The Educational Writers Group: For writers of materials for learners and teachers

Times are tough for educational writers. Digitisation has transformed the way in which educational materials are sold. Publishing contracts are more draconian, with poorer payment terms and less scope for negotiation. Courses are increasingly template-driven, with publishers conducting more of the development process in-house.

The Educational Writers Group is here to help, offering support and guidance for your professional concerns. In this challenging climate, the Group Committee has met to consider how best to do that. We have a number of propositions (details below) and a very short survey for members to help inform the direction the Group takes.

Complete the survey.

• The Group was set up to serve those who write materials for learners and teachers. In recent years, the market for schools and libraries books written by the children’s non-fiction writers in our group has all but disappeared. As many of those writers are now focussing on the general children’s non-fiction market, it is felt that they are better served by the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group, where it is already policy to include at least one member who works in this sector on its committee. The Educational Writers Group will continue to focus on those working on educational materials: textbooks, workbooks and digital resources for both the UK curriculum and higher/further education, and language teaching materials for English and other languages.
• By catering to those writers who produce materials for teaching and learning at any stage, it is hoped that the Educational Writers Group will be of interest to many members of the (largely dormant) Academic Writers and Medical Writers Groups. These groups have overlapping concerns, notably with regards to the sorts of contractual terms offered by publishers.
• We recognise that the UK curriculum and the ELT markets are very different, and acknowledge the challenges involved in meeting the diverse needs and interests of the Group members when holding events. To address this, we propose that there will be a single Group meeting a year but that it will be in the form of a full day of talks, including a topic that appeals across the board (e.g. negotiating your contracts), and a selection of parallel sessions of more specialist appeal (e.g. the commissioning process for materials for the UK curriculum, and the role of digital resources in language teaching). We hope that putting a number of events into a single day will make it more appealing, and better value for money for members travelling any distance.
• Even so, we appreciate that members (especially those living abroad as many ELT writers do) may not be willing or able to come to events, so we plan to bring you more by way of online resources. We hope to be able to live-stream events, and to offer follow-up content. We will let you know how this develops, but do also look out for discussions on the online forum following our self-publishing panel on the 11^th October.  
•  The Committee will continue to meet throughout the year to ensure that the SoA is fully informed of any concerns which are particular to this sector, and to allow the SoA to canvass views and gather information on specific issues. The SoA will continue to raise general concerns with publishers and to lobby on issues important to the sector.

On all these points, the EWG Committee would welcome your feedback – please fill out the survey.

The refocusing of the Group will be discussed fully at the AGM on the 11^th October, and we hope to see many of you there.

The EWG Committee

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