Authors Find They Must Give A Lot But Take Little

September 08, 1985|By Jim Spencer.

Authoring a textbook is not like writing the great American novel.

``It`s a process of give and take,`` says John Morton, 42, an economics teacher at Homewood-Flossmoor High School and coauthor of ``Consumer Action.`` When Houghton Mifflin publishing company hired Morton and coauthor Ronald Rezny, who also teaches economics at Homewood-Flossmoor, to write a textbook on consumer economics, the company gave them a $6,000 advance. It also gave them a pamphlet explaining how to write in nonsexist language and several other guidelines.

Their book, they were told, was supposed to contain a little more than a semester`s worth of material so it could be taught in a single term as a primary text or stretched for two as a supplemental one. Furthermore, it was to be written in language that 9th graders could understand. Finally, for reasons of credibility the high school teachers would have to share a byline with a college professor.

Morton and Rezny complied on all but the last count. They succeeded in dropping the professor from their team by convincing senior editors at Houghton Mifflin to take a chance. High school teachers, they argued, have some very distinct ideas how to communicate with high school students.

``In a lot of cases college professors don`t know what`s going on in a high school classroom,`` Morton said, explaining why the collaboration didn`t work. ``A high school teacher does. Ron and I give examples that kids can relate to, and that`s important in getting a book read.``

``We needed to model the text after the way kids learn,`` Rezny added.

``That is by remembering stories and case studies.``

In essence, they wanted the book to read the way classroom teachers talk. Hence, they included questions within the text, rather than saving them all for the end of the chapter. They also pushed for lots of cartoons. Humor, they had learned, is a great attention-getter.

Houghton Mifflin was wary of most of the innovations, Rezny said. But the authors` skill in the classroom was undeniable. Morton had been Teacher of the Year at Homewood-Flossmoor. He and Rezny had received the Joint Council on Economic Education`s national award for outstanding teaching of economics. When Houghton Mifflin asked council members to recommend someone to write a book on consumer economics, Morton and Rezny were the logical choices.

They took their work seriously. For research they talked to teenagers and gathered anecdotes. For names of characters in case studies they perused birth announcements, matching one baby`s first name with another`s surname. They interviewed car mechanics, neighborhood activists and other ``experts`` in the consumer field. To capture the flavor of a major buying transaction, Rezny put on bib overalls, slipped a tape recorder in a lunch box and posed as a steel worker during a visit to a used car lot in Chicago Heights.

``We wanted to get an idea what the salesman`s pitch would be like,``

Rezny said. ``He used the old pitch about the retired man who had only driven the car on Sundays. Well, the car was three years old and had 68,000 miles on it.``

The first edition of their book, published in 1978, took three years to prepare. The men wrote after school and during summer vacation. ``What we would do is divide up the chapters and write them,`` Morton recalled. ``Then we would exchange them, critique them and revise them. After that we would send them to the publisher. The editors would edit them and send them back to us and we`d react.

``They would apply a readability formula and sometimes break a long sentence into two short sentences. We didn`t write to any formula. But they told us to make the book 9th grade level, so when I was writing I would think, `Can I put a shorter word in there?`

``That didn`t affect the content. If you have to sacrifice content for reading level, you have a problem. But I think reading levels are

overexaggerated. The real question is whether you can write clearly and concisely.``

Morton and Rezny wrote well enough to sell about 10,000 books their first year. Those sales increased to about 25,000, but after four years began to decline as their book ``got old.`` They answered with a revised 1983 edition that was 2 1/2 years in the making.

With a successful sales record Morton and Rezny were able to inject more information about money management and economics in the second edition. But they had to bow to some editorial changes prompted by special interests.

When Houghton Mifflin first submitted their book to the Texas textbook adoption committee in 1980, lobbyists lodged protests that took 20 typed pages to explain and rebut.

The National Organization for Women complained that there were 91 males and only 68 females in the illustrations and that the variety of roles was greater for men than women.