Who writes college textbooks?

Question

Are they written by freelancers, professors, people known as experts in their field, or (other)???
What qualifications does a person need to write a textbook?

Answer 1

Mostly by professors who then require you to buy their book for their class. Then they can say they have sold x # of copies. The nice thing is sometimes they teach directly out of the book - instead of taking notes you can just follow along and highlight.

Seriously, there are some very good textbooks that are valuable as a reference throughout your career. It depends on whether the professor is just using his teaching notes to assemble the book or including more comprehensive data beyond what would be covered in a class.

As far as qualifications, almost all texts are written by Ph.D.'s, depending on the subject, of course. Most come from years of research, study and/or teaching experience.

Answer 2

Most textbooks are written by well-known professors in their fields. The major reason for that is that most professors want to adopt a textbook from someone whose knowledge and experience they respect, and they wouldn't know a "freelancer".

Answer 3

Textbooks will always be written by those who teach in the field, primarily at the post-secondary level. The main reason is because they can use their own classes to beta test the material to weed out errors, organization, right mixture of comprehension, and such. As such, there's a much better chance the book will sell well and future contracts can be made to publish future books.

Tradebooks aren't as stringent in this regard so you see a lot of practitioners writing books on topics that are also used in academia.

Answer 4

Probably few freelancers, mostly experts, and quite often the person teaching the class will write their own textbook. An excellent grasp of writing skills is preferred. Kind of hard to impress students with vast knowlege if ya cain't spel.

Answer 5

In its strict sense, the prime qualification for a person to write a college textbook is his "knowledge and expertise" in his field. From here, the other qualifications follows...

Answer 6

Most are written by professors.

Most have PhDs. My advisor at Berkeley published one while I was his student.

Answer 7

college proffessors