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As you may know, I turned my 25 Years of Ed Tech blog series into a book manuscript over the winter. This is my 5th book (does that make me ‘a writer’ now?), and like the previous two I wanted it to be published open access. Athabasca University Press were an open access publisher I had long admired but not worked with before, so I sent the manuscript to them. AUP work slightly differently in that it is not a book idea they are commissioning but rather publishing a completed manuscript – it’s akin to journal article publishing. The manuscript was sent out for review, and bar some minor amendments, has been accepted for publication! The two reviews were anonymous, but were very diligent and useful, so my thanks to whoever they were. Also thanks to George Veletsianos and Connor Houlihan for allowing a non-maple syrup drinker onto their turf.

AUP is open access, so the book will be CC licensed, the digital version freely available. I’m not quite sure when the publication date will be, we’re just finalising the process. I intend to create a website to accompany the book, and on this I’d appreciate any thoughts. I’ll host it here on Reclaim, and I expect it’ll be a plain WP site. Bear in mind, that it’ll be me doing it with very limited tech skills and zero design aesthetic. I’ve thought of a timeline, an annotatable version and maybe a wiki timeline version to allow alternative suggestions for each of the years. But I’d appreciate any thoughts on things that might be useful or interesting? Or WP themes, plug-ins, “Site under construction” gifs… that sort of thing. I found Anne-Marie’s advice on setting up a WP site very helpful.