Expect to spend a year or two finishing your book and another year helping with its production. Your publisher will assign someone to edit your manuscript, and you will be asked to check the editor's work before your manuscript is set in type. You will also be expected to help proofread the galleys and, later, the page proofs. In addition, you may be asked to help find the illustrations and to obtain the permission of everyone you quote. (Increasingly, sources expect to be paid, often hundreds of dollars, for permission to quote a paragraph or two.)

Most authors are also responsible for their book's index. You can compile the index yourself, or your publisher can hire someone else to do the work, then deduct the cost from your royalties.

If your book is a success, you will be asked to write a new edition. During the 1970s and '80s, publishers wanted a new edition every four or five years. Today, many want a new edition every three years, some even more often.

As a faculty member, you may be skeptical of new editions. Admittedly, a new edition makes the old one obsolete, so every student must buy a new (not used) copy. But a new edition helps authors keep up with the competition and, in a profitable market, several new books are likely to appear every year. New editions also give authors an opportunity to improve, expand, and update their books, stressing what works and discarding what doesn't.

Publishers normally want a complete package. That may include an instructor's manual with tests, a workbook, even software. Those extra features require more work -- but can greatly increase your sales.

Also remember your audience. Make everything as clear, interesting, and readable as possible. If students like your book, faculty members are more likely to continue using it. Provide bibliographies, discussion questions, summaries of key points, and tables, charts and other eye-catching visuals that help explain those points.

For authors, the key to success is self discipline, not brilliance. Authors must have the drive, perseverance, determination, ambition -- whatever you want to call it -- to sit and write: day after day, week after week, month after month.

In return, authors reap a multitude of rewards. A successful textbook provides a greater sense of accomplishment than a convention paper or journal article. It generates ideas for additional research. It can help establish your reputation as an expert in the field, and you may be invited -- and paid -- to speak and consult. Moreover, if your first book succeeds, you can easily find opportunities to write more, further increasing your income.

There are pitfalls, however.

Avoid racism and sexism. Few teachers will use a book likely to offend even a few students, and publishers are notoriously timid. Some delete anything controversial rather than risk losing a large sale.

Never use words such as "mailman" or "policeman," nor the pronoun "he" while referring to both men and women. Also avoid photos that show only white males. Women and minorities must be cited in examples and portrayed as equals.

Make your book as timeless as possible. Remember that the words you write today may be set in type in a year and available in classrooms in two. Then, if your book remains on the market for four years, its contents will be six years old. So the contents never seem that old, avoid issues, names, dates and numbers likely to change from year to year.

Be careful in selecting your co-authors. You need good writers and hard workers: people certain to meet every deadline. Coordinate their work so their chapters never repeat one another, and so your writing styles never vary from chapter to chapter.

For your own protection, prepare a contract with co-authors and sign it before writing a word. Some co-authors become quarrelsome. Others fail to meet their deadlines, turn in sloppy work, become sick and die. Without a contract, you could find yourself dealing with a co-author's survivors or attorneys -- a troublesome situation when you are asked to write a new edition.

At some schools, successful textbooks will help you obtain tenure, promotions, and merit pay. Administrators at other schools do not consider textbooks "original" research. Faculty members at those schools may want to delay writing a textbook until after they obtain tenure.

To avoid a conflict of interest while using your book in a class, consider donating the royalties earned from your own students to a scholarship or other department fund.

Finally, some textbooks fail, and it is difficult to determine why. Some failures are well written, attractively packaged, and aggressively promoted. You may get a bad review. The competition may be more difficult than you expected. Or your timing may be unfortunate: several competing books may appear at about the same time.

If you are hesitant to write a new book, look for a popular but old textbook, contact its author, and offer to write a new edition. Its author may be too busy, nearing retirement, or losing interest in the endeavor. Co-authoring an established book is easier -- and has a higher probability of success.