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Wiping the haze from my eyes yet again, I glanced at the numbers that glowed red against my alarm clock's black face. It was 2:38 in the morning. My wife had been in bed for hours, long dead to the lights that burned above my desktop buried in notes, papers, dog-eared books and small mountains of reference CDs and diskettes. A fine coating of dust covered those parts of my desk not inundated with other things. A warped leather coaster absorbed the sweat from a chilled glass tumbler of water that helped wash the clogged pipe I called my throat between coughs. Another ten or fifteen minutes will have to find me headed for the refuge under the covers. I desperately need sleep. I take a sip, condensation drips on my chest. With luck I'd finish the draft of another chapter. Tomorrow night would be the same... and the night after that ... and the night after that too. And so on ad infinitum - or so it seems at the moment. I'm working on this book you see. A text I hope will be heavily used by the students of my English classes along with multitudes of other learners who struggle daily to grasp the rudiments of a language native to me but forced on many for the sake of "bi-lingualism" or due to requirements to graduate or interview for a job at a company where Spanish is spoken 99.999% of the time. "Cie la vie." Months pass. My eyes blur from too much reading in bad light for long hours late at night. Strained from not enough sleep, barrels of strong, thick black coffee poured down my gullet to help keep me awake and going. And never mind the million trips to the bathroom all hours of the day and night. Gotta get done ... gotta finish this chapter, and the next, ... and the next, ... and the next. Drudgery, no ... but ultimately more a labor of love. It was born slowly, over time through the hours of countless classes, numerous questions and thousands of eyes and ears raptly tuned to my words. "Teacher, I don't understand." The phrase has rung in my ears too many times to count. "Here, perhaps you'll understand it better this way." I'd responded a nearly equal number of times. In my class logs and journals, I detailed my board work and explanations. The sheets grew to stacks of notes. The stacks of notes grew to reams of paper. "Write a book? Who, me?" Then finally, "Yes, me." And so the conversion of notes, scribblings, drafts and drawings began to swirl and form themselves into something coherent. From the years and chaos a text began to emerge from the fires of proof-testing on those charges that entered my classroom day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. The pittance I may receive from royalties the publisher pays can never begin to repay the decades of toil that provide the depth and fine seasoning of my work. Educational publishing is a low profit margin industry you see. Work that now lies on the shelf of a photocopy center. The photos and illustrations so carefully crafted for color and contrast now reduced to smudges of black, white and gray. The work still gives that boost so badly needed by the learners. It helps them over the humps and hurdles of pre-exam cramming and last-minute preparations for ole "what's-his-name's" classes. But now the profits all go to the photocopy shop owner. The publisher gets nothing. Neither do I. Neither do the distributors, nor the educational publication salespeople. Nor the EFL or other institutions where classes are taught. Only the person with enough capitol to lease or buy a photocopy machine and set up space within eyeshot of cash-strapped students cashes in. With a reputable, well-written text costing at least a week's salary, who can blame students for taking the low-cost alternative of buying photocopied books at up to 80% off the import retail price? Truth be known, I feel for them myself. (I was once a student too, you know) So how does a $19.95 or so text book multiply in price by four, five or more times? Profiteering on the part of publishers -yes perhaps in part, but the huge increase lumped onto the texts is mostly from import duties imposed by governments insensitive to the needs of the education sector in general and the end users - the students, in particular. Medical texts, for example, can be sheer death to a student budget. Not cheap even before the dirge begins, their cost spirals upwards, virtually out of control, until students can't even begin to dream of purchasing one - let alone the eight to ten or more massive texts they'll need during the course of upcoming semesters. Semesters likewise filled with sleepless nights and swimming pools filled with coffee. Language texts don't come from the bargain basement either. A thin English text book series with workbook and cassette tapes, can cost a week's salary for many middle-income working families. With a new text series needing to be acquired each semester, studying English is no walk in the financial park when coupled with the other texts that students need every semester. Add supplies and other materials and the damage starts to add up quickly. In a frantic effort to avoid financial ruin, students beeline for the nearest photocopy enter to get their books as economically as possible, albeit at the expense of the author, publisher and other academic production support staff. best writing services company
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