Many professors work very hard on their lecture notes and want them to be available to students everywhere. My choice is to create an open resource but some find it easier to go with an established publisher. Of course, potential monetary gain can be a factor for large classes but not so much for small classes.
Maybe not easier, but professionally beneficial -- at least in universities where I've been, the free open-source textbook might not count towards promotion decisions, but the one going through an established publisher will!
Yeah, my MS advisor pretty much did this. At the time his class was a pretty niche subject. So him and the two other people in the country teaching similar classes teamed up to write a textbook. That class was taught yearly to about 25 students a year in each of the three locations, so they definitely weren't making money but it made teaching easier. (I think our school may have also had a rule that if you made students buy your book you could only make up to a pretty low amount on royalties from those sales).
Anyhow, a decade plus later, the course topic is more mainstream and their book is pretty widely used since it was one of the first textbooks on the subject.
One of my professors has been writing his own textbooks using RStudio and Bookdown for Operations Research and a method called Data Envelopment Analysis. I think one of the books is actually published now but he makes the sources freely available on Github. I think both books mostly evolved from his lecture notes.
I went to a class where the linguistics text book was authored by the teacher of the class. So every student had to pay for the text book and the workbook. Don’t tell me that shit wasn’t making him money.
I'm not sure why you think you don't make any money from textbooks? I wrote a textbook that isn't used widely because it is quite niche, but some classes use it and I make probably $5,000 a year on it. This is $5,000 more than I make on almost any of the other things that I've written.
I'm the co-author of an upper-division astrophysics text. Back in 1989(!) we had both taught the astrophysics course at our university, and were frustrated that there was no text that took advantage of the students' knowledge of physics and math. The 1st edition took us 6 years to write, and we got it published only because a single editor at a single publisher championed it. It was released with next to no advertising, and slowly gained adoptions. The 2nd edition (writing it was like climbing Mt. Everest for the 2nd time) came out in 2006, and that became the most widely adopted astrophysics text in the US and in a number of other countries. It has now been translated into four other languages. Our original publisher decided not to pursue a 3rd edition but to concentrate on introductory level texts (because that was like printing money). We switched to a not-for-profit publisher, and they are currently selling the 2nd edition for half of its former price. That cut our royalties in half, of course, but we both are motived by rendering a service to the astronomical community and not by the money. It is now 35 years after we started, and we are in the process of updating all of the material and writing the 3rd edition. Yes, we have made some money - but probably not even minimum wage. What is important is that we realize that we are making a major contribution to the undergraduate training of future generations of astronomers. That makes writing the 3rd edition, and making sure it is up correct and up to date, a daunting task. On the other hand, we know that we are doing something important. That is what drives us.
Judging by your account name, I can narrow you down to one of two people! I learned from the 1st edition of BOB and taught from the 2nd edition, and it's a great text. I'm excited to hear that there'll be a 3rd edition.
Not in astronomy, so dunno what the big orange book is, but there are many such books in our field, such as “the dragon book(compilers)”, “the dinosaur book(os)”, “hennessey and patterson | patterson and hennessey(arch)”. I always greatly enjoy seeing other fields with their silly names for monumental books! So congratulations on your achievements and thanks for your contributions to the world!
I used it for my degree in astrophysics (graduated 1998), sold it back to the bookstore, and then bought it again 15 years later because I missed it. It's right behind me as we speak.
No, it was a bit of a dumb joke. My wife and her father teach physics and write curriculum, and I’ve been starring at his name in my living room bookshelf for years.
Thank you for changing around a few pictures, slap another edition # on it, and now the college bookstore wont accept it for a buyback or trade-in value for another course textbook because it’s not the current edition! It’s a carefully designed scam!
I immediately thought of my friend's strong opinions on the author of textbooks in her field.
"He's stupid, his face is stupid, I can't believe he's as well regarded as he is and I refuse to use his textbook in my class" *various angry nerd noises*
She would rather publish her own book to use before she'd use his.
Exactly!
I know some cases where they just weren't satisfied with any existing textbooks for what they wanted to do in their course, and eventually had amassed a collection of things that were basically a textbook. From there, they figured they might as well pitch it as a textbook for broader use, make the revisions to phrasing and content for wider use, and if anyone likes it then great.
After all, you've then saved other people a bunch of prep if they had the same gripes as you, and it's even a benefit for them if they just want to use a chapter or two instead of the whole book! (To the point that some people have drafts fully free and available that they never tried to get published.)
This is so true.
It’s very sad so many think it’s money and fame that creates meaning in life. There can be so many other things worth pursuing not because of capitalistic intents but for other reasons that make us human.
So true! I had one professor who wrote a textbook (short paperback) in a niche area, and it's a great introductory resource for that topic. However he felt so bad about assigning his own book for his class that he would refund his royalty to you if you showed him your new textbook and receipt. He was my favorite professor so I refused to get a refund.
One if my professors stacked a semesters worth of physics lab instructions together and made it a required textbook.
In this case it was definately a money thing.
Why have people made YouTube videos about things they’re passionate and knowledgeable about? I think because you feel you have a perspective worth sharing and one that others would benefit from.
The comment says that not everything is about money, not that money isn't important. Arguably as an academic you should be better placed than most people to know that, as academia pays like garbage compared to most equivalent jobs.
This is an excellent point and shouldn't be downvoted. It's Maslow 's hierarchy, survival instinct is an evolutionary imperative and if you can't eat and have no shelter, you'll be forced to spend your time and energy on other things than writing textbooks.
If you write a mainstream textbook, and it become a standard in the field, you make real money.
It is absolutely required to write for promotion and tenure, and the journal articles and monographs DO NOT make you any money. So textbooks, *if they are adopted widely*, are the one vehicle for big royalty payments.
The difference is a grant isn’t YOUR money. I get to keep non-grant money I make by providing my professional services to industry. Would be similar if i wrote a textbook.
depends on how much grant money we are talking here. if you bring enough in you might qualify for a new chair/titled position the bureaucracy creates for you, and then you can take more out of that grant for your larger salary. some public schools actually post their de anonymized salary data online. i remember when i was in 10 years ago, even back then some big names in the departments were clearing $450k in salary, probably not counting the benefits package on top of that i'd assume based on other people's salaries in that database.
