Another 'surprise' of the summer has been writing a chapter on our ebook survey of last year for, ironically enough, a print book.

Yet another thing I've probably not mentioned was a session I went to at one of the conferences a week or three back. It was a session on ebooks so I thought I might attend out of both personal interest (thanks to my reading of the things on various devices) and professional (thanks to the survey).

In an otherwise good session I was somewhat astonished when the presenters said they'd surveyed 50 people and only had 24 responses. But here were the results and they were having a chapter published in a forthcoming book.

Hang on a minute, I thought. 24 responses?! We surveyed over 1000 students. Why on earth aren't we writing a chapter of this book?! I guess it still niggled a little that the colleague and I who'd run the survey hadn't managed to get round to writing a journal article on it or something. But she was the lead so I could hardly push it.

Anyway, at lunch after the session I bounced up to said colleague (and a third colleague also attending the conference) and said we should at least ask if we're not too late. And, to give her credit, no sooner had we got back to the university after our travels but she fired off an email and had a reply saying that yes there was time and they were interested and they'd get back to us with deadlines and the like. (Possibly having apparently had someone drop out may have aided our cause!)

Three weeks later we get an email inviting us to contribute and setting out the details and requirements and the like. The only snag is that the deadline is such that with my colleague's leave, we've only got abotu ten days to put this together. Good job the results are already 'in' and much of what we want to say is in our heads and I've been collecting articles and reading for some time on the subject. But there followed a rather intense few days (working till late, getting up early, 5am one morning) of both of us either reading and highlighting and noting references or hammering away at the keyboard on the bulk of the text to get it done.

In fact, we were pretty pleased with the results and although my colleague was rather apprehensive that it wasn't what they wanted, I was unsurprised when we got an email back about the draft to say it was just what they had hoped. (As well as being impressed with hitting their deadline so promptly).

Anyway, it's done now. No idea when it's due out and have, in signing some of the documents, learned we get paid $200 and get a free copy of the book. Better not give up the day job.

But an interesting process and a first for me in my writing CV.