Content development Archives - Page 2 of 3

Why everyone is stealing your stuff

January 30, 2020June 24, 2014 by Nick Robinson

On the 9th June 2014, the following exchange was posted by a well-known ELT author in the ELT Writers Connected Facebook group. I’ve reproduced it here with his full permission, although he has asked to remain anonymous. It is a conversation with the manager of a blog that had been making copies of the author’s book available for illegal download.

Author: Am I right in thinking that you manage this site? If so please remove the illegal version of my book [REDACTED] from it.
Pirate: lol
Author: That’s your reaction?

The challenge of creating content for private EFL lessons

January 31, 2020March 21, 2014 by Tim Gifford

In a previous post we heard from Kris Jagasia on how his startup EdTech company TurksLearnEnglish had recognised and acted on an opportunity they identified within the Turkish language education market. Kris returns to eltjam to tell us about another learning platform he and his team have developed to aid the private language tutor, and how 1-to-1 lessons differ to full-class teaching. Kris, it’s over to you …

Writing by numbers: The myth of coursebook creativity

January 31, 2020February 20, 2014 by Scott Thornbury

The second of a two-part series, by Scott Thornbury

Textbooks, generally speaking, don’t score high on the originality stakes. And for good reason.

The Monetary Value of ELT Authors

January 31, 2020February 10, 2014 by Steve Elsworth

The world of ELT is becoming digital, and the age of the writer is over – or so we’re told. But is it? Steve Elsworth argues that publishers want to produce content on their own, but they don’t have the wherewithal. Will the future be the province of Boys With Toys? Will creativity be stifled by the Dead Hand of Publishing? And where is the small mammal that will revolutionise the teaching of ELT?

Loyalty vs. Royalties: Author as collaborator or contractor?

January 31, 2020February 4, 2014 by Laurie Harrison

If authors are becoming contractors rather than partners, that changes the role of both author and publisher in a big way. But why is it happening, and is it yet reflected in how publishers work?

If the author is no longer a collaborator, then the publisher must take on that role and so in effect become the ‘master’ author to whom they subcontract the details. This would be analogous to those master painters of old who would paint the head and hands of a portrait, leaving the sitter’s clothing and the background details to be filled in by their apprentices.

Loyalty vs. Royalties: Is There A Place For Royalties In Agile ELT Publishing?

January 31, 2020January 30, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

Are writers’ attitudes to royalties realistic? Or have they simply got used to a system that is actually very strange?

Iterative publishing in ELT – 10 reasons why it will and won’t work

January 30, 2020November 4, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

One of the big buzzwords in ELT publishing at the moment is iterative publishing – the idea, borrowed from the software and startup world, that products should be in a constant state of evolution and improvement in response to changing market conditions, requirements from big customers or new technologies. The whole concept of ‘editions’ is apparently past its sell-by date in the internet age – too redolent of the dusty old print era.

An ELT publisher’s survival plan

January 30, 2020October 28, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

It’s crunch time for ELT publishers. There are a few more years left for the traditional ELT publishing business to stagger on, possibly even quite profitably for some. But we all know it’s on the way out, as evidenced by the attempts – with varying degrees of conviction – of the existing players to turn their businesses into ones capable of surviving and thriving in a world populated by rapidly changing student expectations and super-ambitious and rapacious EdTech start-ups who will very happily destroy the cosy world of ELT.

For ELT publishing people, which path to choose?

January 30, 2020October 7, 2013 by Nick Robinson

Last week, Karen White from ELTTeacher2Writer shared a great article from Digiday, in which they asked digital and print media editors to share the best career advice they’d ever received. One item that jumped out at me was this, from Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic magazine: the best general career advice I’ve heard — but have … Read more

ELT dips its toe into the crowdfunding pool

February 4, 2020September 2, 2013 by Nick Robinson

Back in June, Laurie wrote a piece on crowdfunding in ELT, which lamented the fact that nothing much ELT-related was happening on crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter. Well, there’s one recently launched project that’s definitely worth a look. Atama-ii Books is the brainchild of, amongst others, Marcos Benevides, a Japan-based teacher, publisher and author. Marcos is well … Read more

Breaking up is hard to do: the ‘atomisation’ of ELT content

January 31, 2020August 19, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

Is the linear ELT course on the way out? There’s a growing trend towards the provision of modular mix and match content, or even completely ‘atomised’ content. There are four key things driving this trend: The need to make content development faster and more efficient The potential for huge improvements in production efficiency The rise … Read more

