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  • Ask My Readers: Revenue Sharing from Textbooks

    By Dean Dad August 17, 2007 8:30 am

    A returning correspondent writes:

    You and your readers were very helpful in responding to my questions about how to convince my college's leadership to consider my textbook project a professional rather than personal project. In fact, college leadership now officially considers my project to be professional rather than personal. But this has led to another situation. College leadership wants to discuss a "revenue sharing agreement."

    What are the precedents in community colleges for "revenue sharing" in this type of situation? (To recap, I am writing the textbook in addition to teaching a full load and fulfilling my service obligations; in other words, I am writing the textbook on my own time. I want to use the following college resources: my office, my email account, my office phone, my college-issued computer, paper, post-it notes, pens, and copy machines.) I don't expect there will be much "revenue" from the project as my textbook will appeal to a fairly small niche of instructors in my discipline. How much revenue should I expect to "share" with the college considering that I will be putting in hundreds of hours of work (on my own time) and the college will be doing very little for the project, all things considered?

    There is no faculty union at my institution. As far as I can tell, no other faculty member currently at my institution has published a textbook.

    ---------

    Gee, free Post-Its? You're living the dream!

    I'll have to ask my readers about precedent, since I've never asked this question of my colleagues at other schools. At my cc, we don't give release time for textbook writing, but we allow faculty to use their offices and email and suchlike without checking up on them, and we don't ask for a cut of whatever they produce. (Development of online courses is another issue. But 'writing' in the traditional sense – books, articles, etc. -- is owned entirely by the author. In the union contract, it's clear that lecture notes belong to the professor, but syllabi can be kept by the college.)

    At Proprietary U, there was an understanding that in return for institutional support, the author(s) would split the royalties from copies sold at Proprietary U. Royalties on copies sold anywhere else went to the author(s). This struck me as reasonable, since the royalties on copies sold at a single campus amounted to roughly enough to spring for donuts once a year.

    Good luck. If you don't mind my saying so, I'm not overly impressed with your administration.

    Wise and battle-scarred readers: what arrangements have you seen?

    Have a question? Ask the Administrator at ccdean (at) myway (dot) com.

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Comments on Ask My Readers: Revenue Sharing from Textbooks

  • Costs...
  • Posted by Johannes Gutenberg on August 17, 2007 at 10:00am EDT

  • Online email account - Free
    Home phone - $20/month
    New Wintel desktop computer loaded with Linux and Open Office - $400
    Post-it notes - $2.38

    Independence - Priceless.

    If you want to write a textbook, by all means, do it.

    But there is something about all this that seems to suggest some hopeful thinking on your part. You now say the admin is convinced writing the text would be a professional project, a reversal from what was said earlier. Despite this change of heart, it sounds like your employer isn't impressed with the idea and isn't going to give you even minimal support. But if you sit in your office and use the college computer and some post-it notes, they want a slice of the action.

    It might be a good idea to listen to that feedback.

    It sounds like you seem to think that if you work on this project at the college instead of at home that setting will legitimize your efforts and your admin is going to realize that it was a great idea all along and shower you with _____ (affection, money, tenure?). I fear you might not be listening to the response from the administration and instead you might be hearing what you want to hear.

  • cap on royalties
  • Posted by Sylvia , asst. prof on August 17, 2007 at 11:10am EDT

  • Our institution recently decided that authors' royalties based on textbooks sold on our campus would be capped at $500. Beats me how they enforce this. Also, since my last royalty statement said -11.71, I'm not sure this agreement will even be enough to spring for doughnuts. Mind you, I understand that this can be seen as a conflict of interest, but the whole point of writing a textbook yourself often stems from a need to have a text that fits the course you teach better than what's currently out there.

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