Writing and Developing Your College Textbook

Mary Ellen Lepionka
2003, Atlantic Path Publishing, Gloucester MA
www.atlanticpathpublishing.com
paperback, 240 pp., illustrated, $24.
ISBN 0-9728164-0-2

Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher mosher@svsu.edu,
Saginaw Valley State University, University Center MI 48710 USA.

Probably many readers of Leonardo Reviews have textbooks in progress. Sample chapters are swelling upon their hard disks, while proposed Tables of Contents are jotted on legal pads over morning coffee. This reviewer very much recommends Mary Ellen Lepionka’s packed and concise guidebook to them.

Lepionka distils twenty years in the publishing business into a helpful guidebook of do’s and don’ts, resources and contextualizing discussion. She recently retired after twelve years at Pearson Education’s Allyn and Bacon division, and an overview of the college textbook publishing process is given in her first chapter. Chapter appendices provide listings of textbook publishers by disciplines, URLs of resources for market research, legal and business advice. She provides notes and a bibliography on self-publishing, of which this book is evidently an example.

Readers learn the courtship dance of interesting a publisher, and the tough questions to be asked during the crucial signing process. Experience helps Lepionka to put herself in the place of an author, and see the questions and issues from both sides. The ‘ten domains’ of development are explained to make prospective authors realize the enormity of planning tasks ahead, which include intensively surveying the competition. The essential and often under appreciated role of the development editor is explained. The textbook writer must then address issues of writing for the intended audience and establishing the proper voice. Lepionka ‘s own voice is the voice of the helpful but direct editor that writers all crave.

The book then addresses the brass tacks, the nuts and bolts, of writing a book. Covered are the structure of headings, length and schedule, the necessary task of obtaining permissions, and facilitating and streamlining the drafting and revising process. In discussing a book’s visuals, she provides the kind of clear felt-pen sketches an author can give to the book’s graphic designer or illustrator that elicit accurate results. The book ends with a useful glossary of ten-plus pages, references, bibliography and index.

In three crucial chapters, Lepionka helps prospective authors structure their pedagogical plan, their chapter apparatus, and their feature strands. By pedagogy she means written elements that are neither narrative text nor illustrative figures or tables. The apparatus in each chapter might include chapter openers and closers, epigrams, overviews, embedded focus questions, learning outcomes, or systematic study aids such as reviews or boldfaced key terms. Badly designed apparatus might be inconsistent, or overuse some otherwise effective elements. The goal is for all information to be delivered in a way that makes best use of the reader’s cognitive processing. Online resources and an outlined planning guide for a pedagogical plan round out these chapters. We are fortunate that universities have websites on models of instruction and critical thinking, and are provided with their addresses.

If this reviewer had one momentary disappointment with this book, it was that the examples of bad textbook writing she provided go uncited. After reading these howlers—appropriately—chosen illustrations for her lessons in clarity and focus—I quickly turned to the references and bibliography for the guilty pleasure of identifying their errant authors. To the likely relief of their authors, Mary Ellen Lepionka’s professionalism and integrity left them anonymous.

We academics soon grow dissatisfied with many of our textbooks. We look at the range before us and mutter, that one’s inappropriate for students at this level, that one is out of date, that other one emphasizes too much of topic A and too little of topic B. With the help of Writing and Developing Your College Textbook we will soon be all generating successful texts of our own.