Transcription
Hi everyone, my name is Joe Minard and I'm the co-founder, managing director of Camden and Minard e-publishing limited, and I was invited to join Tissol live online. And if you weren't able to join and you want to see what we covered, I'm recording this short video just for you.
We're talking about publishing, and so here's what I talked about. I talked a little bit about me and my publishing company. And then we got into the details about how to propose a title if you're interested in publishing a book and how to prepare your proposal. We looked at features that are important when you're writing for teachers, how to make a book accessible for busy teachers, for example, how to turn your thesis into a book, and whether to publish with a press or to go with a self-publishing model. And if you are interested in self-publishing, we looked at some tools for self-publishing.
We didn't actually get into the role of AI in publishing, but I will share some ideas that I had ready just in case, but we ran out of time.
So, just to give you some background about me, even though I run a publishing company, I've been running this since 2012. Actually, my day job, my full-time job is working as a professor at Kanda University of International Studies, and it's in Chiba in Japan. I work in this center. It's called KUIS aid. So it's building 8 on campus, but it houses the self-access learning center. I'm mainly involved in supporting learners outside the classroom. So I'm the director of the center and I work with a large team of colleagues and our job is to support learners in learner autonomy so they can take charge of their learning throughout their lives. So we offer one-to-one advising. We've got courses, lots of activities. And here's here's our mission. The sulkq is a community and it aims to facilitate pro-social and lifelong autonomous language learning within a diverse and multilingual learning environment. So this is what we do.
So I wanted to share this so that it explains where I'm coming from when I look at my own publications and my approach to promoting autonomy not just in our learners but in colleagues as well and in people who might want to publish as a way to share their ideas and to grow as a professional. I'm also the director of the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education, also at Kanda University of International Studies, and we run courses for advisers so you can get a professional certificate in advising. We're a community of researchers so we're doing ongoing research in learner autonomy and related fields. We offer other courses, webinars, resources, and we also run a couple of journals. I'm the editor-in-chief of these two journals. So RELAY Journal is aimed at those who are interested in learner autonomy and teacher autonomy in general. And CEO Journal, which has been going for 15 years, is a Scopus-indexed quarterly peer-reviewed publication aimed at people who work either in self-access learning or are interested in promoting language learning and supporting language learners outside the classroom. And both of these journals are open access.
And our approach to running the self-access learning center and the research institute is that it's a complex dynamic system. So all of these people and all of these features of our center impact each other. And so what I try to do as a director is to promote this sort of autonomy-supportive environment. So each of us supports the other. And this is a way that we promote leadership and autonomy in our learners as well as our colleagues.
So here are books that I've published. Now you know a little bit about my academic background. There's no surprise that they're focusing on advising, reflective dialogue, on autonomy support outside the language learning classroom, and on promoting language learner autonomy. I've also published books on looking at the dynamics of social language learning communities and also promoting reflection on language learning in general. So some of the books are edited volumes where I've worked with colleagues around the world who are promoting learner autonomy in their classrooms and outside the classrooms. So some of these edited volumes really showcase some excellent work that's going on around the world.
Okay, let's talk about how I got into publishing. So it was possibly inevitable. I love books. I'm always reading books or editing books or collecting books, talking about books. So, this has always been a large part of my life.
Let's talk about the IATEFL Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group. So I've been involved with them for many years and at one point two colleagues in the SIG, Special Interest Group, Carol Everhard and Richard Smith, were editing a series of papers that gathered input about learner autonomy around the world from different colleagues. And these were short pieces. I think there were 52 altogether and they were published in our newsletter over several years and everybody really loved this project. It was very creative and it brought different ideas together and it explored autonomy in very innovative ways. We looked at connections with fields around autonomy as well. So rather than it just be lost, we wanted to bring them together in a book. So this is the first book I worked on. So during this process, I worked with Carol and Richard and I learned how to make an ebook. So this is published just with the SIG and this became the first of many books where we would have an event and the event would include lots of presentations from different people and then they would write. Previously this would have just been lost because of our ability to collect these as an ebook, we published them as ebooks. Later there was a real desire to see the actual print books as well. So we've published many of these books in print form. Okay, and I have some of them behind us. So, it's very satisfying, isn't it, to see your book in print form as well.
So, the way to do this was to form a company and I continue to work with the Learner Autonomy Special Interest Group, but our scope has now broadened. So, let's have a look at what we do now.
