Course materials built the way you teach.

Your syllabus isn't generic, and your course materials shouldn't be either.

Macmillan Learning Custom Solutions helps instructors, departments, and institutions create custom textbooks, labs, course packs, eBooks, digital resources, and Achieve courses tailored to your syllabus, teaching approach, and students.

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Whether you're adapting an existing Macmillan title, combining multiple resources, or building something entirely new, a dedicated team of editorial, design, accessibility, print, and digital specialists help bring your course materials to life.

Why instructors choose custom solutions

You don't have to figure out what kind of custom project you need. The process starts with Macmillan Learning’s editorial, design, and digital specialists transform it into a professionally produced solution, in whatever format works best.

Your content, your course, your campus.

Reorder chapters, add original work, embed campus resources, and localize materials, all built around how your course is actually taught.

Students pay for what they use.

Custom solutions include only the content the course actually covers, which typically means a lower cost than a standard commercial textbook.

The right format for every student.

Choose print, PDF, eBook, ePub, Achieve, or a hybrid solution. Every project is developed with accessibility in mind, including ADA, Title II, and WCAG compliance.

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What can you customize?

If your course needs it, it can be built. From a simple chapter swap to a fully original digital course, there's a custom solution for it.

Select chapters and sections that fit your course. Remove what you skip. Reorganize content so students progress through your teaching sequence, not the publisher's.

Your lecture notes, lab procedures, assignments, case studies and chapters are professionally integrated, formatted, and made accessible—alongside Macmillan content or on their own.

Create course materials built around your specific needs, including:

  • Course packs that combine a handbook with a curated reader
  • Lab manuals designed around specific instruments and sequences
  • Custom eBooks in Achieve using content from multiple Macmillan titles
  • And many more options! 

Choose print, digital, or both. Every project is built to your specifications, with cover design, alt-text, and accessibility compliance included.

Campus writing center, localized resources, institution-specific guidance, and custom cover designs go directly into your solution. Students get materials that feel like they were made for them, because they were.

Print or digital, softcover, spiral-bound, carbonless pages, perforated tear-outs, eBook, PDF, we match the physical and digital format to how your course actually runs.

Smart Worksheets automatically grade lab reports, calculations, and data analysis by accepting variable student data and returning real-time, error-specific feedback, eliminating manual grading across sections and TAs.

Customize your Achieve course to fit the way you teach. Add selected chapters and LearningCurve activities, or create a fully integrated digital environment with custom eBooks and closed-captioned video content. Build as much or as little as your course needs.

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Woman at Laptop

From conversation to course material in five steps

Custom course materials can be created across every discipline and format. Here’s how they come together and what sets this process apart from others.

Tell us about your course.

A Custom Solutions Specialist listens to how the course actually runs, what gets taught, what format works for students, and what has been missing. That conversation is the foundation everything else is built on.

The path gets designed.

The editorial and solution-design team maps the course needs to the right build path: print, digital, or both; starting from Macmillan content, original work, or a mix of sources. No need to know what kind of project it is upfront. That gets worked out together, with a clear explanation of what is being recommended and why.

Built and produced in-house.

A full in-house team, including editorial, design, and production specialists, handles the heavy lifting for you. The Macmillan team manages rights clearance, accessibility compliance, and professional typesetting.

You review. Refinements follow.

Before launch, the product gets reviewed and confirmed. Content accuracy, format, accessibility, and delivery readiness all get checked, so there are no surprises on the first day of class and nothing needing a fix mid-semester.

Support continues after delivery.

Bookstore fulfillment, ISBNs, Achieve integration, and dedicated support throughout the adoption. When the course evolves, the materials can too.

Dedicated Project Editors and Account Managers support you long after your materials are delivered, leaving nothing to chance.

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A few examples of how this works

Different institutions, different disciplines, different problems to solve. Each custom solution was built around each program's course needs.

Appalachian State logo
Rhetoric & Composition

Building a Program, Not Just a Course

Appalachian State's Rhetoric and Composition program surveyed its entire faculty, built a single custom text serving two courses simultaneously, and brought in campus partners, the writing center, library, and WAC program, as contributors. The result is a book that their program actually owns.

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UL Lafayette logo
Psychology

When students become the authors

At UL Lafayette, graduate TAs produced the course content, original videos on lifespan development embedded in a custom Achieve e-book. Royalties fund undergraduate scholarships and travel grants. A course resource that pays for itself, built around peer voices students actually engage with.

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Houston City College Logo
First Year Experience

When off-the-shelf and OER both failed

Houston City College tried building their own LMS course. They tried a grant-funded OER platform. Then they partnered with Custom Solutions, and built a five-layer custom program including a digital campus scavenger hunt and course navigation videos their 90,000-student institution still runs.

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Not sure where to start?

No need to know exactly what is needed to get started. That is the point. A Custom Solutions Specialist will listen, ask the right questions, and lay out options that may not have seemed possible.

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FAQs

Every custom project starts with a conversation and a course that deserves better materials. These are the questions that come up most often along the way, about format, content, cost, timeline, and support.

        • Custom Solutions are course materials built around how you actually teach, combining the content you want, in the format that works for your students, with the professional production, accessibility compliance, and ongoing support that makes it last. Whatever you bring to the table, we build from there.

