{"id":6832,"date":"2019-06-28T04:19:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T04:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/?p=6832"},"modified":"2019-06-28T04:19:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T04:19:18","slug":"the-elt-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/2019\/06\/28\/the-elt-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"The ELT Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"TimothyThe ELT Workshop<\/h3>\n

Timothy Hampson<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

When\u00a0<\/span>Mike<\/span>\u00a0Griffin (of the\u00a0<\/span>ELT Rants, Reviews and Reflections<\/span><\/i><\/a>\u00a0blog) and I started\u00a0<\/span>The ELT Workshop<\/span><\/i><\/a>, under an\u00a0<\/span>unofficial slogan \u201cELT coursebooks for people who hate\u00a0<\/span>ELT coursebooks,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0we had big plans. There were ideas that we might make a thousand dollars in the first year, we had a list of about 20 books that we would produce, and we even put\u00a0<\/span>a manifesto<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on our website.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

T<\/span>hree years on, we have realized the process of getting books published is hard and full of setbacks, and that making money doing it is even harder. So when I got the opportunity to write this post about starting an ELT publishing company, I decided to talk about some of the difficulties we\u2019ve had and some of the ways we\u2019ve solved those problems.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Time turned out to be the biggest issue we\u2019ve had with the business. Ideas for books are plentiful, but having the time to actually get those onto the page is difficult. I have found for myself that working on the company projects often ends up being the first thing that doesn\u2019t get done when times get busy. For a classroom teacher, there are always unexpected things that need to be done urgently, so\u00a0<\/span>The ELT Workshop<\/span><\/i>\u00a0ideas get put on the backburner. When you\u2019re working with a partner and an author, you might all end up\u00a0<\/span>being free at different times, which means work that requires any kind of back and forth – and takes forever.<\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We have also learnt there\u2019s a lot to learn in publishing. There were a lot of \u201cknown unknowns,\u201d such as learning to typeset well\u00a0<\/span>or<\/span>\u00a0advertising a book. We knew we\u2019d have to sink some time into learning these skills to run the company. At the same time, there were a lot of things we didn\u2019t know we didn\u2019t know. As an example, making a Kindle book look good and be easy to read isn\u2019t as easy as you\u2019d think. While we have quite a good handle on them now, we spent a lot of time learning these skills that we didn\u2019t know would prove to be so important.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another problem has been that following the blueprint of large publishers hasn\u2019t worked for us, especially in terms of sales. We originally took quite a \u201cif you build it, they will come\u201d attitude to sales and advertising. This didn\u2019t play out so well for us at first. As a small company, be prepared that people don\u2019t notice it when you put something out as much as they might for a larger company.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Despite all of these setbacks, I\u2019m feeling very optimistic about the future of\u00a0<\/span>The ELT Workshop<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span>We recently published our first book \u201c<\/span>Teachers\u2019 Toolkit: Presentation Based Activities<\/span><\/a>\u201d<\/span>\u00a0by Tim Thompson.\u00a0<\/span>Seeing something you were involved in making feels great and has motivated me to do more.\u00a0<\/span>The company\u2019s start has been slow, but we have found some solutions from the publishing process. In terms of organizing our time, we have learned to batch tasks to avoid back and forth. We can do all of the editing first and then all of the typesetting, which would mean less time spent waiting for replies. We have learned a huge deal from our experience so far and\u00a0<\/span>we are more ready than we were before.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re considering starting up a side project in ELT,\u00a0<\/span>please don\u2019t let this article put you off.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>It is important to try and be realistic about what might be difficult.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ELT Workshop Timothy Hampson   When\u00a0Mike\u00a0Griffin (of the\u00a0ELT Rants, Reviews and Reflections\u00a0blog) and I started\u00a0The ELT Workshop, under an\u00a0unofficial slogan \u201cELT coursebooks for people who hate\u00a0ELT coursebooks,\u201d\u00a0we had big plans. There were ideas that we might make a thousand dollars in the first year, we had a list of about 20 books that we … Continue reading The ELT Workshop<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[140,137,138,136,135],"class_list":["post-6832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-self-publishing-issue","tag-course","tag-elt","tag-english-language-teaching","tag-materials","tag-self-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6832"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6860,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions\/6860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itdi.pro\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}