I received my M.A. degree in political science from the University of California at Davis in June of 1989. The following spring I taught international relations at Shasta College near Redding in northern California, and a year later I began teaching American government, international relations, and politics of developing countries courses at Butte College near Chico, California, while continuing to teach both international relations and American government at Shasta College. So I was a part-time instructor at two colleges, I was teaching a full-time course load between the two of them, yet I was making very low part-time wages.
I had always been interested in writing as a profession and had already begun a career in outdoors writing. At Butte College I met sales representatives for the major textbook publishing companies. After I expressed my desire to write for their companies, they put me in touch with editors. In the summer of 1992 I landed my first big project, a test bank for a new American government textbook published by Harper Collins. They paid $2.50 a question for 1600 questions: I made 4000 bucks and was hooked on my new profession.
I took advantage of my diverse educational background (A.S. degree in engineering, B.S. degree in biochemistry, M.A. in political science, with a lot of course work in history, geography, and earth sciences) to market myself to publishers in several fields using the methods described in this book, and I continued to get work. By the summer of 1994 I’d been a part-time college instructor for four years. For the previous three years I’d been teaching essentially a full-time load of 5 classes per semester, but I was making only about $15,000 from it. Even though I loved teaching and got high evaluations from both students and administrators, I decided to leave that profession and become a full-time writer. By 2001 I had reached an annual income of $53,000, about three-and-a-half times what I made as a part-time college instructor. I achieved my highest income in 2002: $63,066.
Click here to see a list of the college textbook supplements and ancillaries I’ve written.
I’d love to hear from all of you other textbook supplement writers. How did you get your start? How much have you enjoyed writing supplements?
(John Soares is the author of Writing College Textbook Supplements: The Definitive Guide to Winning High-Paying Assignments in the College Textbook Publishing Market. You can download the Detailed Table of Contents and first two chapters for free.)
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