publishers 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?

The Future of ELT

January 30, 2020April 7, 2014 by Gavin Dudeney

It was interesting to be at IATEFL this year, the annual land grab for attention larger than ever, and a conference dominated by discussions, presentations and a plenary about the future of ELT, which – it is suggested – will be completely mediated by technologies (more of this fallacy later). With Sugata Mitra selling his … Read more

In defense of meerkats

January 30, 2020February 25, 2014 by Laurie Harrison

Guest post by ELT publisher Janet Aitchison, in response to Steve Elsworth’s post, The monetary value of ELT authors.

Not all publishers think there is no place for writers in the digital future. The writers’ role and the means of remuneration will be different from what it was in the heyday of ELT publishing, no doubt, but any publisher worth their salt knows that however clever the software, however many bells and whistles it has, without well-written, motivating, fun content, students will not engage and will therefore not succeed.

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

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.

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

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.