Publishers occasionally ask me to review a new textbook. Here are my suggestions to make one book stand out from its competitors.

  1. Make it easy to run a course from your book.
    1. Include slides to project and lecture from. Platform-independent slides are preferable to Powerpoint. Powerpoint is preferable to no slides at all.
    2. Include point-form lecture summaries. (Students hate to take notes.)
    3. Include little quizzes and useful homework problems, starting from "finger exercises", like Shaums Outlines.
  2. Include modern media like
    1. videos
    2. interactive applets
  3. Be up to date.
  4. Tie into real world applications.
  5. Refer to other sources of info on the internet.
  6. Have occasional enrichment material that uses extra math or physics. Students can read it or ignore it as they please.