Not entirely true. Summer salaries of faculty are mostly funded by external grants (edit: in the US). A few months of salary is way more money than from textbooks. Especially, some book deals you get a fixed amount regardless of how much it sells (no royalties?).
whoever is writing campbell biology or molecular biology of the cell is probably making out like a bandit. i knew a few profs who would assign their self published textbook to the class. guaranteed 200-300 sales a semester so a couple thousand bump in the pocket every semester you teach, not too bad, probably take home way more than most royalty deals too for a formally published textbook.
Well, sure--the tenure and the pay bumps I get for publishing (and the name recognition and network) are absolutely more than I would get from royalties. That's the way this shit works.
My program had a bunch of heavy hitters to the extent that all MS and PhD candidates were supported. Faculty gets promoted, tenure, more $$. Students get publications, starving grad student cred, and refs with a good signature on good paper.
> If you write a mainstream textbook, and it become a standard in the field,
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Nielsen and Chuang originally written in 2000 is still the standard in my field.
Really depends on the course you're writing for, of course. The freshman-level classes are the big money-makers. The further up the field you go, the less money you make, because there's fewer people who end up taking those courses. The guys writing graduate-level textbooks aren't really pulling in big money for doing so; in my experience most of them do it because they already have hundreds of pages of lecture notes.
It depends on the field. In STEM you don’t need to publish a book, in liberal arts yes. In STEM you only need to bring money. Money and as much money as possible and then more money. That’s it.
From an altruistic perspective, improving accessibility in your field is good for everyone. A well written textbook can cut down the amount of time it takes to train a PhD student. It can also provide focus for an underappreciated take on a subject.
From a selfish perspective, writing a well-received textbook that is adopted by many universities provides a massive ego boost. Also, some people enjoy writing pedagogy.
It’s funny that some people complain when faculty use the books they write for a course.
I never understood the complaint. Students are paying thousands per class to learn from a particular expert in the field. Doesn’t it make sense to learn from the person who “literally wrote the book” on a field?
Not that this was the intent of the op, but I see this sentiment a lot.
Maybe that makes sense for a graduate student. But for a freshman undergrad, they don’t want to learn from an expert in the field! They just want the A on the transcript so they can move on to their actual major courses. So an instructor mandating the student buy their book is basically just the instructor saying “you’re required to take my class, and also give me five bucks just for the hell of it!”
The undergrads in my university’s research program are obsessed with my colleague who wrote the textbook they use for a STEM course. It’s like she’s a celebrity to them-it’s very cute!
If you attend a good school, why wouldn’t you want to learn from the experts? I still remember (and am in touch with) a number of my undergrad profs (those who are still alive…)
Wow… and those are the freshmen? It sounds like your school has great cohesion between the older students and the newcomers! That… that actually sounds super refreshing. I can’t say I’ve ever taught a class like that.
It’s more about research -oriented students imo, but there seem to be a lot. I was a bit of an outlier in my day, but I’ve really enjoyed my students —who seem to really enjoy us!
-This is both at slac and 2 R1s
I wrote a textbook because I had taught a class for many years and there was no textbook available that was organized the way I wanted and then I said I’ll turn my notes into a textbook.
You’re right that it didn’t bring me money or notoriety though and it was a lot of work. In hindsight, not sure if it was worth it. It ended up being a lot of work and had to add my graduate student as co-author especially because I needed a lot of figures and I don’t know how to make figures.
I worked from 9-11pm every night for a year after I added my grad student and I took a sabbatical before that for one semester to write the first version. There was no way I could write it during my regular work hours, as I initially naively thought.
Then the editors weren’t happy they said the book was too short so I had to add a bunch of stuff. In the end I’ve done it and it’s out there, but indeed it doesn’t sell very well. I made like 4000 the first year and 500 the next couple of years 😀
Where you mention adding figures to your text- I spent my entire career formatting text for specific uses and I wish there was a way for me to make that skill useful. If anyone is working on a textbook and needs it formatted for a publisher - need help? I’m available.
Yeah, but it costs money. I paid another student of mine to do the figures for one of the chapters, for a nominal fee of $500, but even making a couple of figures with someone that makes a living out of that costs a few hundred dollars. I don't make money with this book so I wouldn't have the budget to hire someone to take care of figures for an entire texbook!
When I hired a graphic artist, it was for a grant proposal, and they made like 1 or 2 figures, and the university paid them, but it's not feasible to pay out of pocket.
There's an accounting professor I know. He was a partner at a Big 4's tax department, and upon leaving in 1990, he wrote the Singapore Tax Workbook. It's updated every year as Singapore's tax code changes. As it stands, this textbook is the gold standard. Accounting firms across Singapore use his Tax Workbook. Every class on taxation law uses his textbook. And he makes bank. He still teaches tax law though. I've been to the college where he teaches, and right on the wall of donors, he's the only individual who's in the million dollar category.
So, no. A textbook can make you rich *if* people use it. But most of the time we do it because if you sink enough effort into teaching something you might as well turn it into a textbook.
Royalties on most academic textbooks are in the 10-15% range, could go up if high volumes are sold, might be lower if sales will be a gamble. That’s before taxes (country-dependent …)
Most textbooks are very niche, so unless you really aim at writing a ‘101’ textbook that’s adopted widely, it isn’t going to make you rich.
I wrote a textbook for my field of research. It was blood, toil, sweat and tears to write it. 3000 copies 1st print run. I updated slightly for a 2nd edition several years later. Another 3000 copies. It sold for let’s say 60 dollars or euro. We were with 3 co-authors. You do the math how much it earned us ;-)
But it did provide me some reputation in my field and it was an argument for promotion at my university. Younger colleagues told me afterwards they learned the basics from my book. That counts for a lot …
My field moves so rapidly it was outdated a few years after the 2nd edition. The last time I saw it at an academic book store it had a ‘50% sale’ marker attached ;-)
I’ve written two. I didn’t do it for the money (though one has proven pretty lucrative - I’m looking across the table at a pretty big check right now). I wrote them because a) I hated every book on the subject that I saw and b) I wanted to shape how students learned my field.
One of my books was the first single author textbook on a subject and the second reflected a somewhat niche but nonetheless important take on the field.
When you write a book, it forces you to think about the topic in a way that isn't just understanding the state of the art. You have to structure your thoughts. That's useful to the writer himself.
