New York-based publishing giant Briggs and Briggs announced Wednesday their much-anticipated ninth edition of “Textbooks: A Modus Operandi,” the authoritative textbook on the art of crafting and marketing textbooks.
Written by renowned economics scholar Max Abeuse, “A Modus Operandi” has become a perennial success and new-age classic with eight rereleases since its 2010 debut. The ninth edition looks to perform just as well, with the coming edition featuring a third foreword from author Abeuse, additional BigRelevant™ Connections sections throughout the text, as well as new annotated versions of Abeuse’s first and second forewords.
The textbook has proved an essential resource to those in the textbook industry, and will retain classic chapters such as “Not Fires, Conflagrations: The Art of the Thesaurus,” “Why Thicker Means You Can Charge More” and “Latin: The Only Good Language is a Dead Language.”
Longtime fans of Abeuse can also look forward to an impressive-looking leather-bound cover in commemoration of the original text’s six-year anniversary.
Briggs and Briggs spokesperson Alexis Clarke elaborated: “Per Briggs and Briggs tradition, the ninth edition of the text will feature a handcrafted cover bound using leather harvested from wild stump-tailed macaques, as well as twice as many BigRelevant™ Connections sections. Trust me, the macaque leather is worth a couple extra bucks—it’s supple, exotic and gives the text a really scholarly look and scent.”
Amid the general excitement in academia, the moral question of the use of the skin of an endangered and intelligent primate species as a book cover has been largely ignored, but the size of the text’s $300 price tag has come under some fire.
Among its critics are associate professor of chemistry Cynthia McPearce.
“My department expects me to stay up-to-date in my field and in my professional development. But it’s just unrealistic. I can’t afford to be buying $300 books every half-year with my kind of salary, not without something extra.”
McPearce plans to use the additional income from her own co-authored introductory chemistry textbook to help fund the purchase.
