by John Soares on September 2, 2010
I found an interesting article on the Inside Higher Ed website by Kenneth Green. Green examines the difficulties facing the current model of publishing textbooks and what factors drive up costs.
He also addresses how the necessity of supplying essentially free supplements/ancillaries affects the author, the publisher, and the students:
The ancillaries would be essential, and development costs for the ancillaries would be significant. But the industry exec reminded me that there was no money associated with any of these ancillaries: absent a separate workbook for students, the only revenue associated for Widgets 1e and the accompanying ancillaries came from the sale of my textbook to students. And the only time the publisher would realize any significant revenue from the sales of Green/Widgets would be during the first year of the new edition.
This, he explained, was the conundrum confronting the publishing industry: The ancillaries are essential part of the total package for the any textbook. Yet the ancillaries generally generate no revenue.
The piece gives a good overview of the conundrum facing the higher education publishing industry. It also helps everyone who buys those books understand why costs are so high.
by John Soares on August 26, 2010
by John Soares on August 25, 2010
As a freelance writer for college textbook publishers, I definitely care about the financial health of higher education publication industry. If the textbook publishers are doing well, they’ll keep publishing current and new editions and keep hiring me to create supplements and ancillaries.
Here’s the latest data from the Association of American Publishers for June 2010 higher education/college textbook sales:
Higher Education publishing sales increased 35.2 percent for the month ($514.9 million) and increased 27.4 percent for the year.
Excellent news!
I have several writing assignments that I’m either currently working on or will start in the next month or so. Don’t have enough work? Contact editors and let ‘em know your qualifications and availability.
by John Soares on August 18, 2010
The Text and Academic Authors Association (I’m a proud member) is hosting a call-in podcast about textbook indexing on Wednesday, August 25th, at 11 a.m. EDT, 8 a.m. PDT.
Here are the details:
You might take that alphabetized list of words and page numbers for granted, but there’s turmoil inside the textbook indexing world. First there’s the ongoing challenge of people not understanding what indexing is about, a world where production editors are always just out of college, authors are forced to pay, and jobs are going to countries where English isn’t a first language. The rise of e-books has reintroduced a significant problem that first appeared in the early 1990s: wholly inferior tools. E-book indexes do not work, literally. How does this affect writing? Join us for a lively discussion with Seth Maislin, Managing Partner at Potomac Indexing, LLC (http://www.potomacindexing.com), about how we find things…or not.
Of particular concern is the difficulty of creating a good index for an e-book, and e-books are a major trend right now in the college textbook publishing world.
Check out the Text and Academic Authors podcast page for past episodes and what’s coming in the future.
