idea file’ for your textbook
As an author of several textbooks and ancillaries over a couple of decades, Kevin Patton, professor of Life Science at…
Featured Member Ric Martini – A veteran textbook author’s insights on contracts, author collaboration & more
Frederic (“Ric”) Martini received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in comparative and functional anatomy for work on the pathophysiology of…
Featured Members June Parsons and Dan Oja – Digital textbooks and pedagogy
Digital book pioneers June Parsons and Dan Oja co-developed the first commercially successful multimedia, interactive digital textbook; one that set the bar for platforms now being developed by educational publishers.
The coauthors began writing and creating educational software for Course Technology in 1992 and between them have authored more than 150 college computer textbooks. They currently have several digital textbooks in print, including the best-selling New Perspectives on Computer Concepts.:
How to negotiate textbook contracts strategically
Many textbook authors, especially new authors, are intimidated by the idea of negotiating their contracts, but strategic and artful contract negotiation is essential to ensure that you get the best offer possible.
“It is very important to negotiate your contract, because the first offer will not be the best deal, so you’ll just be leaving money on the table if you don’t negotiate,” said Stephen Gillen, intellectual property attorney at Wood, Herron & Evans.