        • Any instructor, program director, or department chair who wants course materials that actually match how their course is taught. You don't need to know exactly what you want. A Custom Solutions Specialist will help you figure that out.

        • The format follows the course, not the other way around. We can customize or produce:

          • Print books
          • eBooks
          • Lab manuals
          • Readers
          • Course packs
          • Assessment materials
          • Digital resources, such as custom videos, illustrations, and animations
          • Or any combination

          If your course needs it, we can build it.

        • Your custom solution can be built from Macmillan chapters, your own original work, curated third-party readings, open educational resources, assignments, assessments, and supplemental materials, or any mix. The content strategy starts with what your course actually needs.

        • Timelines vary depending on the scope of the project. A focused chapter selection moves faster than a project involving original content or third-party permissions. Your Custom Solutions Specialist will map out a realistic timeline during your first conversation, before you're committed to anything.

        • You don't need everything figured out to start a conversation. It helps to know your course name, institution, term start date, expected enrollment, and preferred format, but even a general sense of what you're trying to build is enough to get started. We'll ask the right questions.

        • Yes. You can select the specific chapters and sections that map to your syllabus, so students have exactly what they need, and nothing they don't. We build it into a single, professionally produced course material.

        • Yes, and this is one of the most powerful things Custom Solutions does. Your original introductions, assignments, lab procedures, case studies, or supplemental readings can be professionally produced and integrated directly into your course material. Your work, published correctly.

        • Yes. Our editorial team handles the permissions review, licensing clearance, and compliance work for third-party content, so you don't have to navigate copyright on your own. We'll let you know what's feasible and what the timeline looks like.

        • Yes, print, digital, or both, depending on what works best for your course and students. Your Custom Solutions Specialist will help you identify the right combination of formats from the start.

        • That's exactly how we build them. Your custom solution is organized around your syllabus, course sequence, department curriculum, or learning outcomes, not around a publisher's standard chapter order.

        • Yes. Assessments, homework, quizzes, and practice activities can be built into your custom solution or paired with it through Achieve. Your Custom Solutions Specialist can help you identify the right approach for your course outcomes.

        • Absolutely. This is one of the strongest use cases for Custom Solutions. A shared, professionally produced course material gives departments a consistent student experience across sections, without taking instructional control away from individual faculty.

        • Yes. We can host multiple eBooks within an Achieve product to give your students a comprehensive, unified library.

        • Yes, and we encourage it. We can build a personalized content matchup to show exactly how Macmillan content maps to your syllabus, generate a custom digital mockup, or set up a pilot course for you to explore before committing. We want you to see what you're building before you sign.

        • Requirements vary depending on format and project scope. Your Custom Solutions Specialist can tell you what applies to your specific situation. Just ask.

        • Pricing is based on your specific project, content scope, format, page count, enrollment, and distribution model. All play a role. In many cases, custom solutions come in at a lower per-student cost than a full commercial textbook, because you're paying only for the content your course actually uses.

        • Often, yes. Because custom solutions include only the content your course actually covers, students pay for exactly what they use, which frequently means a lower cost than a standard commercial textbook. Your Custom Solutions Specialist can model the cost comparison for your specific course.

        • The course you've already built from PDFs, OER links, and personal materials represents real instructional work and expertise. Custom Solutions takes that foundation and formalizes it, integrating your content with Macmillan's materials and professionally producing a single, stable, accessible solution with one point of access for students. No more broken links. No more manual grading of disconnected materials. No more accessibility gaps discovered at the end of the semester. The course you've been building, finally built right.

        • Every custom solution goes through a thorough review before delivery, covering content accuracy, accessibility compliance, technical specifications, and production quality. You'll have visibility into this process and a dedicated point of contact throughout.

        • Our editorial team reviews all custom content for Title II, ADA, and WCAG 2.1 compliance: screen-reader compatibility, proper structure, and adaptive styling. For faculty bringing their own materials, we handle the accessibility work so you don't have to. You focus on the course; we make sure the materials meet the standard.

        • For custom lab solutions, we integrate Smart Worksheets into your Achieve course, flexible, interactive, auto-graded digital tools for data analysis, math calculations, and real-time graphing. Students get instant feedback and adaptive hints while you eliminate grading inequity across sections or TAs.

        • Yes. Custom solutions are built to last and designed to evolve. Existing products can be revised, updated, reprinted, or adjusted for new terms, new editions, or changing course needs. Your investment in a custom solution carries forward.

        • Your Custom Solutions Specialist reviews your request, confirms what's feasible, maps out a timeline, and walks you through next steps, so you always know where things stand. We keep you in the loop from the first conversation through delivery.

        • Reach out to your Macmillan Learning Project Editor. They'll guide you through the process from first conversation to final delivery. No need to figure out who handles what.

        • Support doesn't end at delivery. You will be paired with a dedicated Custom Account Manager who will guide you through course setup, LMS integration, bookstore readiness, and First Day of Class, and will remain your point of contact if anything needs attention mid-semester.

        • Your Custom Account Manager is your point of contact for any mid-semester issues: access, bookstore, or technical troubleshooting. When you're ready to evolve your course for the next term, your Project Editor can work with you to support revision cycles, content updates, and table of contents changes. Your custom solution is built to grow with how you teach.