So, I would just want to summarize a few facts about Camden and Minard. So, we're a small academic press established by myself and Christopher Camden back in 2012. We specialize in applied linguistics, language teaching and learning, and actually professional communication. We facilitate links between research, practice, and dissemination. So practice has always been very important to us. We never wanted to be the kind of publisher that just publishes research or academic tomes that nobody reads. We want actual practicing teachers to be involved in writing them and using them to inform our practice. We help with the dissemination and helping perhaps new authors or early career researchers to realize that they can share their practices with others and it's incredibly useful for everybody. This is the kind of work that moves our field along. So, we encourage and support writers, researchers, and practitioners, no matter what stage of your career you're in. So far, we've got eight series and 36 books. We publish in ebooks and print books, and we're also in many libraries. Our goal was to make our books as accessible as possible. So no matter where you are in the world, you should be able to find it in your university library or if you don't have much of a budget, then the books are very economical. The company is incorporated in Hong Kong.
So let me take you through some of our series. So we have the Teaching English to Young Learners series and this is headed up by Dr. Anamaria Pinto. Then I'm the series editor for the Autonomous Language Learning series, given my background and interest, and we've published many books here. Many of them are edited volumes and some of them have started life as a conference or an event and then we've collected the papers from that event, but it's gone beyond that. Then there's the Life and Education in Japan series, which is currently headed up by Melody Cook and Anne Howard, and previously Diane Holy Nagatmo. And these books explore the unique experiences of academics and expatriates in Japan. And our new series is Generative AI and Foreign Language Education, headed up by Luis Hohashi, and this explores theoretical, practical, and philosophical implications of generative AI developments in our field. The Positive Pedagogical Practice series is headed up by Tim Murphy, and this is theoretical and practical applications, and this really looks at transforming classroom learning and classroom experiences. And this is the Leadership in Language Education series, headed up by Kevin Knight, and this looks at theoretical models and practical case studies, draws a lot on psychology to help language educators to implement innovative ideas in their classrooms and beyond.
So, if you're interested in proposing a title for any of these series, feel free to get in touch with me or with a series editor with your tentative idea and we can help you expand on it. What we'll do is we'll send you a proposal form and this will help you develop your idea more deeply. We'll get into what the proposal form includes in a moment. We will give you some initial feedback and some pointers. And then when we feel like it's in good shape and we've got enough detail, we will send it for external review to get more feedback. And then we set the timeline. We set a timeline for revisions. I would typically allow at least a year before you would see the final draft preparation for publishing. So of course we issue contracts to the editors or authors and all the contributing editors and we pay a royalty of 12%.
Okay, let's talk about how to prepare a book proposal. First, thoroughly identify your market and you can do that by reviewing other books in the field. Read as much as you can about what other people are publishing and also examine the books that the publisher is actually publishing to see where it might fit in. So if you're interested in publishing with us, look at what we already do and try to establish your book as fitting within one of our series, ideally. Or if you're publishing with another publishing company, it will be the same process. See how your book fits in and is it the kind of thing that we publish? And then write a convincing proposal. Spend some time doing this. It's worth doing. And this can later be used in your introductory chapter. It can be your first draft of your introduction, actually. And include things like what's the book about? What's the purpose of the book? Why is the book needed? And why now? And what evidence do you have that we need such a book? And why do the other books fall short? So you'll have done a review of all the other books on offer at the moment. How does yours differ or how does yours meet some sort of shortfall or gap? And are you the best person to write it? And finally, what will the book contain? So on that, list your contents and ideally group the contents into coherent sections. So you might want to list all the things that you want to put in the book and then move things around and put them in organized sections that helps the reader navigate through the ideas. And then write a short description of the contents for each chapter. And give a brief summary as well of your relevant experience and your publications. For some publishers, they might require you to have had previous experience. So, it's a good idea to maybe contribute to a book before you become the editor, or maybe you'd like to work with a co-author or co-editor if this is your first time, but we will guide you as much as possible. And try to create a realistic timeline as well. It always seems to take longer than people think, so add on a few months for what you think. And it's you can always finish early. That's fine, too.
All right. So, here's some questions. So, if you've got a book in mind, feel free to pause the video and think of these ideas. Jot some ideas down or talk to somebody about it or just think to yourself. Think about who is this book for? What book are you thinking about writing? What's it about? Who is it for? And what's the purpose of the book? Why is it needed? Why now? What evidence do you have? And why do other books fall short? And are you the best person to write it? Why? And what will the book contain?