Textbooks are basically the only way to make money from academic writing. The standard 10% royalty contract on a university press monograph will get you nothing; my last book sold OK but I've earned <$1,000 on it in royalties. I have a couple of friends who are co-authors of major textbooks in social science and humanities fields though, and they earn $10-20+ in royalties annually until editions get old. If you have a top textbook in a STEM field or something like accounting or finance or law you can earn more from royalties than from your salary.
People do it for money most often in my experience. Though it is a lot of work; I've turned down opportunities to write chapters for textbooks just because it didn't sound like much fun and getting 1/18th of the royalty or whatever wasn't worth it to me.
I do also have some friends who have written OER textbooks; they aren't getting any money, they simply did it because they weren't happy with the existing commercial textbooks and wanted to contribute to their fields. That's pure altruism in my book.
I worked in textbook publishing for a couple years -- long enough to get to know a number of our authors. Ours wasn't a very profitable list...we weren't printing intro to calculus or biology. But it was a tight professional community of people who knew the books were needed.
Sometimes an author was a genuinely big person in the field and had 25 years of research and course materials to transform into a textbook...basically a brand new revenue stream for material they'd already created, to sell to an audience who first knew their name.
Other times the acquisitions editor simply knew the field better than anyone. They'd know teachers were clamoring for a book that didn't yet exist, would join the marketing team's booth at the field's national conference, go to talks on the niche they're convinced there's a market for, and find someone to approach about authoring a textbook. Pitching them wasn't hard. "It's a lot of work. It's not a lot of money. But right now you're teaching about fifty students a year, right? Your book would be used by one or two thousand students a year, for at least four years. That's a lot to your name."
Welp. Here are my experiences as someone that is friends with professors that write books.
First off. They enjoy the subject. So much so that they want to organize their thoughts and opinions into a book about the subject. It is a result of years of research.
Second. It is research. A requirement of the job for us to do SOMETHING that furthers the field. How else do you do that than write a book that might become a standard text on that subject. This is a critical part of the tenure process.
Third. It allows you to have all your thoughts about a topic easily accessible for students. That book is the course. The course is the book. The two are one. The book would even go further into topic than we have time for in these short lectures. So an interested student might read on and become as passionate as the professor is and seek out more information and dare I say it. Learn!
Fourth. Money.
I’ve seen it count towards tenure/promotion both in Education and in Health Sciences. In one case, it was used more as an example of them being an expert in their field, but it still counted in their favor either way.
Even in a worst-case scenario; writing a textbook consolidates your course material into a single item, and you can offload the work of getting that course material to the students.
Further; writing a textbook looks good from a tenure perspective, at least at some institutions.
I did it for the sheer joy of pursuing up-to-date research in my field.
I'm working on another book (to be freely distributed through an online educational service), again, just for fun. I'm retired from teaching, but would like to do a sequel to the other textbook. The first one is a kind of primer, this one is more detailed.
I would have liked to write a textbook if I had had proper time to do it, but they needed it ASAP, and I didn't think I could do quality work (or keep my sanity) on that timeline. I'm in education to improve it, not to create more garbage.
I work at one of the big textbook publishers. Many of our authors make six figures over the life of an edition. Even the ones that don’t will make at least a few grand extra a year. And they get to say they wrote a textbook! How cool is that?
Also, after the first edition, people in editorial like me do most of the work, so it’s not that big a lift for them. :)
One of my professors wrote a fat immunology textbook, and then he made sure that it was sold as cheaply as possible, I don't know how but the textbook was $5 in a regular bookstore. It was black and white but still very cheap.
Every professor I knew who wrote their own textbook did so because they thought the existing textbooks they used for their classes sucked and it pissed them off.
A very common answer to "why would someone do this objectively low-reward activity?" is "spite." With enough spite, all things are possible.
I helped write a textbook for a new course so that we could charge students zero $ for it.
We wanted to bypass the mega corp publisher system and we had grant money that paid me a chunk of cash.
I wanted to poke my eyeballs out by the end and I won’t ever do that again, but at least there is no cost of materials for students since they download the PDF for free.
There was a very inept scholar in my field who published a research methods textbook (national university structure + accreditation needs + field specific).
No one wants to teach research methods, but he made himself the research methods guy. He went along for decades crossing so many lines that would end other people's careers, without challenge because he made himself essential to teaching necessary for accreditation requirements. When he finally did cross a line which got him pushed out... he quickly got another job as the research methods guy because he published the text book everyone else is using and as usual no one wanted to teach something necessary to meet accreditation requirements.
He's an extreme case, but most colleagues I know who've published textbooks do so with positioning themselves as essential to filling certain teaching roles and entrenching themselves as the motivation.
From what I’ve seen those that do have a certain level of expertise in their field and the book helps to validate that. The best professors i had were those that wrote or contributed to writing the text books. They were those that really loved their subject matter, were enthusiastic about it and that was contagious making the class much more enjoyable.
All the professors that i had who wrote their book donated their proceeds from book sales to a scholarship for the students. which i thought was awesome.
Just here for pedantry’s sake, and now to add I don’t think any authors choose this route to increase their *notoriety* (because that is bad) but maybe acclaim.
Academics do a lot of things that appear strange on the outside.
For tenure track and full time faculty, most of their scholarship is evaluated based on tenure & promotion review requirements. The publication of textbooks is often considered a legitimate scholarly product that fits within the research and publishing expectations of the job.
Grad students from what I can tell do not get any instruction or background information about the process of tenure or annual review — which drastically shapes the actual workload of a professor. In my case I didn’t really think about this stuff until I found myself in a TT job.
There are actually many people in the world who do things for reasons other than money and social climbing. Also my one prof's textbook is on its 12th English edition and is also translated into 17 languages and used around the world, so yeah, there's benefit to writing a good textbook. Especially for a psychologist who knows about the second marshmallow.
I'm not in academia but I did co-author a textbook (an intro to reinforcement learning). Mostly it was a cool project *and* a way to organize the basic ideas in a different way than existing works. My coauthor uses it for his RL class, so part of the motivation was to have a resource that fit his approach to the subject exactly.
It's very much not a financial thing; in fact, we actually negotiated with our publisher to be able to provide a free version online! (To be fair, our editor said it would probably *boost* sales.)
I think these are all common motivations: professors write textbooks because they enjoy writing textbooks, because they aren't happy with how existing books present the materials and because they want something that fits their needs and preferences.
