e-textbooks Archives

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?

ePerfection: Collaborative Textbook Design

January 31, 2020January 16, 2014 by Tim Gifford

It’s quite simply a phenomenal idea; utilising a powerful toolkit of online collaborative applications to deliver a 5-week course on how to develop an eTextbook.

The 5 EdTech trends of ELT part 4: e-textbooks

January 30, 2020July 17, 2013 by Laurie Harrison

Hear that distant rumbling sound? That’s the sound of every ELT publisher rushing to create ebook versions of their coursebooks because we’re moving into the age of the paperless classroom. As one of my American colleagues so wonderfully puts it, “The toothpaste is out of the tube” – there’s no going back now. But most e-textbooks are too print-faithful to be really useful. We need to take things further, and this post ends with some of the key questions that we need to look at if we’re going to use the paperless classroom as an opportunity to improve what a coursebook is, rather than just re-create what we’ve already had for 30 years.

Cengage – that bankruptcy file

January 30, 2020July 15, 2013 by Byron Russell

Byron Russell is a Director of Woodstock Publishing and Pete Sharma Associates, as well as being the Joint Coordinator of the IATEFL Materials Writing SIG (MaWSIG). You can follow him on Twitter at @byronofcombe. A publishing friend called me up the other day, full of concern – “Cengage!” she said. “It’s bankrupt, you know!” Formerly known … 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.