Members will be receiving a copy of our annual eBook compendium in the next few weeks. It brings together 2016’s guest blogs from this website in one smart volume. So you know what to expect, here’s an extract from the foreword to the book by James Styring, our Publications Coordinator.

In 2016, the blog featured a broad range of posts authored by members, on topics including genre writing, writing for digital, self-publishing, getting started as a writer and much more.

The ebook opens with Julie Moore’s assessment of corpora and the lexical sets that they generate, a subject of increasing relevance – and often frustration – to editors and writers alike. Writers unable to find suitable published outlets for their materials should take stock of the very practical advice from accidental DIY-advocate Katie Barron. Marcos Benevides, the brains behind Atama-ii Books, picks up on the previous discussion of corpora; he talks about two very different approaches to vocabulary selection when thinking about writing graded readers. Kieran Donaghy then discusses how and why a good website is key to getting noticed and published.

John Hughes describes principles for writing teacher’s notes, a topic he presented on at the BESIG conference, held in November in Munich in collaboration with MaWSIG. Fiona Mauchline then spills the beans on exactly what her late-teen Spanish students would love (and hate) to see in their next English coursebook; even if you are writing for other markets, there are some valuable take-aways in her students’ reasoning. The world of digital is explored by Phil Bird, with his wishlist for the perfect authoring tool for digital content.

For novice writers, Moundir Al Amrani, a writer from Morocco and the OUP/MaWSIG 2016 IATEFL scholarship winner, shares his thoughts about getting started in materials writing. Kathryn Aldridge-Morris’s thought-provoking piece about the lack of decent ESOL materials for teachers of refugees and asylum seekers resonated with many other readers, judging by the discussion on both the website and our Facebook page. Tania Pattison then describes her experiences writing an EAP coursebook for a specific market (Canada), and Genevieve White shares her fascinating story of developing a MOOC for the British Council.

Do you have principles for writing? Katherine Bilsborough does, and she discusses them in light of principles previously offered by Brian Tomlinson and Jill Hadfield. Jeremy Day’s post addresses a topic he spoke about at the November BESIG conference, writing ESP materials. We hope to publish more blogs with a MaWSIG/BESIG crossover in 2017. The volume ends with a very thoughtful piece by Tania Pattison, with questions and resolutions that will speak to all of us in the materials writing community.

So, happy reading everyone! And if you’d like your writing to appear in next year’s compendium, contact us with your idea for a blog post in 2017.