Writing an open textbook: tracking an author’s perspective

" ... What’s involved in writing for open publishing? A big challenge though is to get authors to write an open textbook. There is no direct financial reward, and perhaps even more importantly, there is a much higher level of risk than going through commercial publishers. Who will read it? Will it be accepted in the academic community? Will it have as much influence?  And a very practical question: if I do decide to do an open textbook, how do I do this? What do I need to know? Who can help me? How do I preserve the integrity of the book if people can just copy or alter what I’ve written? These are questions that I have been struggling with. I am planning to write a textbook, a guide, for faculty and instructors, on teaching in a digital age. I have decided – for reasons that I will describe in another post – to not only make it an open textbook, but to try to ensure that it is designed to fully exploit the affordances of open publishing, and to practice in the design of the book what I am preaching in the text. Tracking progress In the spirit of open-ness, I plan to share this journey through a series of blog posts that tracks my progress, my questions, the answers I find, and I also hope to encourage others to help me as I do this. Here are some of the issues I expect to address in subsequent posts ..."