Textbook Publishing

Textbook Publishing: What Students Need to Know

Since faculty often get several questions about textbooks used in courses, This essay serves as a short primer that answers some of  the common questions encountered. It may help you better understand what goes on in textbook publishing at the college level.



An overview of the publishing process:

Step 1: The proposal

The faculty identify a need for a text or an idea for a new book project. Then, the team that is needed for that topic work together to to that idea into a Proposal. That will include an analysis of competing products from other publishers, and an expanded TOC - takes about 10-20 hours to fully develop.

We send it to an acquisitions editor at a publisher. If they thinks it has merit or more importantly is marketable (and we've got several ideas waiting for the market to catch up) then he sends the idea out to several other professors teaching in the area to review. Professors typically get paid $50-$75 to review a proposal and answer a simple questionnaire about their own classes and the potential use of this book, as well as the proposed content.

Step 2: AU1 and DE1:

Let's say they like it, and would use it. Then the executive editor assigns it to a project manager, who lines up a set of chapter reviewers who make $50-$75 per chapter to provide a detailed review of the manuscript, and establishes a production schedule for the authors. We authors then work 20-40 hours/week submitting first drafts (without any financial compensation so far) on a two week schedule (one chapter due every two weeks). These are called Authors First (AU1). The chapters go to the project manager who sends them to 4-6 reviewers, along with a detailed questionnaire. If there are lab exercises in the material, a Technical Editor (TE) is assigned to test the lab exercises out to make sure there are no technical issues. The response from the reviewers and TE go to a Development Editor, who consolidates the reviews, weeds out the unproductive ones, and makes his/her own review from a production standpoint. The final packaged and rewritten chapter (using track changes) goes back to the Authors as DE1 (Development Editors First).

Step 3: AUF and Page Proofs:

Now we spend a week, typically, rewriting that chapter, incorporating the good suggestions, making the chapter better, adding material in the month or so since the AU1 went out for review. The resulting chapter is now Authors Final (AUF). That chapter then is assigned to a Composition Editor (CE) and, The CE is like an English teacher who corrects spelling, grammar and looks at writing "flow". After CE, the AUF is sent to a separate company, called generally "composition" (not to be confused with the composition editor) that puts the pages into a printable format, create figures, tables, and lays out a rough draft of what the chapter looks like when printed. These are callled "first pages" or "page proofs". Up until now the chapters are in Word, now they're in PDF. These are sent to the authors for proofing. We review the chapters making sure we like the layout, placement and composition of the figures, tables and chapters. We correct typos, and can make small changes to the material (such as a bad URL). The resulting documents are called "revised proofs". These go back to Cengage, and then back to the composition company.

Step 4: Final Proofs and Printing.

We get one more pass at the chapters - when final pages come back. Only egregious errors are identified and corrected, and usually only those made by composition. Once these pages are finished, attention turns to the front and back matter (Index, table of contents (TOC), All those pages you skip getting to the TOC, glossaries etc. Then once pages are released to an external printing company, we move to instructor's materials (Instructors Resource Kit or IRK). Here we develop (or pay someone else to develop) the PowerPoint, test bank, answers to end of chapter questions, sample syllabus and all the support materials that make a book a true academic textbook.

Step 5: Published!

After about 6 months to a year of work, the book comes out in press. Time frame is shorter for subsequent editions, since you already have a good start on chapters, but authors typically use subsequent feedback from faculty we meet at conferences, and from students in classes to constantly improve the material. We keep one copy of the book marked up with corrections, improvements and ideas. So each subsequent edition gets better and better. Every now and then we radically redesign the book to add newly released content as new chapters, re-organize the material to flow better, but we constantly look for ways to improve the material.

