Textbook Writing 101: by M. Garrett Bauman

3/3/2021 Textbook Writing 101
THE REVIEW
Textbook Writing 101

By M. Garrett Bauman
JULY 4, 2003
Are you ever dissatisfied with your textbooks -- those awkward, overloaded
wheelbarrows of information that wobble off course every few pages? Why not
assemble your own lecture notes into the ideal textbook for your classes and,
incidentally, become rich and famous? As the author of two textbooks on writing --
and purely to serve my colleagues -- let me guide you through the process.
Most professors think you need a great idea for a textbook to put your stamp on the
discipline -- a sparkling, cutting-edge theme. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Rule #1: Original ideas are messy for students, teachers, editors, and writers.
No one really wants them, only the appearance of them. Simply blend a teaspoon
of originality into a bucket of the same old thing. Imitate top-selling texts
shamelessly.
As you draft sample chapters, you’ll face every textbook writer’s dilemma -- do I
write for students or for the professors who order the copies? Students want
simplified, clear, and entertaining texts; to reach an average student, your style
must compete with the local newspaper, Saturday Night Live, and Puff Daddy.
Professors want intellectual complexity and vocabulary that announces, “This is
college, ladies and gentlemen.” They want you to sound like The New York Review
of Books, PBS, and Joan Didion. From my observation, most textbook writers figure
https://www.chronicle.com/article/textbook-writing-101/ 1/7
out which group butters their royalty checks. I, however, took the path less traveled
and wrote directly for students. Sure, some reviewers sniffed, “Maybe it’s OK at a
community college, but we would never use it here” -- meaning at a place of higher
education. I gathered my integrity about me like sagging underwear and pressed
on. Today it gratifies me when students say my book talks to them and they really
like that it’s not too heavy to carry. Rule #2: Write for both students and professors,
to spread the alienation around.
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To win a contract, you must create a dazzling book proposal -- a 10-page document
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that demonstrates your expertise, your ability to write simultaneously to aa Harvard
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Ph.D. and the pimply kid slinging burgers at Wendy’s, your sign in.
skill in smearing a
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patina of innovation over crass imitation, and your firm, unbiased belief that the
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bookLast
willName
enhance the publisher’s reputation as a leading-edge moneymaker.
Direct Enter
youryour
proposal
last nameand several chapters to acquisitions editors. Those people
workEmail
hard to fill gaps in their catalogs, anticipate new trends, and save their butts.
That final item is important because few acquisition editors survive long enough to
yours@example.com
face the consequences of their decisions. That opens the door for you to become
Password
one of their mistakes. How? By understanding Rule #3: A book proposal delicately
your password
balances truth and expectation: 10-percent truth, 90-percent fantasy.
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The proposal explains how your book is unique but just like leading books, what
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makes you the only person in the modern world who can write it, and why it will
updates and special offers from The Chronicle and our
selected partners. You will also receive our agship daily
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newsletter, In Unsubscribe
Academe Today. general, create
links arethe impression that you’re full of enthusiasm,
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creativity, and energy yet also wise, conservative, and experienced -- in other words
that you’re both edgy and safe. Keep in mind that publishers adhere to the same
ratio of 10-percent truth and 90-percent fantasy. So when a publisher offers a
contract and promises strong promotion, fame, and early retirement, be wary.
Consider the publisher’s reputation and your long-term goals. Then follow Rule #4:
Accept the first offer any fool makes you.
Sadly, many authors with contracts do not finish their books. Why? Because
reviewers mug them. In comfortable anonymity, reviewers announce they liked
everything about your book except its main premise. Or, interspersed with sensible
praise, they make suggestions that are the equivalent of putting spandex shorts on
Michelangelo’s David or grafting a third arm to his back. Rule #5: Reviewers always
suggest 50 pages of new ideas and insist the book be shorter. Rule #6: What one
reviewer loves best another hates best. My advice for authors: Rule #7: Accept
reviews with stoic dispassion and gratitude. Rule #8: Smash your hand only into
soft objects.
Should your book survive reviews, a copy editor will polish it to perfection. Copy
editors are fastidious; they must pass the American Psychological Association’s
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Anal Retentive Assessment to be hired. They worry that youAlready have abefore
use commas
“ands” in items in a series and daydream about dangling participles
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jackets. Rule #9: Consistency always outranks creativity. The copy editor also
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polices
Lastpolitical
Name correctness, checking that you used roughly the same number of
hypothetical men
Enter your and women in examples to prevent stereotyping. That means
last name
that women
Email
should not be nurses, cooks, secretaries, or sex objects. It means men
must be.
yours@example.com
Password
Finally the big day! A FedEx box arrives with 10 copies of your new book inside. You
your password
flinch at the glaring red and canary yellow cover with your name in iridescent blue.
You caress it, sniff its newness, crack the spine. Then life picks up exactly where
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you left it two minutes earlier. You’re so sick of the book, you can’t bear to read it.
No paparazzi snap photos as you emerge from the Piggly Wiggly with groceries. No
one sendsAcademe
newsletter, you sales figures
Today. or reviews
Unsubscribe by John Leonard. Actually, you feel like
links are provided
hiding. You are about to be abused in hundreds of classrooms. In my own classes,
students say, “You wrote this?” glancing from me to the book, which I take to mean,
“The book’s OK, but how did this guy write it?” One student who asked me to
autograph the book whispered to his friend, “I bet I’ll get more for it at buyback if
it’s signed.”
About a month after publication, I received a postcard from an Ohio professor. In