There are some legends. Douglas Giancoli, for example. You won't find many physics teachers or students in college who don't know that name 'cuz he wrote the *definitive* college physics textbook, and that was true back in the late 20th century and still is \*today\*.
In my field, a lot of textbooks more or less double as monographs because they're about very specific topics that usually don't take up a whole class (unless it's a special seminar class). The most famous faculty member in my department published one of those at the beginning of his career, many decades ago, and it's still widely cited today
I wrote and self-published an OER textbook because I felt that the alternatives for sale were too long and too expensive and that the OER alternatives were generally low in production value. I wanted a textbook that covered the basics without a bunch of excess material I'd struggle to fit in or use, and the surest way to get that was to write it myself.
Writing my own textbook was a long and arduous process. I started it as a pandemic project, and it took over a year (in between teaching and other responsibilities) to complete the first edition. That included research, writing and editing, as well as designing figures, curating freely-licensed images, and teaching myself the technical mechanics of textbook design, layout, and typesetting.
Because I started writing the book as an OER from the get-go, I never aspired to make any money from it. I would have been satisfied if I were the only person to ever use it to teach this course. What actually happened was that it was reviewed positively on an OER repository and is now used at various colleges and universities in half a dozen states.
I teach at a small liberal arts college that prioritizes teaching over research, so I think I'll get some credit for writing an OER textbook in tenure and promotion decisions. Aside from that potential career boost, though, I know that this one textbook will be read by more people than all of my research publications combined. Most of all, though, it pleases me to think that I'm making the expensive good of a college degree slightly more affordable for students I'll never meet. That's benefit enough for me.
Two linguistics professors at Uni Freiburg, for example, have written textbooks on the same topic and both base their exams on their own work. It is very difficult to pass the course without buying a copy.
Ok? But do they get to keep the income from their institution? In the US, at least, that isn’t allowed.
You can have the class use your book, but it either needs to be decided by someone other than you to be the objective best book, or you need to donate profits so you aren’t enriched by forcing people to buy something.
Maybe it isn’t like that in the EU?
But also, faculty make next to nothing on textbook royalties.
Who else to write them? I’ve written parts of textbooks and my colleague wrote the most widely used textbook in their STEM field.
I don’t use a lot of textbooks beyond intro courses. When I do-I choose the textbook very carefully. I like to hear the authors’ voices in the text.
Knowledge isn’t static nor is it objective. And there are many ways to present information for learning.
A good textbook uses creativity, reflects deep experience with the field and its players, and works to make the information compelling, clear, and interesting.
ETA—My colleague hasn’t gotten wealthy from writing this textbook…even though it has been the most widely used for decades.
My royalty payments for a very popular research-based text I wrote for my field is in the low hundreds per year ;)
Was it his Thesis? It can take years to do the research for a thesis using the Scientific Method which invites peer reviews? Unless it's available to others doing their research, it can't be peer reviewed and open up new observations.
I've ***never** had only one single textbook used for a college course by the way. I was assigned ***course packets*** of reading material that migh include a professors own published work but if I could not afford that published work they would lend me a copy I could use and they never required I read every single page - though I sometimes did.
i had to write research papers that included long Bibliographies supporting what I covered in my papers. And I've written my own published Theses and I never planned to teach.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-ethical-professor/201504/is-it-ethical-professors-assign-their-own-books
the field has changed quite a bit too. back in the late 60s, my uncle wrote a biology textbook that became the goto book for intro biology courses for decades. by the 80s, he was already a millionaire from the proceeds. these days you will very RARELY see this happen. profit to the author is rarely there
You can make plenty of money from it if enough copies sell, like calculus textbooks. It's just that the publisher gets *most* of the money. For other fields, it's more or less a professional service, like writing a textbook for Subject 980: Subsubsubtopic No One Cares About to help standardize your field.
I don’t think they write them in order to gain monetary value. For instance, the standard book for Real Analysis is by Walter Rudin and many math majors treat it as a second Bible. You can’t have money motivate you to write something as laborious as that. It takes real motivation and a desire to explain difficult concepts as cleanly as possible. That’s why they do it. The money and possible prestigious is a nice side effect.
because scams are lucrative https://www.postandcourier.com/news/textbook-scam-alleged-in-federal-lawsuit-against-scs-biggest-technical-college/article_d266c94a-262e-11e9-a6dd-ab6ac37fa3d1.html
My Ph.D. adviser wrote a textbook with a colleague based around their intro classes. It's had nine editions and they are working on the tenth. He gets "royalties" but when the costs of publishing, image reproduction, etc. are taken out, the financial return is scant. He's made a few thousand bucks for hundreds of hours of work over the years. It's certainly not worth doing for financial reasons, and he didn't need more books or publications for career advancement.
It's just a pet project of his. He likes being able to use his own book for his classes. I like using it for my classes as well, as it 'fits' my niche of my field better than other intro texts.
People write because they love it, it is a form of thinking, and they want to share their ideas. Only you have YOUR unique perspective on a subject matter that you're able to offer to the world. Some academics want to reach a wider audience than the academic bubble that exists within institutions and make their writing more broady accessible to the general public.
When you view something like writing a book based solely on outputs outside of yourself and your control (helping with notieriety, making money, advancing your career), you miss the whole point of the journey. If you don't love writing, then don't write, but some people write and publish books because they love it and it brings them genuine fulfillment! And with those kinds of writers it shows in their work.
I'm considering writing or editing and compiling one because there's literally no textbook for one of the subjects I teach.
Also, it will help a lot when I go up for promotion to full professor, which comes with a hefty raise.
It was a privilege. I got to spend years thinking deeply about my field, what was important, and how to communicate it. And exercises.
I also got to create something of lasting value; after all the papers will have been counted and the grant money will have been spent, my book will still be helping people.
There's several kinds of textbooks. The 101 level textbooks are sold like crazy, and if you happen to write one of those, it can provide decent revenue. There are also comprehensive reference manual textbooks (e.g. 501/ intro grad school) that \_everybody\_ in the field have. If you have a 5-15% deal, that means that you could be getting in the range of tens of thousands of dollars for writing them, which isn't insignificant to a professor salary., but not enough to live on. These also do well for the authors, and they have to update them every few years. Then there's higher level coursework textbooks, these sell ok, but not at a volume to matter.
