I wrote a book review on my own PK books. I know, this is unusual. Most journals no longer take book review. The one which takes such type of manuscript rejected my book review since it is written by the book author. In this book review, I answered several "whys" and shared some behind the scene stories. If you are interested, read the full article below.
Self-review of my PK textbooks: “Essentials in Clinical Pharmacokinetics” and “Advanced Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics”
Guohua An, MD, PhD
College of Pharmacy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
To establish credibility and gain trust from readers, the traditional way to publish a textbook is to go through those big and well-reputed publishers (e.g., Wiley). To promote a textbook, the traditional way is to ask experts of the subject matter to write book reviews. I am well aware that I have violated both – I am writing a book review on my own books which I self-published at Amazon. For readers who are reading this book review, I owe you an explanation regarding why I chose self-publishing and self-promotion.
In fact, I initially said yes to Wiley when they approached me and offered me the opportunity to publish a pharmacokinetics (PK) textbook through them. The turning point is the moment I read the contract and realized that the copyright of the book would belong to Wiley (the publisher) instead of me (the author) once I sign the contract. I wasn't able to convince myself to let the publisher be the legal owner for a textbook 100% written by me, so I walked away. In May 2024, I self-published my first single-author PK book (“Essentials in Clinical Pharmacokinetics”) at Amazon (1). One year later, I released my second single-author PK book (“Advanced Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics”) (2).
While I was able to keep copyright to myself, saying no to Wiley means I lost their tremendous resources/platform, such as their deep, established networks to bookstores and universities worldwide as well as their robust marketing power. As a self-published author, it is my full responsibility to reach potential readers and let them know the existence of my books. In short, self-publishing requires self-promoting.
There is one more question I would like to address; this is a deeper one - there are many PK textbooks on the market, why would I still want to write these two books? The short answer is that as a professor and the sole instructor of two PK courses I couldn’t find a book that can fully meet the needs of students in my classes, so I decided to write PK textbooks myself, one for students taking my basic PK course and the other for students in my advanced pharmacokinetics/ pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) course.
The basic PK course I teach each spring has a large class size, ranging from 80 to 120 students, and most are first year PharmD students. This is neither a simple course to teach nor an easy topic to learn as it is math driven, and many concepts/terms are intrinsically difficult to comprehend. To help students, the only solution I found was to come up with outside examples and analogies to explain those hard-to-understand terms. Using squirrels and nuts to explain intrinsic clearance is one example. Using bank accounts to explain steady state is another example. To avoid course material being dry, I blend them with case studies and real-world stories. For example, I used the real story of Mayo Clinic physician poisoning his wife to teach students how to use curve stripping method to estimate the amount of colchicine used in the crime. There are many other interesting case studies that I designed for my class. I included all of them in my basic PK book. I used simple language in my writing and wrote the book in an unconventional way. My goal was to make this book simple, fun, practical and easy to follow. Whether this goal is achieved or not, I leave it to readers to evaluate.
In addition to what I mentioned above, another valuable aspect of my basic PK book is that it not only covers small-molecule drugs but also introduces biotherapeutic products, including a basic introduction (Chapter 12), monoclonal antibodies (Chapter 13), antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs; Chapter 14), oligonucleotide products (Chapter 15), including both antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs; 15.1) and small-interfering RNAs (siRNAs; 15.2), as well as Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy (Chapter 16). Most of the existing PK textbooks focus on small-molecule drugs only. I consider Part III of my book (i.e., Chapters 12-16) a big advantage compared to other PK textbooks.
In contrast to the basic PK course, the advanced PK/PD course that I teach every other year has a small class size, ranging from 6 to 18 students, and most are graduate students. There is no content overlap between these two courses, and students who take my advanced PK/PD course need to complete my basic PK course first. The first half of my advanced PK/PD focuses on essential modeling skills and is whiteboard driven with little slides - I draw model structure and write equations on whiteboard. I teach students how to build models, how to write differential equations, and how to use Laplace transformation to solve these equations. I consider these skills critical for pharmacometricians. Once you master them, you gain the ability to build very complex models (if you need to build such model one day). The second half of my course is delivered in a “multi-media” style (e.g., ppt, whiteboard, group discussion, etc) and covers more advanced topics, including various PK models (e.g., nonlinear PK, target-mediated drug disposition (TMDD), whole-body physiologically-based PK (PBPK), population PK (PopPK)) and PD models (e.g., effect compartment model, indirect response models).
The content of my advanced PK/PD book matches very closely with what I have taught in the class. For example, Chapters 1-8 are based on the first half of my course, and Chapters 9-16 match closely with the second half of my course. While the topics are the same, I consider the content of Chapters 9-16 in the book is an “enhanced version” as I provided more detailed information and explanation. In addition, I included the history of many important models in the book so that readers could get a big picture of the PK/PD discipline and have a deeper understanding of “where we came from” and “where we are now”.
Additionally, in the advanced PK/PD book I included anecdotes of several PK/PD giants whom I deeply admire, such as Gerhard Levy, William Jusko, and Lewis Sheiner. For example, I found the story of salicylate nonlinear PK is inspiring as it showed how Gerhard Levy used sound data to corrupt the Status Quo; so, I included this story in my book (Chapter 9.2). Similarly, I shared the story of Lewis Sheiner’s fortuitous bus ride, which led to a lifetime collaboration with Stuart Beal and the birth of the software NONMEM (Chapter 12.3), and the stories behind William Jusko’ groundbreaking work, including interviews on his TMDD model developed with Donald Mager (Chapter 10.2), his indirect response models (Chapter 15.1), as well as the full interview (Appendix 1).
For both books, I did not use AI in my writing. I wrote the whole book, word by word. In the age of AI, I consider these 100% human written books special. I hope readers enjoy my writing and find my books useful. These two books are the result of a teacher’s love (I wrote it for students in my own class). As I firmly believe they are valuable books, naturally I would hope that they can reach more readers. So, I am writing this book review to self-promote them.
Many years ago, I bought a second-hand cabinet from a retired campus police officer, and he told me his interesting side business – selling used textbooks online. At the end of each semester, the dumpsters close to students’ dorms are often filled with “used” textbooks that are essentially brand new. Rescuing these free treasures and selling them on Amazon and eBay became his side business. After my books were published, that story came to my mind from time to time. What will be the fate of my books?
I hope my PK books will outlive me on readers’ bookshelves.
Disclosure: I did not use AI when I wrote this article.
References:
- An G. Essentials in Clinical Pharmacokinetics – Concepts, Dose Optimization, and Biologics. Independently published on Amazon. May 2024. ISBN: 978-1-964623-00-9. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1964623006)
- An G. Advanced Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics – Lecture Notes and Self-study Guide. Independently published on Amazon. May 2025. ISBN: 978-1-964623-03-0. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1964623030)