What does ‘being published’ mean to you? Sharing worksheets online; getting local funding to produce a safety booklet for your learners; creating an e-book; putting something out in print yourself, on a small scale, or getting published with a local or international publisher?

Many of us have done, and continue to do, a range of those things, and if you search for ‘getting published in ELT’ you’ll find a lot of good advice about starting small, with reviews or articles, as well as thoughts on how to get work in the very competitive international ELT field.

If you work for an institution and talk to colleagues, there may also be warnings about ‘who owns the materials?’ We’ve all been very fortunate to have supportive workplaces, but we’ve also been careful to keep the two roles separate, and to get permission for ‘outside work’, where needed.

Here’s a list of some articles we really liked. We should also offer a word of caution: if you’re writing for a small market (think migrant English learners in Australia), there’s a reason why commercial publishers won’t take on your project – they aren’t hopeful of selling enough to make it viable. If you decide to go ahead on your own (as we all did), it will consume your life (in a good way, obviously) and may take you a while to even recoup your costs…

That said, here are just a few resources:

ELT Teacher 2 Writer is a site that links up publishers and writers (in the international ELT writing scene). They have a page full of Writer Resources. blogs and useful links.

One of the links they mention is eltjam.com, which has some excellent articles on publishing and self-publishing in the ELT world.

They also refer to MaWSIG, an IATEFL special interest group on Materials Writing. Some great articles like this one on Getting Started as a Materials Writer, from a new writer working with a publisher.

Alex Case has lots of articles on pathways to ELT publication, listed on his TEFLtastic blog.

Most of these resources focus on international ELT, rather than ‘English for my local migrant/humanitarian learners’. If you search for something like ‘ESL self-publishing’, the results are limited (and don’t even try with ‘EAL’). Perhaps we need to write something? We’ll keep you posted.