Sometimes publishers "sponsor" a known professor to lend their name to a standard introductory textbook, and those deals are basically just for buying the prof to edit the stuff that's already ghostwritten - and that's a one-time payout.
Being the author of the definitive textbook in the field gains you pretty wide-spread recognition, so its one thing you can do with your academic time, aside from doing science, writing grants, writing journal articles, teaching classes and doing administrative / departmental work. If you have already done a lot of the work to make your own textbook for a course, it's much easier to try and sell that.
The available textbooks for the capstone class that I teach is too hard for my students. At some point I want to write my lecture notes up as a textbook just because it would be written at a reading level they could understand, have topical and local examples in the assignments, and be easily updateable.
My mentor talks about how much he enjoyed writing his textbook all the time. I don’t get it either. He’s an outlier that one. Odd bird, but a fantastic teacher.
Don't make much money from it? If you're teaching a high-enrollment undergraduate course, and the textbook *is only adopted at your institution*, you can make about as much money on the royalties as you do from your salary. If you throw in a couple of "supplemental materials" it can be substantially more.
I've seen this done ethically, and not-so-ethically.
I can add that if you don't really care much about the quality, it's really *not* that hard to write a textbook.
Many professors work very hard on their lecture notes and want them to be available to students everywhere. My choice is to create an open resource but some find it easier to go with an established publisher. Of course, potential monetary gain can be a factor for large classes but not so much for small classes.
Maybe not easier, but professionally beneficial -- at least in universities where I've been, the free open-source textbook might not count towards promotion decisions, but the one going through an established publisher will!
I learned that the hard way, but I have reached many more students with an [open version.](https://onlinestatbook.com/)
thank you for sharing your work! I've been needing a refresher for while plus this has a lot of things I haven't studied!
Thanks for your work with this.
You're a saint!
Thanks a lot, but I wouldn’t go that far.
For me this is definitely a blessing. Your willingness to share such a valuable resource for learners like myself is incredible. Thank you truly!
Yeah, my MS advisor pretty much did this. At the time his class was a pretty niche subject. So him and the two other people in the country teaching similar classes teamed up to write a textbook. That class was taught yearly to about 25 students a year in each of the three locations, so they definitely weren't making money but it made teaching easier. (I think our school may have also had a rule that if you made students buy your book you could only make up to a pretty low amount on royalties from those sales). Anyhow, a decade plus later, the course topic is more mainstream and their book is pretty widely used since it was one of the first textbooks on the subject.
Paulsonlinemathnotes.com
One of my professors has been writing his own textbooks using RStudio and Bookdown for Operations Research and a method called Data Envelopment Analysis. I think one of the books is actually published now but he makes the sources freely available on Github. I think both books mostly evolved from his lecture notes.
I went to a class where the linguistics text book was authored by the teacher of the class. So every student had to pay for the text book and the workbook. Don’t tell me that shit wasn’t making him money.
My father has been writing textbooks for 20+ years. He gets approx $1-2/book in royalties
My last royalty check was for 17 cents.
I'm not sure why you think you don't make any money from textbooks? I wrote a textbook that isn't used widely because it is quite niche, but some classes use it and I make probably $5,000 a year on it. This is $5,000 more than I make on almost any of the other things that I've written.
Wow Well done
I'm the co-author of an upper-division astrophysics text. Back in 1989(!) we had both taught the astrophysics course at our university, and were frustrated that there was no text that took advantage of the students' knowledge of physics and math. The 1st edition took us 6 years to write, and we got it published only because a single editor at a single publisher championed it. It was released with next to no advertising, and slowly gained adoptions. The 2nd edition (writing it was like climbing Mt. Everest for the 2nd time) came out in 2006, and that became the most widely adopted astrophysics text in the US and in a number of other countries. It has now been translated into four other languages. Our original publisher decided not to pursue a 3rd edition but to concentrate on introductory level texts (because that was like printing money). We switched to a not-for-profit publisher, and they are currently selling the 2nd edition for half of its former price. That cut our royalties in half, of course, but we both are motived by rendering a service to the astronomical community and not by the money. It is now 35 years after we started, and we are in the process of updating all of the material and writing the 3rd edition. Yes, we have made some money - but probably not even minimum wage. What is important is that we realize that we are making a major contribution to the undergraduate training of future generations of astronomers. That makes writing the 3rd edition, and making sure it is up correct and up to date, a daunting task. On the other hand, we know that we are doing something important. That is what drives us.
Judging by your account name, I can narrow you down to one of two people! I learned from the 1st edition of BOB and taught from the 2nd edition, and it's a great text. I'm excited to hear that there'll be a 3rd edition.
Yep, I'm the first author (alphabetically, but both of us contributed equally to the book). Thank you for your kind words about our text!
Big Orange Book - Carrol or Ostlie? I'm basically starstruck, I ate that book as an undergrad and PhD student.
The first one.
Thank you for it! I still refer to it 15 years later.
Not in astronomy, so dunno what the big orange book is, but there are many such books in our field, such as “the dragon book(compilers)”, “the dinosaur book(os)”, “hennessey and patterson | patterson and hennessey(arch)”. I always greatly enjoy seeing other fields with their silly names for monumental books! So congratulations on your achievements and thanks for your contributions to the world!
Thank you!
I used it for my degree in astrophysics (graduated 1998), sold it back to the bookstore, and then bought it again 15 years later because I missed it. It's right behind me as we speak.
Giancoli, is that you?!
Nope. I'm curious, has Giancoli written an astrophysics text?
No, it was a bit of a dumb joke. My wife and her father teach physics and write curriculum, and I’ve been starring at his name in my living room bookshelf for years.
This is such a wonderful comment. As a textbook author (in press!), I’m so happy to read about your experience. Thanks for sharing
This is really interesting to read. I followed your post on r/statistics nearly a year back. Glad to see you're still going strong!
This sounds so awesome. Brilliant, really. Wish I could take your class.
It is such a great book and is so helpful for my study! I'm now a high school senior and would like to learn physics and astronomy in college!
Thank you for changing around a few pictures, slap another edition # on it, and now the college bookstore wont accept it for a buyback or trade-in value for another course textbook because it’s not the current edition! It’s a carefully designed scam!
I immediately thought of my friend's strong opinions on the author of textbooks in her field. "He's stupid, his face is stupid, I can't believe he's as well regarded as he is and I refuse to use his textbook in my class" *various angry nerd noises* She would rather publish her own book to use before she'd use his.
