When you are entirely on your own in your future position, you will need to submit book adoptions to your college or university bookstore. Sometimes this is easy.  Here at Yale, just email the ISBN to the email below and you are set. 

Sometimes this is less easy… navigating some burdensome website where you enter the details of book orders yourself. Note that you will need to go through the same process of book adoptions even if you have taught the same course for 30 years using exactly the same books. 

You should always check as soon as possible that the bookstore has actually ordered the right book and in the right number.

Once, the University of Texas at Austin bookstore decided it would be more lucrative for them to order the commentary on Lattimore’s English translation of Homer for my Greek class than the specific Greek commentary I requested. 

The UT bookstore would order only 75% of the requested number of books, assuming that students would inevitably drop in the first days, despite historical evidence that this wasn’t the case for the courses in question.

College/university bookstores, and publishers, usually work very slowly. Expect 4 weeks for your books to arrive in the bookstore. 

Desk Copies

While it’s your responsibility as instructor to adopt books for your course, it is usually the (or a) secretary in your department who has the codes to order desk copies. (Desk copies are the free copies provided for instructors.) Before you can order desk copies, book orders need to be logged officially in the bookstore’s system. *Publishers do not like giving away free books, even if you are the author.*

Some publishers are nicer than others. Oxford is usually nice; Bolchazy-Carducci pretty bad.  Nowadays, publishers will try to give you an ebook rather than a real book as if it’s the same thing.  Because they are providing you with a free copy, they will also take a long time to ship you the book, assuming they agree to give you a physical copy.  All the more reason to submit your book adoptions as early as possible. 

At Yale

For standard L1-L2 textbooks, I will take care of book adoptions and desk copies. For L3-L4 courses, I will work with you to determine proper texts for your course and order them for you myself.  But FYI:

If you want to order books for your course, contact the Yale Bookstore by phone at (203) 777-8440 or email at tm321@bncollege.com. Include your course number, ISBN-13 for the books you want, and projected enrollment for your course.  Check the Course Demand Statistics for historical enrollments for your course, and be liberal with the average. 

For desk copies, contact the Classics Registrar. 

—James F. Patterson, 12/23