Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide

Writing and crafting a textbook and attending to authoring tasks is a time-consuming, complex—some would say monumental—project, even harrowing at times. This updated and expanded third edition of Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide, published by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association, will empower authors to undertake textbook development by guiding them through the nuts and bolts of the development process, and providing essential background information on the changing higher education publishing industry, as well as how to choose a publisher, write a textbook proposal, negotiate a publishing contract, and establish good author-publisher relations.

Robert Christopherson, author of Geosystems, said: “TAA and the authors have done a wonderful service to us all—textbook, academic, and even trade authors—with this seminal, blood-and-guts guide to the art, craft, and work of authoring. Even though I signed my first contract in 1987, I read every word of this valuable new book and took pages of notes to guide me forward!”

Linda S. Ganster, Editorial Director at Rowman & Littlefield, said: "Writing and Developing your College Textbook is a wonderful reference for those interested in entering the field. Written by knowledgeable publishing insiders, this guide will help readers successfully navigate the ever-changing publishing landscape. At each stage of the process, from initial proposal and contract negotiation all the way through development and into production, the authors provide thoughtful instruction, enabling new authors to fully partner with publishers to create their best work."

Divided into three sections, each written by a veteran in the higher education publishing industry, chapters include:

    •    The Evolving Higher Education Textbook Publishing Industry
    •    How College Textbooks are Published
    •    How to Capture Publishers’ Interest
    •    Negotiate Your Contract
    •    Why Your Textbook Needs Development
    •    Write to Reach Your True Audience
    •    Establish an Effective Authorial Voice
    •    Why You Need Learning Objectives
    •    Why Heading Structure Matters
    •    View the Full Table of Contents

The book also includes 22 samples and templates, and a new feature called "Author to Author", which provides an inside look at how many of the concepts introduced in the book have been put into practice by successful textbook authors.

In this third edition, authors Sean W. Wakely, Founder and Principal Adviser at Academic Author Advisers, who wrote the first section on the higher education publishing industry, and Stephen E. Gillen, Partner at Wood Herron & Evans, who wrote the second section on contracts, joined Mary Ellen Lepionka, a retired publisher, author, editor, textbook developer, and college instructor, who wrote the first two editions and authored the third section of the book on writing and development.

Mary Ellen Lepionka of Gloucester, MA is co-author of "Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide" (3e). She is a retired publisher, author, editor, textbook developer, and college instructor with a Master's in anthropology from Boston University and Ph.D. work at the University of British Columbia. In 1990 she worked in higher education publishing as a developmental editor of college textbooks, principally for Houghton Mifflin and Pearson Education. Between 2002 and 2011 she established Atlantic Path Publishing as a retirement business and published two editions of "Writing and Developing Your College Textbook" and related titles. She presently is an independent scholar writing a history of Native Americans on Cape Ann.

Sean W. Wakely is co-author of "Writing and Developing Your College Textbook: A Comprehensive Guide" (3e). He is Founder and Principal Adviser at Academic Author Advisers, a literary agency and consulting service with a primary focus on advising higher education authors and educational technology startups. He began his career as a sales representative for Allyn & Bacon and was a top-performing acquisitions editor and editorial manager at Pearson Education and Houghton Mifflin's college division. In several senior executive roles at Thomson Learning and Cengage Learning, including president of Wadsworth Publishing and manager of National Geographic Learning, Sean successfully guided editorial, product, marketing, production, and digital media teams to achieve industry-leading growth.

Stephen E. Gillen teaches Electronic Media Law at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. He worked for nearly 20 years in publishing prior to entering private practice in the middle 1990's. He is presently a partner at Wood Herron & Evans (a 145-year-old Cincinnati law firm focused on intellectual property) where he concentrates his practice on publishing, media, and copyright matters. He is a long-time member of the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) Council and a regular speaker at TAA conferences.