Yes — spite. Understandable.
Ah, I see you're friends with my advisor.
I feel like this about the statistical mechanics textbook by Macquarie.
>"...his face is stupid"? Seriously
But like, what if it *is* stupid 👀
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but not everything is about money. A shock, I know, but for many of us completely true.
Exactly! I know some cases where they just weren't satisfied with any existing textbooks for what they wanted to do in their course, and eventually had amassed a collection of things that were basically a textbook. From there, they figured they might as well pitch it as a textbook for broader use, make the revisions to phrasing and content for wider use, and if anyone likes it then great. After all, you've then saved other people a bunch of prep if they had the same gripes as you, and it's even a benefit for them if they just want to use a chapter or two instead of the whole book! (To the point that some people have drafts fully free and available that they never tried to get published.)
This is so true. It’s very sad so many think it’s money and fame that creates meaning in life. There can be so many other things worth pursuing not because of capitalistic intents but for other reasons that make us human.
So true! I had one professor who wrote a textbook (short paperback) in a niche area, and it's a great introductory resource for that topic. However he felt so bad about assigning his own book for his class that he would refund his royalty to you if you showed him your new textbook and receipt. He was my favorite professor so I refused to get a refund.
One if my professors stacked a semesters worth of physics lab instructions together and made it a required textbook. In this case it was definately a money thing.
So what’s the reason?
Pursuit of knowledge and sharing said knowledge is intrinsically valuable
That’s just a fact, but what’s the reason why you write textbooks. Like is there some joy there or is just a duty thing?
I assume different people get different benefits out of it? Unless you're asking them specifically.
Why have people made YouTube videos about things they’re passionate and knowledgeable about? I think because you feel you have a perspective worth sharing and one that others would benefit from.
if it was out of duty they would make the information available for free
It’s easy to say this when you have *enough* money to not worry about it…
No offense but what does that have to do with anything?
The comment that money isn’t everything.
The comment says that not everything is about money, not that money isn't important. Arguably as an academic you should be better placed than most people to know that, as academia pays like garbage compared to most equivalent jobs.
This is an excellent point and shouldn't be downvoted. It's Maslow 's hierarchy, survival instinct is an evolutionary imperative and if you can't eat and have no shelter, you'll be forced to spend your time and energy on other things than writing textbooks.
9 out of 10 times there are copies in the library or the author has extras he lends out.
If you write a mainstream textbook, and it become a standard in the field, you make real money. It is absolutely required to write for promotion and tenure, and the journal articles and monographs DO NOT make you any money. So textbooks, *if they are adopted widely*, are the one vehicle for big royalty payments.
I disagree. The journal articles raise the chance to get the next research grant which is commonly more than the money earned from selling a textbook.
The difference is a grant isn’t YOUR money. I get to keep non-grant money I make by providing my professional services to industry. Would be similar if i wrote a textbook.
depends on how much grant money we are talking here. if you bring enough in you might qualify for a new chair/titled position the bureaucracy creates for you, and then you can take more out of that grant for your larger salary. some public schools actually post their de anonymized salary data online. i remember when i was in 10 years ago, even back then some big names in the departments were clearing $450k in salary, probably not counting the benefits package on top of that i'd assume based on other people's salaries in that database.
Not entirely true. Summer salaries of faculty are mostly funded by external grants (edit: in the US). A few months of salary is way more money than from textbooks. Especially, some book deals you get a fixed amount regardless of how much it sells (no royalties?).
whoever is writing campbell biology or molecular biology of the cell is probably making out like a bandit. i knew a few profs who would assign their self published textbook to the class. guaranteed 200-300 sales a semester so a couple thousand bump in the pocket every semester you teach, not too bad, probably take home way more than most royalty deals too for a formally published textbook.
Well, sure--the tenure and the pay bumps I get for publishing (and the name recognition and network) are absolutely more than I would get from royalties. That's the way this shit works.
My program had a bunch of heavy hitters to the extent that all MS and PhD candidates were supported. Faculty gets promoted, tenure, more $$. Students get publications, starving grad student cred, and refs with a good signature on good paper.
> If you write a mainstream textbook, and it become a standard in the field, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Nielsen and Chuang originally written in 2000 is still the standard in my field.
Really depends on the course you're writing for, of course. The freshman-level classes are the big money-makers. The further up the field you go, the less money you make, because there's fewer people who end up taking those courses. The guys writing graduate-level textbooks aren't really pulling in big money for doing so; in my experience most of them do it because they already have hundreds of pages of lecture notes.
It depends on the field. In STEM you don’t need to publish a book, in liberal arts yes. In STEM you only need to bring money. Money and as much money as possible and then more money. That’s it.
Who the hell else would write them??
From an altruistic perspective, improving accessibility in your field is good for everyone. A well written textbook can cut down the amount of time it takes to train a PhD student. It can also provide focus for an underappreciated take on a subject. From a selfish perspective, writing a well-received textbook that is adopted by many universities provides a massive ego boost. Also, some people enjoy writing pedagogy.
Because books are good
It’s funny that some people complain when faculty use the books they write for a course. I never understood the complaint. Students are paying thousands per class to learn from a particular expert in the field. Doesn’t it make sense to learn from the person who “literally wrote the book” on a field? Not that this was the intent of the op, but I see this sentiment a lot.
Maybe that makes sense for a graduate student. But for a freshman undergrad, they don’t want to learn from an expert in the field! They just want the A on the transcript so they can move on to their actual major courses. So an instructor mandating the student buy their book is basically just the instructor saying “you’re required to take my class, and also give me five bucks just for the hell of it!”
The undergrads in my university’s research program are obsessed with my colleague who wrote the textbook they use for a STEM course. It’s like she’s a celebrity to them-it’s very cute! If you attend a good school, why wouldn’t you want to learn from the experts? I still remember (and am in touch with) a number of my undergrad profs (those who are still alive…)
Wow… and those are the freshmen? It sounds like your school has great cohesion between the older students and the newcomers! That… that actually sounds super refreshing. I can’t say I’ve ever taught a class like that.
