Major U.S. College Textbook Publishers That Hire Freelance Curriculum Content Creators

College textbook publishers have a great need for freelance writers to develop curriculum components such as test questions, quiz questions, lecture outlines, instructor manuals and student study guides. My ebook Writing College Textbook Supplements, third edition, describes in detail how to create these ancillary materials, and how to get hired by college textbook publishers and also by the curriculum development companies that frequently handle the larger projects for the publishers.

This post covers the major college textbook publishers that have the greatest need for curriculum content creators/instructional designers. Changes occur frequently in the publishing world, so do a web search on a particular publisher or imprint if these more general web addresses don’t get you the results you need.

College Textbook Publishers and Imprints: United States

I list the parent American college textbook publisher and then the main individual imprints of those companies, where relevant. Visit the parent company website to see which imprints cover disciplines in which you are qualified to work, or to find the disciplines directly. See Chapter 3, “Getting Assignments,” in my ebook for all the details on how to get freelance writing projects with textbook publishers.

Note that Pearson Education, Cengage, and McGraw-Hill are the largest American college textbook publishers and thus present the greatest freelance opportunities for curriculum development jobs.

Cengage (formerly Thomson Learning)

Brooks-Cole
Course Technology
Delmar
Gale
Heinle
Schirmer
South-Western
Wadsworth

Jones and Bartlett Learning

MacMillan Learning

Bedford/St. Martins
W.H. Freeman
Worth Publishers

McGraw-Hill Higher Education

McGraw-Hill higher education covers most academic subjects. Search the website by specific discipline. You’ll also find:

Dushkin McGraw-Hill
Irwin McGraw-Hill
Primis Custom Publishing

Oxford University Press

Pearson Publishing

Addison-Wesley
Allyn & Bacon
Benjamin Cummings
Longman
Merrill
Prentice Hall

Curriculum Content Management Companies

Many of these publishers have moved away from directly hiring and managing freelance curriculum content creators/instructional designers. Instead, they now contract with curriculum content management companies to do this for them. Finding work with these companies is also covered in my ebook, and you can find a detailed list of them here.