Textbook Authors Say Writing Is Well Worth The Effort

ideas, loves teaching, is up to date in his or her field, and writes well need not expend much effort in finding a publisher--publishers do the finding. Scores of publishers' sales representatives fill the halls of academia every fall and spring, hawking their wares, but also carefully scouting for promising authors. Editors also come a-hunting. "I knock on doors, ask questions, and see if professors are interested in writing a text," says Ron Pullins, chemistry editor at West Publishing Co. of St. Paul, Minn. One need not be a practicing scientist to write a textbook. Some of the most talented textbook authors, publishers say, are professors at community colleges, where teaching skill is paramount, and research hardly done outside of student research projects. And some of the most successful science texts today are written by people who are not trained as scientists at all. Nonscientist Cecie Starr, for example, is the author of the highly regarded Biology Concepts and Applications (Belmont, Calif., Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1991) and other best-selling texts. A quick way to find a publisher is to indicate one's interest in textbook writing on a market survey. That's what happened to Gail Marsella, who was an instructor in chemistry at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., when she began to write a chemistry text for nonmajors under the editorship of Pullins. "Ron Pullins sent out a market survey when he worked with [Boston-based] Little, Brown [& Co. Inc.], including a table of contents, and asked, `Do you teach this type of course? Could you use this?' " Marsella recalls. "I wrote back that no, I wouldn't use it, this is what I need, this is what I don't have, and adding that all the available texts look alike. He wrote back, asking if I'd submit a book proposal." Pullins liked her proposal so well that he took it with him to West when he joined the company in 1987. Marsella subsequently signed a contract with the St. Paul publisher. Reviewing a text or writing ancillary materials such as instructors' manuals is a good way to get a foot in the door, editors say. Steven Miller, a professor of biology at the School of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Mo., segued into textbook writing by first doing a lab manual. He found he needed to write experiment protocols for his zoology laboratory classes because his approach was "not classical," not quite matching the exercises in published manuals. "After completing more than a semester's worth of labs, I thought, `I've done all this work, why don't I send it to a publisher?' " Miller says. "Wm. C. Brown [Communications Inc. of Dubuque, Iowa] at the time thought they had a zoology author lined up. They liked my lab exercises. So I signed a contract on a lab manual, and then the text author they had found fell through." The publisher asked Miller if he would write the text. "I wasn't certain I wanted to commit to a project of that [size], but I'd already invested time, and the publisher liked the work, so I told them I was ready to go for it--if they found me a coauthor," Miller recalls. His 1992 book, Zoology, written with coauthor John P. Harley of Eastern Kentucky University, is doing well. The publishing process is something a scientist doesn't learn about in grad school. Professors courted by publishers offering contracts may be so flattered and inexperienced that they do not know what questions to ask. Many authors suggest joining the Textbook Authors Association, based in Orange Springs, Fla., which matches prospective authors with veterans, says Norma Hood, acting executive director. The $50 annual dues is well worth the opportunity to learn from others' mistakes, members say. One author team working on a nutrition textbook, for example, didn't realize what was involved in agreeing to pay for artwork. When their long-awaited first royalty check arrived, it was minus $30,000 to pay for art. Other points to discuss come contract time, authors advise, are whether the publisher will pay for indexing; obtain the necessary permission to reprint material from other sources; and hire someone to write ancillary materials. aren't issues, because the readers are peers. Textbook writing is different. An author must have an idea of who the audience is: Will the readers be science majors or not? Undergrads or graduate students? At an Ivy League school or a community college? "It takes a different set of skills to be able to communicate technical information to a nontechnical person, compared to conveying it to a science type," says Pullins. "Presentation of the material, in terms of writing style and approach, is particularly important for freshman biology students. So many textbooks now are just databases of fact after fact, even more than a science major wants. The concept-oriented approach is needed, and some humor, to show that science is fun, not just a formula," adds Glyn Davies, editor-in-chief of the college division for sciences at New York-based HarperCollins. Writing a textbook is a huge and unending commitment. "You have to be able to give writing priority for some fraction of time. If you wait till everything is done, you won't get the text written," says Robert Bauman, author of Thermodynamics (New York, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992), who retired last year as a professor of physics at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Becker agrees that the lengthy time can be daunting. "If I'd known up front what I know now, about how much work it was, and how long it would take, I'm not sure I would have signed on," he says of writing The World of the Cell. Many a would-be author, understandably, is turned off by the realization that a 20-chapter book does not mean writing merely 20 chapters--it means at least two drafts, and a new edition every three to five years. "And it doesn't get easier with subsequent editions, because the field, at least in cell biology, is advancing so rapidly, and the quality of the competing texts so great, that in order to stay competitive, you have to be more on your toes than you would even just five years ago," says Becker, currently updating chapter nine of edition three of his text. The new author soon also learns that producing a chapter entails far more than writing, for a textbook really is, to a large extent, judged by its appearance. In fact, Davies considers the "art program" the most critical facet of creating a successful textbook, particularly in introductory courses. The "art program" is a second manuscript, apart from the written one, specifying each piece of art and each photograph. This can amount to 1,000 pages for an introductory biology book. "In terms of pure sales, if a text doesn't pass this first test--of art that is effective, attractive, and pedagogically sound--it doesn't stand a chance. An author must develop some sense of design, how illustrations and photographs look on a page. Having an idea for a piece of art in hand is one thing, but you need to communicate that to an artist," Davies says. An author typically submits crude drawings or copies of illustrations, which the publisher sends to artists. The publisher also provides photographs. Another time-consuming part of text writing is the search for errors. DNA molecules must be meticulously checked to see that the complementary bases match up correctly, and that "complementary" is not erroneously written as "complimentary." Every chemical bond must be scrutinized. "The bottom line is to really get the author to look at the proofs. You have to. We [editors] are not scientists, and errors can get by us," says Ruth Adams, managing editor at New York-based Garland Publishing. One way to speed text writing is to find a coauthor. "We review chapters for each other," says Zoology author Miller. He and Harley divvied up the chapters quite easily because their areas of expertise complement. Adams has had the joy of overseeing one of the most prestigious textbook teams ever--Molecular Biology of the Cell (2d ed., New York, Garland Publishing, 1988), written by National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts along with Dennis Bray (senior scientist at the Medical Research Council in London), Julian Lewis (senior scientist at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Oxford University), Martin Raff (a professor of biology at University College, London), Keith Roberts (head of the department of cell biology at John Innes Institute in Norwich, U.K.), and former Human Genome Project director and DNA double helix codiscoverer James D. Watson. "James Watson was behind choosing the authors," Adams says. "In this case, Keith Roberts is an artist as well as a biologist. That's one reason why the book is so special. Another key to their success is that they meet throughout the course of the writing, and go over each other's work. They really like each other." articles and textbooks, but the goals differ. "In reviewing a journal article, the reviewer asks very critical kinds of questions on methodology, presentation of data, and conclusions drawn from the data. In reviewing a textbook, the reviewer looks for accuracy and user-friendliness," says Becker. Although journal reviews are more meticulous, textbook reviews are more numerous. While an article submitted to Nature may be reviewed by four or five of the author's peers, a textbook author is inundated with feedback from dozens of reviewers. But a textbook author has greater say over which suggestions to follow, because the editor, unlike a journal editor, is not a scientist. Like journal reviewers, textbook reviewers are anonymous. However, if an author feels a reviewer is incorrect or not matched well to the goals of the text, he or she can request yet another reviewer to more or less review the reviews. Many authors admit to simply ignoring reviews that are obviously off-base. Editors try to round up reviewers who know the subject matter and also teach. They use a variety of techniques to select reviewers. "I build a reviewer base when I travel [of] people who have the same qualities as an author--they are good teachers, know something about texts, know trends, and have an active interest in the field," says Pullins. Marge Kemp, project editor for biology at Wm. C. Brown, shares her "secret"--followed by most everyone, she acknowledges. "I go to the preface of a competing book, and find the reviewers listed there, and ask them to review the manuscript," she says. "I make a lot of calls, to be sure they are teaching the appropriate course and will be around for a while. But I've made mistakes. In one recent case, the reviewers were from a school whose course was much more difficult than our book," she says. An author typically writes a first draft, which is sent to reviewers. Their comments are used to fashion the second draft--which author and publisher hope will be the final one. Authors should prepare themselves for having to diverge from their initial concept, Miller says. "I had a rather idealistic perspective that I was going to write a book that would best suit my students' needs. When I started to deal with all the feedback from reviewers, I realized I had to be flexible," he says. But many authors note that the changes reques-ted by reviewers lead them to write a book that is too much like what is already on the market. "A new kind of text would essentially require an organizational change in the way one teaches. . . . Lots of people will say they want change, but only a few will actually do so," says Marsella. Marsella speaks from experience--her chemistry text, signed with West, was just dropped, because reviews deemed her attempt to incorporate critical thinking problematic. But she says she bears no ill will toward West, grateful that the company's editor improved the book as much as he did. "From the beginning, they warned that what I was trying to do was unusual, and I might have to retrench, that I would be upset by reviews," she says. Her book is currently being considered by other publishers. Despite the relentless reviews and endless work, text authors who have seen their first editions come to life have few regrets. For Wayne Becker, satisfaction comes from having his students see his text on bookstore shelves in such far-flung places as the University of Jordan and the University of Western Australia. "I have a sense of making a contribution, to my students here and students here," he says. Ricki Lewis, a freelance science writer based in Scotia, N.Y., is the author of Life (Dubuque, Iowa, Wm. C. Brown, 1992) and Human Genetics: Concepts and Applications, scheduled to be published by Wm. C. Brown in 1994.

Textbook Authors Say Writing Is Well Worth The Effort

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of