SURE, YOU'VE BEEN PUBLISHED IN JOURNALS, you've focused on a fertile area of research; maybe you've even served as the Department Chair. Where do you go from here? You research, write drafts, rewrite, document, edit; what more can you do?

YOU'RE DOING HALF THE JOB OF PUBLICATION ALREADY. You seem to be submitting papers to journals that are incidental to your specialty. Your own colleagues face the same problems you do. But imagine, for a minute, doing it yourself (and probably do a better job). The secret is that you're the ideal person with the credentials to write grant proposals and get funding.

COLLEGE EDITIONS CAN DO THE OTHER HALF of the job, working with you, as we say, to build a better book. We start with your MSS, work with you to develop a format that you approve, submit proofs at every stage so that we get it just right. I can tell you that every time we deliver boxes of books to our customers, there's an air of excitement and a real sense of accomplishment.

CAN WE DO eBOOKS? Of course. Subscribers and libraries are grappling with which format will be most useful in the coming years. Paper editions will continue; so will ebooks. If funding is weak, consider POD printing (one copy at a time) to eliminate storing hundreds of books for years. Do you want to make information freely available, self-supporting, or does your college expect you to be a profit, or self-sustaining, center? Will ebooks be simply a website resource, or permanent?