16 SUBSCRIBE AT TEACHSECONDARY.COM

THE BOOK CLUBYOU SPEND A LOT OF TIME DEVELOPING BRILLIANT RESOURCES FOR YOURSTUDENTS, SAYS FRANCIS GILBERT, BUT HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUTSHARING THEM WITH A WIDER AUDIENCE?

On one level, most teachers arepublishing all the time. Everytime you plonk a worksheetbefore your pupils, you arepublishing your work in the

broadest sense of the word: you are making itpublic. In the last ten years, the internet hasled to an explosion of teaching resourcesbecoming much more widely available, withsites like TES Resources (teachers.net) andteachsecondary.com offering the chance forteachers to publish their work and reach aglobal audience. But Teach Secondary andTeachit are rare in that they offer paymentfor some lesson resources – most websitesexpect teachers to offer their work for free.And being the publicly spirited people theyare, they do.

However, the landscape is shifting for anumber of reasons. First, a number of majorcompanies such as Apple, Amazon and Koboare now providing everyone with the tools topublish their own e-books. Second, as a resultof the technological strides being made, thenature of publishing is changing. A new orderand hierarchy is emerging – and it’s one fromwhich teachers could benefit.

before a writer enjoys a share of the profits.When the author does deliver a book to apublisher, he or she often has to wait manymonths before it is published because it willtake time for the publisher to edit, format andprint it.

I’ve been lucky enough to publish six titlesthrough mainstream publishers, with one ofthose – I’m A Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here –becoming a bestseller. But recently I’ve becomeaware that I’ve created a lot of resources thatno mainstream publisher would considersignificant enough to take on, despite the factthat there is still a potential market for thiswork. I have written guides for my classes onclassics such as Romeo and Juliet, Pride andPrejudice, Jane Eyre and The Strange Case of DrJekyll and Mr Hyde. I’m pleased with the workI’ve done; it’s the fruit of many hours of after-school labour. I’ve set up blogs on thesetexts and published resources on variouswebsites, but up until recently, it’s been apiecemeal effort.

Now, though, using platforms like Amazon’sKindle, Apple’s iBookstore, or self-publishingsites like Lulu or Blurb, it’s possible forindividuals to write and publish handsome

ABOUT THE AUTHORFrancis Gilbert’s Starcrossed: Romeo and Juliet forTeenagers and his Study Guides are available in theAmazon store. His author page is at amazon.co.uk/-

/e/B001K7P7O6 and his website (francisgilbert.co.uk) containslinks to the subject specific blogs he’s done.Twitter: @wonderfrancis See also: localschoolsnework.org.uk

New pathsLet me explain. Many authors – bothprofessional and amateur – are abandoningtraditional publishing routes, whereby anauthor contacts a publisher (generally throughan agent), offers a book and sees whether thepublisher agrees to publish and distribute it. Ifso, the author may well be paid an ‘advance’after signing a contract. However, ineducational publishing today, because theprofits are so small, it’s rare for an author to getmuch money; many teachers, even those whoare established writers and commentators, willbe paid nothing. Furthermore, they’ll sign acontract that will mean it’s highly unlikely theywill see any royalties: the publisher invariablyarranges things so that their costs are covered

The book club Qx_Layout 1 04/11/2013 12:59 Page 3

SUBSCRIBE AT TEACHSECONDARY.COM 17

books without having to pay huge fees todesigners, editors, and printers. Indeed, if youuse Amazon’s GoCreate website, you can getattractive copies of your book available to beprinted on demand. In other words, there’s norisk at all; you don’t have to pay a penny to put ahard-copy book in the Amazon book store.Added to which you can get 70% of the royalties,a much better deal than you’d get from atraditional publisher, who usually gives you12% of the profits after your advance and costshave been paid off. So that’s what I've done.

The whole packageI’ve never been a huge Apple fan, so I opted topublish my titles through Amazon KindleDirect Publishing (KDP) – although looking atthe amazing Mac apps like iBook Author I cansee how the Apple Operating System can moreeasily produce attractive books. This said,Amazon has roughly 70% of the e-book market;the formatting of Kindle books may not lookthat great, but they are very popular. I tried topublish some work on Amazon Kindle about ayear ago, but I stopped because I just couldn’tget a decent cover for my books together.However, this summer when I looked again on

KDP I saw that it had a great addition – aspecial 'cover creator', which, in a matter of afew minutes, can help you make a decentlooking cover for your book. I gathered the work together I had on various classics in Word documents, converted them to HTML for the web using Word, uploaded them, andwith a few days of intensive work I had eightbooks published.

Once that was done, however, I saw that my‘product description’ could be better, and that itwould be far more effective to ‘brand’ all mybooks by giving them the same cover schema. Ialso spotted some mistakes and realised that Ineeded to improve the layouts. So I went backto work – re-designed the covers, re-wrote myproduct descriptions, corrected my typos andre-formatted the books so that theparagraphing and titles were consistent. Thefantastic thing about self-publishing is that theauthor has total control; you don’t have to gothrough a publisher to make changes. As aresult, amendments that could have takenweeks, maybe even months (and which wouldnever have been done at all in a printed andbound book), were completed in a matter ofhours and updated editions offered on Amazonwithin twenty four hours.

The flip side for the self-publisher is thedifficulty in getting noticed; you have to do all

the marketing yourself. If you are a ‘name’already it helps; well known teacher-authorslike Mike Gershon and Sue Cowley arepublishing their own work and clearly reapingthe benefits from this – the former’s resourceson how to teach have been downloaded 1.6million times while Cowley has books in theAmazon bestseller list. Teachers buy books – indroves – so it’s worth putting the effort in toencourage them to buy yours.

For what it’s worthThis self-publishing experience has made mevalue the materials I make for my studentsmuch more. I’m currently teaching WilfredOwen and William Blake’s poetry, and I'vealready made some Word documents that arethe beginnings of more e-books. The addedincentive of publishing the work has meant I’vepaid even closer attention to what materialreally works – and what doesn’t. I’ve set upblogs for these texts; many of the posts I writefor the blogs will be content for the books, andin time, I'm hoping to use the blogs to promotethe published titles.

The books are a goal to work towards. Theywill come to represent the summation of myefforts and thoughts on topics that mean a lot tome. I’ve also experimented with using Amazon’sGoCreate website, which is linked to the KDPstore – in the last week I've published a hardcopy of Star-crossed: Romeo and Juliet forTeenagers, my modern translation ofShakespeare’s play, which was a hit with myYear 10 classes. I enjoyed making the cover andlearning about the difference between e-booksand hard copies. The costs are remarkably low; it’s less expensive than photocopying abatch of scripts.

Overall, I feel the self-publishing has mademe value the resources I make for pupils muchmore. Financial reward isn’t the issue for me;I’m selling the books cheaply and I’m notaiming to give up the day job. But re-draftingthe words which I originally slapped onto aworksheet into a fluently written, nice-lookingbook has made me feel that all those hours ofwork haven’t disappeared into the void.

USEFUL LINKSLeon Cych is a teacher, publisher &

film-maker who offers invaluable tipshere: tinyurl.com/tsleon

Kindle publish their own free guide topublishing on their platform here:tinyurl.com/tskindle

I found from Word to Kindle very usefuland honest: tinyurl.com/tswordtokindle

iBooks Author: apple.com/uk/ibooks-author

Blurb: blurb.co.ukLulu: lulu.com

ADVICE | self-publishing

The book club Qx_Layout 1 04/11/2013 13:02 Page 4