my textbook on college writing, I had narrated an anecdote Abraham Lincoln told,
in which he referred to a tightrope walker named Blondin. I had spelled it
“Bloudin.” The professor corrected me and added, “Such egregious errors mar an
otherwise fine book.” Ouch! Over the next year and a half I received three more
“Aha!” postcards from Ohio. I fixed the errors and was grateful she took the time to
notify me. But I felt nervous. Was a horde of professors hunting for all my obscure,
petty flubs? Yes they were. But more surprises were coming.
After reading the first chapters, a student in Oregon wrote a bulky letter to tell me
that I understood her and was the teacher-guru she had searched for all her life.
She truly believed I would help her make personal and writing breakthroughs after
years of bitter failure, betrayals, trauma, and suicidal moods. She wondered what
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would be a good time to arrive at my office. A red flag and aAlready have a went up.
Saturn rocket
I sweated out a letter encouraging her to finish the course she was in rather than
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seeking enlightenment across the country with a married man.
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I also received a call

Enter your last from a woman who wanted my help writing a business
name
proposal
Email
to Kinko’s that, she claimed, would generate $4-billion in new sales. She
offered to pay me to write her secret plan -- subtly -- so Kinko’s could not steal her
yours@example.com
idea. “Just tell them enough to tweak their interest,” she said.
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your password
“Are you going to tell me the plan before I write it up?” I asked.
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“I don’t think I should.”
“Iselected
see,” Ipartners. You willmust
said. “This also receive our agship daily
be big.”
newsletter, Academe Today. Unsubscribe links are provided
“It’s huge! Huge!”
Rule #10: Fame is all it’s cracked up to be and less.
You must promote your book -- with dignity if sales are good, shamelessly if not.
We’ve all seen pathetic authors at conferences shifting from foot to foot at the
publisher’s display, hawking their books. Bookstores and used-book buyers drive
them to it, murdering textbooks before they can die natural deaths. When I learned
that bookstores made more than I did for each textbook they simply unpacked and
put in a bag, my ethics and greed were outraged. Then I learned Rule #11: Stealing
is a matter of perspective.
When I spot book buyers slinking around campus snapping up examination copies
from instructors on the cheap to be sold for near full price while the author receives
nothing, I want to kick the thieving rascals down the stairs. They’re kidnapping my
child into slavery. It’s mine to sell! Here’s how the system works. Say a publisher
charges $50 for a new textbook. The bookstore marks it up 25 percent to $62.50 (the
author gets, say, 15 percent of $50, or $7.50). At semester’s end, students sell back
FREE, please sign up. Already have amakes
their used books for $15, and next term they’re resold for $40 (bookstore
$25; student saves $22.50; author and publisher eat air). New book sales plummet
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as used books and examination copies flood the market. The publisher raises
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prices.
LastHigher
Name prices mean more incentive to buy and sell used books. Rule #12:
Everybody elselast
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greedy.
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Most textbooks die in the first edition. But if you say the old ideas in a new-wave
yours@example.com
style or have friends on textbook-adoption committees, you may be asked to do a
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second edition. Warning: You may now actually have to become cutting edge.
your password
When colleagues hear you’re doing a new edition, some groan, “All the pages will
change! I’ll have to rewrite my notes!” Others demand 10 crucial revisions. Rule
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#13: Don’t change anything people like and change everything they dislike, even if
they’re the same thing.
I’ve just finished a fifth edition now, but I can imagine, when I’m doddering around
like old Mr. Chips, being asked to work up a 10th edition. I’ll just cackle, heft my
book, and sigh, “Let’s see how this dead fish smells this year.”
M. Garrett Bauman is a professor of English at Monroe Community College (N.Y.)

and the author of Ideas and Details: A Guide to College Writing (Harcourt, 2003).
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 43, Page B5
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors
or submit a letter for publication.
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3/3/2021 Textbook Writing 101

Textbook Writing 101

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About a month after publication, I received a postcard from an Ohio professor. In

I also received a call

“It’s huge! Huge!”

Rule #10: Fame is all it’s cracked up to be and less.

M. Garrett Bauman is a professor of English at Monroe Community College (N.Y.)

OPINION WRITING SERVICE AND OUTREACH

IN THE CHRONICLE STORE

Enter your last name

Rethinking Campus Spaces Retaining Underserved

By creating a free account, you are agreeing to receive

The New Risk Management The Next Enrollment

1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037

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