Okay, let's talk about writing books for teachers. So, we're going beyond just writing an academic book for the sake of writing an academic book that will only be read by just a couple of people. Let's look at our audience, which is hopefully practicing teachers. So, imagine you're writing for a particular group. Maybe it could be your peers or it could be yourself maybe 10 years ago or maybe something you've noticed that people need. So have some people in mind. In fact, you might know them personally. So it's very helpful if you feel like you're writing for them personally. Do include some theory and rationale sections. Even if it's a practice-based book, teachers like to get some rationale why they have to do these things. And make the information easy to access. So break your chapters into sections. Include some text boxes to highlight some important points. Include some reflection questions, maybe some summaries. Make it easy for teachers to find what they need quickly and read quickly and get to what they want. So teachers like to have example lesson plans, maybe some worksheets and links so they can adapt and follow up on what you've done, what you're presenting in the book. Also include a glossary and list of resources. Free downloads are very popular as well and they can be added to the publisher's website and consider offering an online webinar to bring your book to life.
Now, as you're likely to also be a practicing teacher and you're writing for your peers in many ways, the approach we've always taken is that we're not writing in a top-down "I'm the expert and I'm going to write everything I know about this topic in this book and you're going to just absorb it like a sponge." Think of it as a dialogue. So, you're starting the creative process for your readers as well. So they hopefully they will read your book, get some ideas, feel inspired, and add and build on the ideas you've introduced in the book. So they become co-creators of the knowledge when you think about it.
So here are some examples of what some of our authors have done. So in this book by Christian Jones and Graeme Burton, they're very clear on who the book is for and what's in the book. So teachers can find what they need straight away. And the contents page is meticulously detailed so they know if somebody's interested in relative clauses, they can go to the exact part of the book that you need. It's very clear. This book by Christian Ludvig and Lori Mo Walter, it's an excellent book and it's full of downloadable photocopiable materials for teachers. Hugely practical and what they've done, they've broken down the lesson plan to make it so easy for somebody to really grab with minimum preparation. And here's another one by Satica Watkins and Daniel Hooper. So this book is actually what they've done. They've drawn on their experience of building student learning communities and promoting leadership in outside classroom contexts. And they've broken down the literature for us in such a way that it's easy to grasp and then they've supported it with diagrams and tools and photocopiable activities for learners. It's fantastic. Here's another groundbreaking book by Tim Murphy called Voicing Learning. And Tim introduces, for example, many tools and one of them is the action log where students keep detailed notes about what they do during the class. And what's really helpful is Tim has given us an example of this in addition to a template that we can use. In this book by Diego Midos called Am I an Autonomous Language Learner? Self-perceived Autonomy in Trinidad and Tobago: Sociocultural Perspectives. So it's highly academic, but the author makes it very easy for us to grasp the main content because he breaks it down. And he gives us an executive summary of each and every chapter and he makes this material easy to apply to our contexts. This book edited by Alexander Burke, David Young, and Melody Lorie Cook is a groundbreaking book because there are very few resources on barrier-free instruction in Japan and teachers are crying out for recommendations. So they helpfully give lots of additional resources in addition to all the editing these excellent chapters. So at the back of the book we've got links and websites and on our website we've got additional resources as well. So this is a really excellent example and they keep adding to them on the website, which is very nice. This book is by Daniel Hooper and it's called Student Narrative Journeys in Learning Communities: Mapping Landscapes of Practice. Now this was based on Daniel's PhD thesis. So again, it was highly academic, but he presents his work in such a way that it's extremely accessible that anyone can think, "Ah, I can apply this," and it inspires others to do similar research. At the end of each chapter, he includes "Time to Reflect." So, what kind of learning communities could you form in your self-access learning center or what support do you think you might need? So this reflective process helps people personalize this content for their own practice and research.
Okay, here are some questions. As a teacher using such a book, what do you most appreciate? Do you like having the theory and rationale sections? How about the easy-to-access features like having lots of chapters, clear sections, text boxes, reflection questions, summaries? How do you feel about these things? Do you appreciate sample lesson plans, adaptable worksheets, links, a glossary, a list of resources, free downloads, and online webinars? Think about the things that you enjoy and what would you like to put in a book that you are writing.
Okay, let's talk about how to turn your thesis into a book. And three of our authors have done just that. I've already introduced two of them. So the first one is by Diego Midos. Then there's another one by Sai Odashian. And the third was by Daniel Hooper, which we already had a quick look at. Now all three books are fantastic. I highly recommend them because they are incredible narratives and resources in their own right. But all three books did not start off this way. In fact, they looked very thesis-like. So, we worked with the authors really carefully to help them create a story through their book that was so engaging that anybody can pick up and read. Nobody wants to read a PhD thesis. I'm sorry. You're writing for a completely different audience. You're writing for your PhD supervisor. So, what we want to do is turn it into a book that's engaging for everybody.
So, let's look at a few ways that might be done. So, firstly, keep your readers in mind. Think about what they will take away from this work and think about what chapters they're likely to skip because I hate to say it, even though it may have taken you years of your life to write your methodology section, for instance, your readers are likely to skip a lot of it. So, think about how you might reorganize the book to make it an engaging read. And take a look at other books in the field that you particularly like and get a sense of how the authors have done it, how they've structured them, and how they've made them engaging. Of course, see our books by Diego Maderos, Janu Daniel Hoopa, and Sonia Odashian for examples.
So naturally, a thesis covers so many areas and there are chapters about obscure things, making connections, and justifying your stance. But what are the main things that you want your readers to take away? Maybe just pick one. What's missing from the current published works? And how can you fill this gap best with this book? You don't have to put everything from your thesis into this one book. In fact, you might have several books, but think about the main one for a start. So, readers are often looking for a pedagogical or practical application or research inspiration. So, work that in if you can.
So, think about how you can engage your readers in dialogue. So, can you embed reflective questions? Can you explicitly encourage readers to replicate, share, or apply the ideas in their context? Think about what tools might support this. So, again, consider your readers as co-constructors of the knowledge. You're not just providing the knowledge for them to absorb. Get them involved in the creative thinking process so that they can build on what you've already started. So maybe some obvious things like remove all mentions of the term "thesis" and "dissertation" is going to sound incredibly dry. Consider beginning your book with a personal narrative to frame the work. And you might want to greatly reduce your literature review and methodology. Yeah, people are more likely to skip that part. Your theoretical framework might need to be reduced as well. And this will probably mean reducing your references. People will be interested in your context and your participants' stories and perhaps separate them out into chapters to make the book an engaging read. So tell some stories through your work. The title and chapter headings should be changed to make them more enticing to readers. They can be very dry in a thesis, but you can change them into questions or you can be a bit more creative with your chapter titles in your book. Many people write in the first person in this kind of book to make your story more compelling. And you might want to avoid extensive use of overly academic or unfamiliar terms and acronyms. If you have to explain and define every other word, then I think you need to take a look at how formal the language is and try to create a different way of telling the story.
So, if you're interested in hearing from one of the authors, Diego Maderos talks about the process of turning his thesis into a book. And around 15 minutes into this video, he talks about how his perception before he started writing the book, how it changed completely. So, here he's saying, "I thought, okay, the thesis is ready. Let's just publish it." And that's pretty much what we received as the book proposal. But it took him several years actually to get to the stage where he was proud of the book that was eventually published. Diego's book is now a wonderful resource and a very compelling and engaging read and definitely worth the extra work as he will tell you in the video.
All right. So, if you want to turn your thesis into a book, here are some questions you might consider. Who will read it? When you originally wrote the thesis, it was your PhD supervisor and the examiner, right? Okay. Okay, they've already read it. They're probably not your main audience anymore. So, think about who will read it and what do you need to do to make it accessible? What will be the main challenges? Which sections will you need to cut? And how can you make it an engaging read?
All right, let's talk about pros and cons of self-publishing versus publishing with a press. Self-publishing has become a lot easier these days, but there are still some benefits for working with an academic press. Firstly, the pros. You get a systematic review process. You get some really valuable feedback and you can just focus on your writing and editing. You haven't got to worry about how it will look or how you will market it or have a finance side or any of that. You just focus as an author on your work. You've got the prestige of being accepted by an academic publisher and you benefit from their expertise in the process. They've also got a large network which will help with distribution and getting your work out there.
And the cons might be low royalties. Maybe you're forced to fit within a series. I know some publishers have very strict guidelines when it comes to fitting in with the series. How many words, how many chapters, and so on. And so you've got less room for creativity.
Self-publishing can be quicker and you retain a lot of the control and you can use multimodal methods for your publishing. So you might want to publish some videos or some of the content might be as a course or maybe you could have aspects of it as an audiobook. You can include more pictures. You don't have to fit within the structure that a traditional academic press might give you. You can potentially earn higher royalties if you hit on something successful. You can be more creative. You don't have to follow the rules that have been put in place by sometimes traditional and possibly outdated modes of publishing. And there are loads of tools to manage the process, which we'll talk about in a moment.
The cons are that it can be a lot of work to manage everything. So you're not only creating the content, you're marketing it. You're worrying about the finance, the distribution. There's all of that and actually can be incredibly time-consuming and it's a really steep learning curve.
But here are some tools you can draw on that make it a bit easier these days. So tools for writing. Scriber is an excellent resource. It's great because you can move sections around really easily. You can see the book at a glance and leave yourself notes as you go along. An ebook. Vellum produces beautiful ebooks, formats them for you. Or if you don't mind keeping it simple, Draft2Digital lets you basically upload a Word document, and it'll convert it into a book for you. Have a look at Joanna Penn's excellent blog for more creative tools for publishing and writing.
In terms of selling your book, you can sell it with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. And with that, you can just upload a Word document. You might want to develop some skills if you want to make it look better or use Vellum to do that. And you can sell it as a print book or an ebook. Bookfunnel manages this process of distribution for you as well. Draft2Digital. This is the one I already mentioned. You can use for creating your book. They also act as a distributor. If you want to retain more control, and you can do all of these by the way, you haven't got to choose one. You can use PayHip, which basically gives you your own store and you can set up your own pricing policy. You can add any products you like. So you can have an ebook, a physical product, an audiobook, or a course. You can have them all together in your PayHip store and then you get paid directly using Stripe. Google Play also has a store so people can buy through the Google Play system.
So, if you're thinking about publishing, how will you do it? Are you considering self-publishing? So, what new skills will you need to learn if you go down this route? And how much time do you have to dedicate to this? And what do you think will be your main challenges? Or if you're considering approaching a publisher, have you done your research? Is your proposal ready? And who will you send it to? How confident are you that it will be accepted? And what kind of response do you expect? This will help you shape your proposal if you think about this before you send it.
Okay? And so obviously there will be a role for AI in publishing, as there is a role for AI in everything these days. So I would just want to stress that we can make sure that we use AI ethically. So first piece of advice, write your own content. Don't get AI to write your content for you. That's very problematic. But you can chat with AI to help you develop your ideas, get feedback on sections. You can use Grammarly to enhance your writing as you type. You can use AI to help you write blurbs and summaries, but always check and rewrite and change sections and personalize it. Check it really carefully.
For visuals, you can use programs like Napkin AI. So, you can type in what you want to see and it'll produce very nice charts. If you want, if you're interested in making audiobooks, you could use Findaway Voices or Natural Readers. Actually, AI voices, but they're getting better and better. Some people like to write while talking aloud. I've started to do this recently and it helps speed up the process. So I talk at my phone and I use Otter AI, but I hear not AI is also very good. So it transcribes your voice pretty accurately and then you can just tidy up your writing later. So you can multitask while you're writing or you can write while you're walking around. It's really freeing.
Okay. There are some unclear ethics at the moment and this will probably continue to be an issue for a while. There are AI tools now that help you review journal articles. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but anyway. For example, Galaxy AI can review journal articles, and we have to be careful about our academic writing. We need to feel like we're the authors of the article, otherwise how ethical is it really? So, in terms of authorship, you can have a look at COPE 2023's position statement on AI tools. So basically, you can't credit the AI with authorship, but you must be transparent. If you're using these AI tools for writing, production of images, any graphical elements, or if you're collecting or analyzing any data that involves an AI tool, you should declare it. Basically, authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those that are produced by AI. And you're liable for any breach of publication ethics.
So, there are some questions related to AI, probably far more than I have here, but think about what tools do you use already? And how can you make sure that AI is not doing your writing for you? It's tempting, isn't it? Because it's so quick, but we have to be really careful about this. And what are your views on using AI for reviewing? And how do you think AI will affect the publishing industry long term? This is something I grapple with. Will people still read books? Do we still need to keep writing them? It's a scary future.
Okay, thank you very much for listening. So this was basically a repeat of what we talked about in Tissol live on June 21st, 2025. And feel free to have a look at the slides and get in touch if you have any questions. Thank you very much.