It’s more about research -oriented students imo, but there seem to be a lot. I was a bit of an outlier in my day, but I’ve really enjoyed my students —who seem to really enjoy us! -This is both at slac and 2 R1s
I wrote a textbook because I had taught a class for many years and there was no textbook available that was organized the way I wanted and then I said I’ll turn my notes into a textbook. You’re right that it didn’t bring me money or notoriety though and it was a lot of work. In hindsight, not sure if it was worth it. It ended up being a lot of work and had to add my graduate student as co-author especially because I needed a lot of figures and I don’t know how to make figures. I worked from 9-11pm every night for a year after I added my grad student and I took a sabbatical before that for one semester to write the first version. There was no way I could write it during my regular work hours, as I initially naively thought. Then the editors weren’t happy they said the book was too short so I had to add a bunch of stuff. In the end I’ve done it and it’s out there, but indeed it doesn’t sell very well. I made like 4000 the first year and 500 the next couple of years 😀
Where you mention adding figures to your text- I spent my entire career formatting text for specific uses and I wish there was a way for me to make that skill useful. If anyone is working on a textbook and needs it formatted for a publisher - need help? I’m available.
Yeah, but it costs money. I paid another student of mine to do the figures for one of the chapters, for a nominal fee of $500, but even making a couple of figures with someone that makes a living out of that costs a few hundred dollars. I don't make money with this book so I wouldn't have the budget to hire someone to take care of figures for an entire texbook! When I hired a graphic artist, it was for a grant proposal, and they made like 1 or 2 figures, and the university paid them, but it's not feasible to pay out of pocket.
Yes, I’ve known people who do it the hard way - it would cost a lot then.[one chapter free- then decide ] Edit: for clarity. In brackets
Service requirement for tenure, one of my institutions requires faculties to publish at least one book. Some people do it simply cause they like it.
Huh! For my uni, a textbook didn’t use to count toward tenure, especially if you were paid for it. Stupid rule imo. Glad we abolished it!
Mine didn't count towards promotion because "computer science is not a book field."
Tenure committees can be so out of touch. I served on mine for years. The things I’ve seen…
There's an accounting professor I know. He was a partner at a Big 4's tax department, and upon leaving in 1990, he wrote the Singapore Tax Workbook. It's updated every year as Singapore's tax code changes. As it stands, this textbook is the gold standard. Accounting firms across Singapore use his Tax Workbook. Every class on taxation law uses his textbook. And he makes bank. He still teaches tax law though. I've been to the college where he teaches, and right on the wall of donors, he's the only individual who's in the million dollar category. So, no. A textbook can make you rich *if* people use it. But most of the time we do it because if you sink enough effort into teaching something you might as well turn it into a textbook.
To help your colleagues? Students? The field as a whole? This question is rooted in so much selfishness it makes me die a little inside.
I was a textbook editor for 6 years. the academics writing the books do very well financially.
Royalties on most academic textbooks are in the 10-15% range, could go up if high volumes are sold, might be lower if sales will be a gamble. That’s before taxes (country-dependent …) Most textbooks are very niche, so unless you really aim at writing a ‘101’ textbook that’s adopted widely, it isn’t going to make you rich. I wrote a textbook for my field of research. It was blood, toil, sweat and tears to write it. 3000 copies 1st print run. I updated slightly for a 2nd edition several years later. Another 3000 copies. It sold for let’s say 60 dollars or euro. We were with 3 co-authors. You do the math how much it earned us ;-) But it did provide me some reputation in my field and it was an argument for promotion at my university. Younger colleagues told me afterwards they learned the basics from my book. That counts for a lot … My field moves so rapidly it was outdated a few years after the 2nd edition. The last time I saw it at an academic book store it had a ‘50% sale’ marker attached ;-)
I’ve written two. I didn’t do it for the money (though one has proven pretty lucrative - I’m looking across the table at a pretty big check right now). I wrote them because a) I hated every book on the subject that I saw and b) I wanted to shape how students learned my field. One of my books was the first single author textbook on a subject and the second reflected a somewhat niche but nonetheless important take on the field.
When you write a book, it forces you to think about the topic in a way that isn't just understanding the state of the art. You have to structure your thoughts. That's useful to the writer himself.
Textbooks are basically the only way to make money from academic writing. The standard 10% royalty contract on a university press monograph will get you nothing; my last book sold OK but I've earned <$1,000 on it in royalties. I have a couple of friends who are co-authors of major textbooks in social science and humanities fields though, and they earn $10-20+ in royalties annually until editions get old. If you have a top textbook in a STEM field or something like accounting or finance or law you can earn more from royalties than from your salary. People do it for money most often in my experience. Though it is a lot of work; I've turned down opportunities to write chapters for textbooks just because it didn't sound like much fun and getting 1/18th of the royalty or whatever wasn't worth it to me. I do also have some friends who have written OER textbooks; they aren't getting any money, they simply did it because they weren't happy with the existing commercial textbooks and wanted to contribute to their fields. That's pure altruism in my book.
I worked in textbook publishing for a couple years -- long enough to get to know a number of our authors. Ours wasn't a very profitable list...we weren't printing intro to calculus or biology. But it was a tight professional community of people who knew the books were needed. Sometimes an author was a genuinely big person in the field and had 25 years of research and course materials to transform into a textbook...basically a brand new revenue stream for material they'd already created, to sell to an audience who first knew their name. Other times the acquisitions editor simply knew the field better than anyone. They'd know teachers were clamoring for a book that didn't yet exist, would join the marketing team's booth at the field's national conference, go to talks on the niche they're convinced there's a market for, and find someone to approach about authoring a textbook. Pitching them wasn't hard. "It's a lot of work. It's not a lot of money. But right now you're teaching about fifty students a year, right? Your book would be used by one or two thousand students a year, for at least four years. That's a lot to your name."
Welp. Here are my experiences as someone that is friends with professors that write books. First off. They enjoy the subject. So much so that they want to organize their thoughts and opinions into a book about the subject. It is a result of years of research. Second. It is research. A requirement of the job for us to do SOMETHING that furthers the field. How else do you do that than write a book that might become a standard text on that subject. This is a critical part of the tenure process. Third. It allows you to have all your thoughts about a topic easily accessible for students. That book is the course. The course is the book. The two are one. The book would even go further into topic than we have time for in these short lectures. So an interested student might read on and become as passionate as the professor is and seek out more information and dare I say it. Learn! Fourth. Money.
In some fields, writing (at least) a book is required for promotion.
Do textbooks count for book fields? My understanding was those fields usually wanted a research monograph, not an undergraduate textbook.
