How the Textbooks Get Made (or "The Writer's Life for Me")

I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. In the latest I take a break from talking about guns and "gun control," and instead talking about my actual work-life as a freelance writer/editor:

The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for the Money: Not Safe for Work

Illustrative example: I recently put together a classroom reference on Internet pornography (not kidding). The book consists of a couple dozen point-counterpoint pairs on topics like “Access to online porn does/doesn’t encourage rape” or “Teen/preteen sexting should/shouldn’t be prosecuted as child pornography” – fun stuff like that.

I hunt down these articles, then revise and massage them so that they’re high-school accessible, because that’s the market for this book – high school libraries. That’s my job:

I write reference works on pornography aimed at high schoolers.

I’ve also done books like this on drugs and teen sex. I don’t even know what to say about my life, except that if you had told 12-year-old me that this was how it was going to end up, that kid would high-five you all over the place.

The only time a lay person hears about what goes into a textbook is when some jerkwater school board in North Carolina mandates that they aren’t buying anything with this untested evolution crap in it, or whatever.

I’ve done this about a dozen times (not counting projects I ultimately passed on because the money or timing were wrong). And I gotta tell you, the editorial guidelines have never remotely approached that kind of political micromanagement. More than politics, “expedience” and “balance” are the rule.

. . .