Beyond SCORM – How Tin Can could transform the LMS

January 31, 2020August 15, 2013 by Sean Sutton

The way learning activity is recorded by LMSs is about to undergo a long over-due shake up. If you use an LMS as either a student, a teacher, an administrator, or even as an LMS provider, you no doubt already have some misgivings about the way in which learning activity is tracked by the system: your LMS is probably too rigid to track all the results at the level of granularity you want; it is likely to be a painful process to conform your learning content to work with the way outcomes are tracked; and almost definitely your LMS is unable to track informal or non-curricular learning activity at all. You are not alone in your dissatisfaction. Fortunately, inroads are being made into redefining the way in learning experiences can be tracked and recorded.

Disruptor or disrupted? How to be among the 9% that survive

January 30, 2020August 14, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

A recent scary-sounding post on FutureBook (Will you be in the nine percent of publishers that survive?) about recent research into disruptive innovation got me thinking about what it might mean for ELT publishing. A few weeks ago I posted a primer on disruptive innovation in which I made the case for EdTech as a disruptive force in ELT. I thought it might be interesting now to delve into this a bit more and explore what it is that a disruptive ELT publisher might do, and how to avoid being among the ranks of the disrupted.

Self-publishing in ELT (Part 2)

January 30, 2020August 6, 2013 by Nick Robinson

In Part 1 of this post, we had a quick look at the current state of the ELT self-publishing market. If that didn’t scare you off — and I hope it didn’t — here are five tips to help make sure your own self-publishing venture is a success.

Developing ebooks for ELT – 10 questions to ask before you begin

January 30, 2020August 1, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

ebooks are fast becoming something that ELT publishers simply have to be able to deliver in a world that’s lurching towards the paperless classroom. However, moving from print to ebooks is much easier said than done, especially if you’re adapting an existing (and possibly old) print book, and there a number of hurdles which might not be immediately obvious. Here’s my starter for 10. Each of these is a whole topic in itself, and I’ve raised more questions than answers, so let’s consider this just a starting point!

Self-publishing in ELT (Part 1)

January 30, 2020July 25, 2013 by Nick Robinson

My recent post on whether ELT brands had become more important than ELT authors generated lots of interesting discussion in the comments, and a few things in particular jumped out: Jason R Levine: … in the age of education 2.0-3.0, have the ELT teachers, content creators, and curators become more important? Eric Roth: Given the … Read more

Have ELT brands become more important than ELT authors?

January 30, 2020July 11, 2013 by Nick Robinson

In case you missed it, last week the UK publishing industry was jolted out of its early-summer slumber when the news broke that Charlie Redmayne was to replace Victoria Barnsley as CEO of Harper Collins UK. In a piece last Friday for The Guardian, entitled Bad week for women in publishing as two giants step down, which also covered the news that Gail Rebuck would be replaced as chief executive of Random House UK (now Penguin Random House, of course) by Penguin’s Tom Weldon, the following caught my eye (my emphasis):

Though both Barnsley, who is 59, and Rebuck, 61, could be as tough as anyone when required, they have been author-centred. “What they’ve done is to enable editors. It’s not that they necessarily are those editors. Authors feel the most enormous respect for them and faith in them,” said the source.

Lean ELT Publishing (or, How to publish an ELT course in three months, Part 2)

January 30, 2020July 8, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

In the first post in this series, Nick set out a challenge to see if – and how – it might be possible to radically speed up the process of ELT course creation. The simple fact is that established ELT content providers don’t have much of a choice – radical change is needed because the … Read more

Agile ELT (or, How to publish an ELT course in three months, Part 1)

January 30, 2020July 1, 2013 by Nick Robinson

Making ELT products takes time. A lot of time. Too much time. And in the current climate, we can no longer afford to think about product development in terms of years; the rest of the world is moving too quickly for that, and if we don’t catch up, well …

Why print coursebooks still matter

January 30, 2020June 17, 2013 by Nick Robinson

When I’m not working, I’m generally eating and drinking. And, because cookbook publishing exists, my two interests occasionally intersect. The parallels between cookbook publishing and ELT publishing are greater than you’d expect – and one of the main ones is the enduring value and attachment to print books.