Writing and Developing Your College Textbook Supplements

Writing and Developing College Textbook Supplements is a practical guide for creating instructional materials to accompany textbooks and support courses of study. It provides an introduction to publishing industry standards and best practices for print and electronic products and content, including instructor's manuals, annotated editions, test banks, study guides, readers, lab manuals, transparency sets, audios and videos, multimedia, learning objects, web sites, e-texts, and online courses. Written by an expert development editor in higher education publishing and the author of Writing and Developing Your College Textbook (Atlantic Path Publishing, 2003: ISBN 0-9728164-0-2).

Over a career spanning 25 years, inhouse as a consultant, Mary Ellen Lepionka has worked with authors, editors, and publishers on more than 78 titles, including 28 first editions. Mary Ellen's work has included projects for a variety of educational publishers, large and small, including D.C. Heath; Ginn; Merrill; Prentice-Hall; Pitman; Little, Brown; Holt, Rinehart, & Winston; Addison Wesley; Sage; John Wiley & Sons; McGraw-Hill; and Houghton Mifflin. In 2003 she retired from Allyn and Bacon (Pearson Education) after 12 years of service. Through her experiences in educational publishing, Mary Ellen gained indepth exposure to many fields of study, including U.S. and world history, English composition and literature, business management and international business, political science, education and special education, educational psychology and social psychology, human development and child psychology, sociology and social problems, anthropology and archaeology, communication and public speaking, and criminology and criminal justice. In addition to this exposure, Mary Ellen has solid background in academe and as a classroom instructor. With an M.A. in anthropology from Boston University and work toward a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, she taught for many years at Boston University, Northeastern University, Lasell Junior College, Vancouver City College, North Shore Community College, and Salem State College. With additional certification in secondary education, Mary Ellen also served for five years as a high school teacher and curriculum developer, which led her initially to the world of educational publishing. For Mary Ellen, becoming an author and publisher herself is a natural extension of her life's work.