Tips for Writing Academic Books

 1. Meet your deadlines

One of the issues a textbook writer must always confront is the deadline. Manuscripts must meet the deadline. Books must get out of the press at least four months before the opening of classes so that publishers would have enough time to promote the book to schools. There is no reason for writers to think that a book that leaves the printing press is as good as cash. Writers are always excited about the thought of earning money from royalty. But printed books are not convertible to cash unless somebody bought them. It is not easy to sell books by the way. Books compete with other books. To market and bring them to schools for evaluation require people and money. Publishers need to shell out money just to promote a book. For this reason, writers must assist publishers in marketing by giving them much leeway in time to bring the book to the public.

2. Trust Microsoft

Where does Microsoft come into the picture of marketing and deadlines? Because manuscripts must meet deadlines, writers must write fast and finish their manuscripts as early as possible. This can be done with the help of MS Word. Automate the part of writing and page composition that can be automated by the built-in function of MS Word. Functions that have to do with page composition are found under Layout, Styles, Design, Insert, and many more.

3. Upload files to Google drive

Always upload and update your files in Google drive. The dangers of losing files permanently is not an issue that should be trifled with. You do not lose files only because your hard drive crashed, you lost your laptop, you accidentally deleted a file, and deleted all files in the recycle bin, or accidentally saved a file using the name of an existing file. You could lose your files to hackers.

Hackers can hold your manuscript hostage. They will encrypt it so that you cannot open it, not even with the help of a computer technician. You would have to buy the key from hackers to unlock the file, and even when you pay them, there is no guarantee you would receive the key.

4. Get a copy of the curriculum guidelines

Get a copy of the curriculum guidelines and be sure you understand all the legends and acronyms written on them. You do not want to write a book which is off from the technical specification laid out in the CG. Pay attention to the acronyms and legends written at the bottom of the CG.

Check the CG against the published teaching guides. The Department of Education, for example, also prepares a teaching guide to accompany each published CG. You can also check it against the books on the same subject published by different publishers. For example, right now I am working on Math 9 for basic education. I keep the CG for this subject, the Teacher’s Guide, a book on the same subject published by a known publisher, and pictures of many pages of a book on the same subject displayed in National Bookstore.

5. Edit, edit and edit

Edit what you have written every now and then. If you must continue writing on a lesson, begin your ritual by reading, editing what you have already written. That also means beginning the day by reading and editing the earlier files that you have finished. After editing a piece, upload and update it in Google Drive.

6. Each page should be in publishable form

Do not begin writing the next page of the lesson you are working on unless previous pages of the manuscript are already in publishable form. This means all other pages of a lesson must contain the elements you want seen in a published book. This means proper pagination, headers, footers, citations, headings, subheadings, etc.

Speaking about citations, you must write the citations as soon as you finished writing the statement that must be given a citation. I write citations only for issues and statements I know are controversial. All others, I list them in the reference section.

7. Get a copy of a handbook for writers of English

You will write in English. This is not the language we are born into. For many people, I seem like a very competent speaker and writer of this language, but I still grapple with technical issues about how to use this language properly. Every now and then I must pause from writing and think over if I am using the comma properly. Should I use “that” instead of “which”? Can I begin a sentence with “but”? Must I write a period at the end of each abbreviation?

My favorite book of all, a book that has been with me since college, is Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. If you were to google search this book, you will see that it has been cited millions of times. If you cannot see this book around, you can use any handbooks published by known publishers. Beside Strunk and White’s Element of Style, I also have in my table Bantam Handbook for the English Language.

8. Set a quota of pages each day

A book for a subject that must be taught for a year might need at least 400 pages. A book that is good for only a semester might need at least 250 pages. You must give publishers at least 3 months before the opening of classes to promote and market a book. You must give publishers at least 3 months to edit your manuscript, you must give the printing press at least a month to print thousands of copies of your book. All in all, that is 7 months, and that is just about issues that take place after you have completed a manuscript. This leaves you with only 5 months to finish a complete manuscript if you want your book completed and delivered to schools one year after you began writing the first page.

Let us do the math. How many pages must you write a day to finish a 250-manuscript in five months, and you will write 5 days a week?

You will have to write approximately 4 pages a day.

For most people who are reading this article right now, I assume you are a novice writer and are enthusiastic to begin a book upon reading this piece. I think 4 pages a day is a tough endeavor. You can go around this difficulty, however, if you will write as a team. So, if three writers will produce a book for a subject, each of them will produce only 1 to 2 pages every day, 5 days a week in five months.

9. Textbook writing follows the S-Curve. Do not be depressed if your manuscript is slow to grow.

The S-curve describes the pace with which a project develops as a function of time. Projects are slow, too slow to grow early in the development phase. It is fast to grow in the middle, but too slow again to move close to its being completed. This same thing happens with a book. Right now, you are probably excited to jump into writing and serious about writing 2 pages a day. But after three days of making the commitment to write, you might find yourself depressed because after three days you have not yet written a single page.

This is what the S-curve is about. When you make the commitment to write, you will attend to many preliminaries such as obtaining references, the curriculum guide, the teaching guide, a writer’s manual, etc. You will spend time thinking about what font style to use, the margins, the line space, headers, footers, pagination style, etc. If you want each page of your manuscript to be written in a publishable form with every page you finish, you must decide on these issues, but it takes time to get them made. It takes time to get them done because it takes time to gain confidence in using MS Word. In the beginning, your manuscript is too slow to grow. But it will gain shape and size fast after the initial phase, and it will return to its turtle pace again close to the finishing stage.

What issues will you be working on at the closing stage of writing the book that slows it down?

You will attend to the table of contents, preface, acknowledgments, pagination, proper labeling and numbering of tables and figures. You will also attend, possibly, to chapter page. Your publisher may suggest that you begin each chapter with a chapter page complete with titles, subtitles, and pictures. These are barely essential issues when compared to the meat of the manuscript. That thick bundle of paper, which is your manuscript, is the meat of the whole business, but still, these trifle issues will slow down your book close to the final stage. I am telling this to you so that you won’t give up early in the writing stage, and you won’t scream at yourself or your publisher at the final stage.

10. Do not be a yes person when deciding about the front and back covers of your book.

The front and back covers of your book are behind 50% of the attractiveness and marketability of your books. Or maybe more than 50%. Novice writers are often self-centered about their work. It is I. It is I and what I wrote that matter. This is like the mantra they recite to themselves. But your worth in the publishing business will be revealed to you only when you see the freshly minted copies of your book for the first time. Still hot and sticky coming from the printing press. From the cover design, you will discover right away that front and back covers can break or make a book. Even the title page after the cover page can do your book in.

Since you are a novice writer, what do you know about cover designs?

Novice writers do not know much about cover designs that is why most of them become yes persons when deciding about front covers.