As a rule writers don't just sit down at the computer and write a book off the top of their heads. a writer must decide what topic to write about and what kind of book to write.As academic writer, You would likely choose one of three options:a professional ,a scholarly research book or monograph ,or a textbook .You may also want to edit a book of collected articles by various writers and group them into themed parts or sections .Publishers tend to be wary of edited books, but if you can find important articles and make your edited book “flow” ,you can come up with a valuable book that might sell well.What follows are reif descriptions of the most common books written by academics.The distinctions I’ve made among these three categories are :
Textbooks: Textbooks are overviews of classrooms and usually accompanied by a considerable amount of apparatus:study questions ,bibliographies, and teaching ads .Many textbooks are written team of scholars with expertise in the subject matter of the book.A textbook is usually long and comprehensive -to cover an important topic of study and to be in a main text in a course.
Some textbooks are readers-edited works or anthologies with articles by scholars as part of a general collection on the subject being covered.It may seem as if creating an edited work is easier than writing a book ,but an enormous amount of work is involved in finding the right articles and in obtaining permission to use them .Sometimes a good deal of expense is tied to securing these permissions as well . If some of the articles are written as original pieces for your reader ,you may need to badger your contributors to finish their chapters ,to revise them ,and to turn them in on time .You are also expected to provide commentary on the articles and may find yourself writing much more for edited text than you thought you would.
Professional Books:Professional books are written by scholars on topics of interest to other scholars in the field.Sometimes they are written for the general public or occasionally as texts in courses .Many professors don’t assign large textbooks but ask students to read a number of shorter professional books.In recent years, professional books.In recent years , professional books more and more like textbooks, though generally they aren’t as comprehensive as textbooks .
Scholarly books or monographs:These books are designed to investigate in depth specific topics of interest to the writers ,without any consideration for possible use in college and university courses.Some scholarly monographs,however,are used in courses ,though these monographs have no apparatus.