Step 6: The Royalties

Authors typically split a 8 to 10 percent royalty among the authors. Let's say a book is priced at the wholesale level for $50. That book will typically have incurred the development expenses of the four editors mentioned earlier, plus the paid reviewers (would you do it for free?) plus an external composition company, plus an external printing company. A typical textbook, if successful sells about 3000-4000 copies, that's only $150,000 - $200,000 in gross revenue. Authors get 10 percent, expenses from reviewers cost another 5 percent, printing is between 25 and 30 percent, internal expenses another 20-30 percent, and now the book still has to be shipped and marketed. The most common form of marketing for an academic textbook is by email and by "review copy". In other words several hundred copies of the book get sent out to prospective adopters (faculty members). No one makes any money on these copies, and sometimes they get resold by the faculty members actually costing the publishing company money. For every book that's successful, two aren't. We've had books only sell 1000-1500 copies. Marketing expenses and shipping cost another 20-25 percent, only leaving about a 20-25 percent profit margin ON THE $50 price! The authors will receive a royalty statement twice a year covering the sales period for the six months prior to the statement (typically April and October for the previous June to Dec and Jan to June time frames. So the book has to sell for at least 6 months to make anything. My first check took my family out to dinner - at Longhorn! So there is a LOT of work with very little reward for several years to be an established textbook author.

Step 7: The Bookstore

Now the book goes to the Bookstore, whichever bookstore you like - online or physical. Now don't get me wrong, I like our bookstore. There are a lot of hardworking people there who are very dedicated to their jobs. HOWEVER, most of the PROFIT from a textbook goes to the bookstore. They order the books, shipments paid by the publishing companies, and put them on the shelf with a 50-100% markup. That $50 book now costs you $100. The kicker? They re-buy that book from you used for say $50 and then resell it used for $75. After a year or so, they rebuy it for $35 and resell it really used for $50. The longer a book sits on the shelf (time since publishing) the more money the bookstore makes.

Step 8: New Editions

We try to update every textbook every 2 years. That is a lifetime in the technology market, but since most of our books are managerial, it's not so bad. We restart the process after about 18 months, looking for a new edition to hit the shelves between 2 and 2 1/2 years after the previous. We update everything, we try to make the product better, as I've explained earlier. When the new edition hits the shelves, the bookstores return new copies of the previous editions to the publisher AND RECEIVE A FULL CREDIT INCLUDING SHIPPING. So the bookstores aren't out any money. We actually have an expense against our royalties for returned books!

So what's the purpose of this rant?

I want you to be fully informed when you make your textbooks selections, and when you interact with your professors about the books. Yes there are older editions out there. They never go away. But before you ask your professor, who may just be THE TEXTBOOK AUTHOR, "Can I use an older edition?" Ask yourself - do I really want to insult my professor by saying "I don't to recognize all the work you put into our class, I'm just trying to save a buck". Realize this:

Your professor most likely has attended 40-45 undergraduate classes, 10-15 master's level graduate classes, and 10-20 doctoral-level classes, and had to but the book for every single one. He or she has most likely bought used books when available, and new when not, all without fully understanding how these books come to fruiting, or the time and expense in developing them. But NEVER has he or she asked their professor - "Can I use a previous edition".

What I want you to take away from this essay:

Textbook publishing is a business, very much like Internet start-ups. Some succeed, most fail. Authors work very hard to develop and provide the books you see, most with quality reviews and criticisms - the old addage "the hottest fires produce the finest steel" holds true here. Every book is (or should be) reviewed by the author's peers as well as professional editors. The MARKET decides whether a book is good or not.

But textbook publishing is also a dedication to one's students - a promise to try to bring you a quality education, based on the best I can find and develop. Sometimes we're ahead of the market - like IR/DR. The market will catch up, and we'll end up with much faster re-writes.

Oh, and royalties earned by your professor on books published and used at your school? Every year we estimate how much we've earned on our students - ot averages about $400- $500/year (yes, that's all) and we then donate that much from our salaries (yes our after tax salaries) to the University foundation which then goes to support the University - so we MAKE nothing off of you.