The anatomy of textbook publishing: complex publication process, lack of respect steer many scholars away from writing textbooks - Faculty Club - Statistical Data Included

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 20, 2002 by Kendra Hamilton, Ronald Roach

Everything else from your college days may be fading into the mists of middle age, but there's one thing you probably remember with utter clarity: the first time you had to shell out more than $50 for a textbook.

Let's see, there was Gray's Anatomy; Jensen's art history tome; Samuelson's doorstop in economics. And whether you were the kind of the student who fingered the pages with rapt and loving attention or the kind who never cracked the spine, that textbook author's name has most likely lingered in your memory.

So it's one of the academy's more troubling ironies that neither the textbook nor the textbook author gets much respect. That is to say, the writer of a standard textbook may be the most visible scholar in his field--but that doesn't mean that scholar is a recognized expert in his field.

"Nothing in this area is simple," says Dr. Jacqueline Royster, professor of English and senior associate dean for research and faculty affairs at Ohio State University. The fact is "we need Black scholars who are interested in knowledge-building, who are interested in questions of what the students learn, who are interested in issues of access. ... But being involved is a complex issue."

The statement seems counterintuitive. What, one wonders, could be "complex" about writing a textbook in an institution whose primary mission is, at least allegedly, the production and dissemination of knowledge? The answer can be summed up in one word: plenty.

First, there are the complexities of navigating the system. While profit figures are closely held proprietary information, textbook success stories are of the kind that make publishers salivate.

There are the quiet success stories, like The Harbrace College Handbook. Written by the late Dr. John C. Hodges of University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the handbook reliably pumps out hefty profits year after year for its publisher --and, through an endowment, funds critically important research as well as leave and travel provisions for English faculty at Tennessee.

Then there are the stories that make a media splash--like that of Dr. N. Gregory Minkiw, the Harvard economist who won a $1.4 million advance for an economics textbook the publisher planned to position as the successor to Samuelson's. The amount was roughly four times the $300,000-$400,000 that was the industry standard for an economics textbook in 1997--and untold thousands more than the advance one might receive in another field.

With those kinds of numbers being flung about, publishers have a tendency to move cautiously. For example, despite many awards and honors, including winning the Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize from the Modern Languages Association (see Black Issues, Feb. 14), Royster noted that her most recent freshman reader--Critical Inquiry: Readings on Culture and Community, forthcoming from Addison Wesley Longman--had to wind its way through a tortuous review process: 16 reviewers on the first round, then, due to a buyout, 12 reviewers on the second.

It comes with the territory, Royster notes, adding, "You can understand the publisher's point of view. There can be a great deal of money at stake."

`KISS OF DEATH'

But even if a scholar manages the difficult tasks of winning a publisher's ear and winding his or her way through the arduous proposal and publication processes, there's something to contend with that can be even worse--the contempt of one's colleagues.

"In my field--in psychology--it would be the kiss of death for a young scholar to author a textbook," says Dr. James Jackson, founder of the Program for Research on Black America at the University of Michigan and director of the school's internationally renowned Research Center for Group Dynamics.

And while "kiss of death" sounds extreme, it's a sentiment that one finds replicated across the Research I disciplines--economics stands virtually alone among the fields in which the top names lose no respect for writing textbooks, Jackson says.

The reason is painfully simple. In the hierarchy of publication, the single-authored work of original research or the scholarly article appearing in a reputable refereed journal is at the top of the pyramid--followed by the edited collection of scholarly essays, the edition of a "lost" primary text and sometimes even the anthology.

But the textbook isn't at the bottom of the pyramid; it's not even on it. The textbook just doesn't figure in the complicated promotions and tenure formulae laid down by Research I institutions. So it's hardly surprising that African American scholars, relative newcomers to the academic table, have heaped their plates with other types of publications and generally ignored textbooks.

"Realistically, writing a textbook is some thing that takes a tremendous amount of support, and African American scholars don't tend to get those levels of support. And if you pursue that choice anyway, there's always a cost," says Dr. Joseph Graves, professor of evolutionary biology at Arizona State University and author of the acclaimed The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium.