Have you ever wondered the educational value of academic publishing? Wondered how the research we do filters into the classroom? Maybe not! This is not something often discussed and debated in business academia, where the ethos and culture is driven to publish in top-tier academic peer-review (?) journals. However, for some of us, behind closed doors, in secret we are also engage in another publishing activity. An activity not often discussed with high esteem or value by research-driven colleagues, where the words “I’m writing a textbook” seem like sinister words. However, if we really think about the educational value of academic publishing, it is textbooks and the educational resources we develop where a real contribution to knowledge and wider value in education is most certainly felt, not just through journal articles. Here in this blog post I share part of my experience and the view that “writing of good textbooks should be central – not marginal to our HE mission as researchers and teachers”.

OUP Sales Conference 2010

This week on Wednesday, 25th August 2010, I attended the Sales Conference for my textbook publisher – Oxford University Press (OUP) in Warwick (UK). Not a sales representative, nor a member of the publishing industry, I’m an author and an academic so I attended to reconnect with the sales team I met 2 years ago who are responsible for a book title I’ve coauthored titled, Marketing. In this I participated in a session about how our 1st edition has gone and to discuss the launch of the 2nd edition due out in December 2010.

This experience was invaluable. Sat in the room was the hearts and minds of over 30 people who are in direct contact with lecturers, universities and book stores from across the UK and Europe. They are deeply embedded in the publishing industry and the dynamics with which it is changing, both due to economic constraints, changes in technology and market preferences. In brief, students are not using books like they used to, it’s about differing formats, differing resources from a variety of locations! And these people know their business and are some of the most humble about their value in the publishing process. In awe of their knowledge and commitment to distributing good educational resources and how they could help educators, I most certainly was. One thing I love about Oxford University Press (OUP) as a publisher, and their team … is they also have heart! They care about the books/resources they develop, the people they work with and the people who they are developing for. Yes they have to generate revenue, but maybe this cultural ethos is because they have a charity status and so are not as commercially driven like most publishing houses.

Why Write a Textbook on Marketing

The above is why I really engaged with this project over 2 years ago in 2008, not just because I wanted to write a book, actually at the time I didn’t want to as academic textbooks are not as valued by business academia like a journal article is (a view I am opposed to!). But with OUP’s ethos, and our coauthor and editorial team, not only did we have a vision for what students in marketing today should be learning in and out of the class room, but the team also saw the importance in not just writing a book, but in developing an overall suite of resources for all in marketing education – lecturer and student alike.

So myself and two colleagues, Paul Baines from Cranfield and Chris Fill from Portmouth, came together on this project through differing routes and bringing differing skills, knowledge and experience to the table. I was the publishing novice, and in some ways still am, still trying to juggle personal and professional deadlines with publishing ones. But one thing connects us, our vision on the value of coupling a deep knowledge of learning and education with marketing theory and practice in business management academia. Our focus has been on developing a resource – not just a book – that helps both students and lecturers in learning and educating about marketing in the many differing spaces it occupies, in the many differing formats it comes, in how it is evolving and the differing ways in which we can learn and experience it. Essentially we spent three years prior to 2008, creating an ‘educational resource’ that brings practice into the classroom, brings not just theory, but also critical debate around marketing theory into the class room and most importantly, engages with the many differing ways and styles with which we both learn and can educate about marketing – online, offline and through experience. Marketing is going through not just an evolution given changes in society, but also a digital revolution.

The Value of Textbooks in Academic Publishing

However, along this journey I must say I’ve been saddened by the lack of value academia, especially business academia appears to place on the value of textbooks in academic publishing, an ethos which has filtered throughout our institutions, governance structures and our education system. Spurned by a ‘publish or perish’ ethos around peer-review (?) journal articles and a governance system – the Research Assessment Exercise or Framework (RAE 2008, REF ?), that propagates this view. I’m not saying these are not important, they are, we couldn’t write books, develop educational resources or educate without them. But our myopic focus on the importance of a journal article above everything else and thus their production at cost to everything else (e.g., teaching quality, educational innovation, staff morale) is harming the inherent basis on which university and business academia exist – “to contribute to knowledge through research, education and community engagement” (this is what I signed up for when I joined academia at the completion of my PhD in 2003). I didn’t sign up to an ethos of “to write just journal articles”.

Yesterday I sat and listened. I knew how well our book at done in its first edition,  but I didn’t realise just how well. Our book – Marketing, the first edition released in 2008, is 2nd in the UK academic market for 1st year marketing textbooks with 30% marketshare, 2% behind the leading textbook, and beating Kotler … “the god of marketing” … who is third. Whoop! Whoop! Our title is apparently OUP most successful business title and purchased by thousands of students across the UK and Europe. This was well above our expectations, in the begining we just wanted to challenge the status quo in 1st year marketing education. Challenge what we were teaching and how! So, a celebration yes! But a personal one! We don’t get huge royalty cheques, and these books don’t really count towards promotion as they are not as valued as much as a journal articles (REF/RAE), despite how much time, work and resources goes into their creation and how well regarded they are outside the academy (e.g., in business). So it’s not about the money and nor drive for a tenured track Professoriate position.

Its about an educational ethos, and contributing to the knowledge of tomorrows marketing industry. In this, for our title, we have reached the minds of 100′s of lecturers and thousands of 1st year marketing students in the UK and Europe and contributed to their knowledge of marketing theory, marketing practice and importantly challenged the status quo in marketing education. That is worth more than any promotion or 4* journal article.

A Manifesto for Textbook Writing

But this journey over the last 4-5 years has made me really question how business academia, across the UK, Europe and in wider international communities really value the academic textbooks and educational resources in business academia and their contribution to business knowledge, theory and practice. I cam across this great blog post on “The Higher Education Academy” websites about “Writing Textbooks in a Cold But Changing? Climate. This post has some interesting insights about “To Write or Not to Write a Textbook?” In short the author Rob Pop concludes with a Manifesto for Textbook Writing, for all educators, researchers and authors.

A Manifesto for Textbook Writing (Rob Pope, 2003)

• Textbook writing is a central, sensitive and symptomatic indicator of all that we do.
• Textbooks come into being and operate precisely on the cusp of teaching with research, of education with economics, and of a vision of knowledge as personal empowerment and satisfaction with one of knowledge as public commodity and techno-political power.
• Textbooks are the main interface where the notion of the subject in general is embodied in the particular heterogeneity of all the subjects who study it; it is therefore the major tool whereby subjects in every sense have lasting effects.
• Textbooks are also the main site where the fundamental structure and significance of the discipline is communicated and debated. It is therefore not only the place where the existing territories are consolidated and boundaries reinforced; but where the work of inter- and cross-disciplinary re-definition and re-negotiation goes on — publicly and accountably, amongst ones peers as well as students and, sometimes, a more general public.
• Textbooks are thus where specialist knowledge and skills are accumulated and made generally accountable as well as accessible. Thats why a good textbook is precious — and a bad one pernicious.
• In sum, the writing of good textbooks should be central — not marginal — to our higher educational mission as teachers and researchers.

So with this Manifesto in mind, I have continued with my co-author team to develop our title, Marketing, with the launch of our 2nd edition in December, 2010. Why? Because like Pope (2003), I too believe that writing good textbooks and developing good educational resources should be central, not marginal to our HE mission as teachers and researchers, and our governance structures.

Smiles

Kelly

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