12 Publish and Distribute
Once you’ve completed your adoption, adaptation or new open textbook, you will need to decide how to share your work with your students, your colleagues, the bookstore and library at your institution, or the general public. What file types will you provide, what ancillary resources will you/could you include, and how will you ensure the longevity of your work?
File types
Students like flexibility when it comes to their textbooks. Some may prefer printed versions of the textbook, others will prefer using a website, and some may prefer reading using an e-reader or tablet. To make your book as accessible as possible, consider making your textbook available in multiple formats so students have the ability to choose the format that works for them. Remember to include editable files so that others can use your work to create their own adaptations. Pressbooks will allow you to export your book in a variety of files types, both editable (.xml, .odt, .html, .epub) and less editable (.pdf and .mobi) files.
Share
You can distribute your adapted textbook by:
- Providing a link to the book on Pressbooks
- Downloading copies of the book and placing them on another website or file-sharing service (e.g., on D2L, Dropbox, or Google Drive)
- Asking the Queen’s Library to catalogue your book, and sharing that link as well.
You can also consider sharing your work with the larger open community. One way to do this is by adding your adapted textbook to an established repository or open textbook collection. Some of these require undergoing a formal review before being accepted.
