Getting Your Textbook Adopted: Desk Copies, Instructor Resources and LMS Access

A textbook does not sell one copy at a time. It sells a section at a time, when an instructor puts it on a syllabus — and the decision that produces those sales is made by someone who will never buy the book themselves. Understanding how that decision is made is the key to getting a textbook adopted, and it explains why the things that matter (desk copies, ancillaries, accessibility, LMS access) are not the things authors usually think about. This guide describes the adoption process from the adopting instructor's side, and what an author can do about it without becoming a salesperson.

How an adoption decision actually happens

Instructors change textbooks rarely, because changing is expensive: a new syllabus, new problem sets, new slides, new exam questions, and a term of teaching from unfamiliar material. When they do change, the sequence is usually:

1. A trigger. The current book goes to a new edition they dislike, its price rises, students complain, the course is redesigned, or a new instructor inherits the course.
2. A shortlist. They ask colleagues, look at what similar courses use, search, or respond to a publisher's mailing.
3. Evaluation. They request desk copies and read them — often just the chapters that cover the parts of the course they find hardest to teach.
4. The practical check. Is there a solutions manual? Slides? A test bank? Does the digital edition work with our LMS? Is it accessible? What does it cost students?
5. The decision, sometimes individual, sometimes by a course committee, and often on a deadline set by the bookstore's order date.

Every step is an opportunity for friction, and friction loses adoptions. Most of what follows is about removing it.

Desk copies

An instructor will not adopt a book they have not read, and will rarely buy a book to evaluate it. Free desk (or examination) copies for instructors considering adoption are therefore the single most important sales tool a textbook has. Make sure your publisher offers them, that the process is quick, and that the request form is easy to find — on the book's page, ideally. (Linus Learning provides desk copies free to instructors considering a title; the request link is on every book page.) If a colleague expresses interest, point them to that link the same day.

Ancillaries

The practical check in step 4 is where many otherwise-excellent books lose. An instructor adopting a new book needs, at minimum, worked solutions to the exercises. Slides, a test bank, an instructor's guide with teaching notes, and data sets for the examples each remove a reason to say no. Decide early — ideally at proposal stage — which of these you will provide and which the publisher will, and have them ready at publication, not a year later.

Accessibility

Many institutions now require that assigned course materials meet accessibility standards, and their disability-services or procurement offices check. A book that fails is excluded from adoption regardless of its merits. Ask your publisher what standard each edition meets and whether they can supply a conformance statement; instructors are increasingly asked for one. (Linus Learning's ActiveBooks are built to WCAG 2.1 AA.)

Cost and format

Instructors are sensitive to what students pay, and departments increasingly track it. A book offered in several formats — print, eBook, an interactive edition — lets students choose, and lets an instructor answer the cost question honestly. Rental and institutional-licence options, where the publisher offers them, matter too.

LMS access

For digital editions, the practical question is how students get in. The traditional answer — a printed access code the student must find, type correctly and match to the right course — generates support tickets in the busiest week of the term and loses students who give up. The better answer is a link in the course page that opens the book directly, with the student identified by the university's own login (the LTI standard), and with the campus bookstore handling the seats. Ask your publisher how their digital editions reach students; if the answer is "access codes", ask what else is available. (This is what ActiveConnect does for ActiveBook titles.)

What an author can do

Publishers market textbooks; authors should not have to. But there are things only the author can do, and none of them is selling.

• Tell the people who teach the course. You know them: co-authors of papers, conference acquaintances, the instructors at neighbouring institutions, the people on the course's mailing list. A short personal note that the book exists, with the desk-copy link, is the most effective marketing a textbook gets.
• Present where you already go. A conference talk on teaching the course, a poster on the approach, a session at a teaching workshop. Mention the book once; the talk does the rest.
• Make your own department aware. Colleagues who teach other sections of the course are the first adopters, and the least likely to hear about the book by accident.
• Give the publisher what they ask for. A biography, a description of the book in your own words, a list of courses and institutions where it fits, and — if you are willing — a short webinar or a sample chapter to share. The marketing team can do far more with these than without.
• Collect and pass on feedback. Instructors who adopt will tell you what is missing. Those comments shape the ancillaries and the next edition, and answering them well keeps the adoption.
• Follow your institution's policy for your own courses. See our guide on assigning your own textbook.

After the first adoptions

Adoptions compound. An instructor who adopts and is happy tells colleagues; a department that standardises on a book for all sections produces steady sales for years; a course committee that chose the book once tends to choose it again at the next review. The things that keep an adoption are the same things that won it — responsive ancillaries, accessibility, easy access, and an edition that improves rather than merely changes. An interactive edition adds one more: analytics that show which sections students actually use, so the next edition is informed by evidence rather than guesswork.

Building this in from the start

The most reliable way to get a textbook adopted is to design it for adoption from the proposal onward: a clearly named course, honest comparison with the books instructors use now, ancillaries planned rather than promised, and formats that remove the practical objections. If you are at that stage, the proposal template walks through those questions, and an editor will tell you candidly how a specific book would fare.