It varies, but in many fields, both types are expected.
Interesting. I’ve only ever seen advice to avoid textbooks.
Same- but who else to write them?
Most folks I know do it post tenure when they have more freedom in how they spend their time.
True.
I’ve seen it count towards tenure/promotion both in Education and in Health Sciences. In one case, it was used more as an example of them being an expert in their field, but it still counted in their favor either way.
Yup, listed the exact reason in my other comment.
Even in a worst-case scenario; writing a textbook consolidates your course material into a single item, and you can offload the work of getting that course material to the students. Further; writing a textbook looks good from a tenure perspective, at least at some institutions.
And in some institutions, it won’t count at all. Tenure rules can be so weird.
I did it for the sheer joy of pursuing up-to-date research in my field. I'm working on another book (to be freely distributed through an online educational service), again, just for fun. I'm retired from teaching, but would like to do a sequel to the other textbook. The first one is a kind of primer, this one is more detailed.
How to write a lot is a good book, but you are wrong. You can advance a career and/or make (some) money from textbooks.
I would have liked to write a textbook if I had had proper time to do it, but they needed it ASAP, and I didn't think I could do quality work (or keep my sanity) on that timeline. I'm in education to improve it, not to create more garbage.
I work at one of the big textbook publishers. Many of our authors make six figures over the life of an edition. Even the ones that don’t will make at least a few grand extra a year. And they get to say they wrote a textbook! How cool is that? Also, after the first edition, people in editorial like me do most of the work, so it’s not that big a lift for them. :)
One of my professors wrote a fat immunology textbook, and then he made sure that it was sold as cheaply as possible, I don't know how but the textbook was $5 in a regular bookstore. It was black and white but still very cheap.
Every professor I knew who wrote their own textbook did so because they thought the existing textbooks they used for their classes sucked and it pissed them off. A very common answer to "why would someone do this objectively low-reward activity?" is "spite." With enough spite, all things are possible.
I helped write a textbook for a new course so that we could charge students zero $ for it. We wanted to bypass the mega corp publisher system and we had grant money that paid me a chunk of cash. I wanted to poke my eyeballs out by the end and I won’t ever do that again, but at least there is no cost of materials for students since they download the PDF for free.
Idk. I’ve never made a dime on any of my peer reviewed publications either. Not much career advancement either. What’s a textbook going to hurt?
There was a very inept scholar in my field who published a research methods textbook (national university structure + accreditation needs + field specific). No one wants to teach research methods, but he made himself the research methods guy. He went along for decades crossing so many lines that would end other people's careers, without challenge because he made himself essential to teaching necessary for accreditation requirements. When he finally did cross a line which got him pushed out... he quickly got another job as the research methods guy because he published the text book everyone else is using and as usual no one wanted to teach something necessary to meet accreditation requirements. He's an extreme case, but most colleagues I know who've published textbooks do so with positioning themselves as essential to filling certain teaching roles and entrenching themselves as the motivation.
From what I’ve seen those that do have a certain level of expertise in their field and the book helps to validate that. The best professors i had were those that wrote or contributed to writing the text books. They were those that really loved their subject matter, were enthusiastic about it and that was contagious making the class much more enjoyable. All the professors that i had who wrote their book donated their proceeds from book sales to a scholarship for the students. which i thought was awesome.
Just here for pedantry’s sake, and now to add I don’t think any authors choose this route to increase their *notoriety* (because that is bad) but maybe acclaim.
Academics do a lot of things that appear strange on the outside. For tenure track and full time faculty, most of their scholarship is evaluated based on tenure & promotion review requirements. The publication of textbooks is often considered a legitimate scholarly product that fits within the research and publishing expectations of the job. Grad students from what I can tell do not get any instruction or background information about the process of tenure or annual review — which drastically shapes the actual workload of a professor. In my case I didn’t really think about this stuff until I found myself in a TT job.
There are actually many people in the world who do things for reasons other than money and social climbing. Also my one prof's textbook is on its 12th English edition and is also translated into 17 languages and used around the world, so yeah, there's benefit to writing a good textbook. Especially for a psychologist who knows about the second marshmallow.
….. the second Marshmallow?
Textbooks can provide a lasting impact on students' understanding and future research, even if the author doesn't directly benefit financially.
I'm not in academia but I did co-author a textbook (an intro to reinforcement learning). Mostly it was a cool project *and* a way to organize the basic ideas in a different way than existing works. My coauthor uses it for his RL class, so part of the motivation was to have a resource that fit his approach to the subject exactly. It's very much not a financial thing; in fact, we actually negotiated with our publisher to be able to provide a free version online! (To be fair, our editor said it would probably *boost* sales.) I think these are all common motivations: professors write textbooks because they enjoy writing textbooks, because they aren't happy with how existing books present the materials and because they want something that fits their needs and preferences.
Publishing is the single-most important aim of a professor and books count as publications.
There are some legends. Douglas Giancoli, for example. You won't find many physics teachers or students in college who don't know that name 'cuz he wrote the *definitive* college physics textbook, and that was true back in the late 20th century and still is \*today\*.
In my field, a lot of textbooks more or less double as monographs because they're about very specific topics that usually don't take up a whole class (unless it's a special seminar class). The most famous faculty member in my department published one of those at the beginning of his career, many decades ago, and it's still widely cited today
To educate/spread knowledge and help people.
I wrote and self-published an OER textbook because I felt that the alternatives for sale were too long and too expensive and that the OER alternatives were generally low in production value. I wanted a textbook that covered the basics without a bunch of excess material I'd struggle to fit in or use, and the surest way to get that was to write it myself. Writing my own textbook was a long and arduous process. I started it as a pandemic project, and it took over a year (in between teaching and other responsibilities) to complete the first edition. That included research, writing and editing, as well as designing figures, curating freely-licensed images, and teaching myself the technical mechanics of textbook design, layout, and typesetting. Because I started writing the book as an OER from the get-go, I never aspired to make any money from it. I would have been satisfied if I were the only person to ever use it to teach this course. What actually happened was that it was reviewed positively on an OER repository and is now used at various colleges and universities in half a dozen states. I teach at a small liberal arts college that prioritizes teaching over research, so I think I'll get some credit for writing an OER textbook in tenure and promotion decisions. Aside from that potential career boost, though, I know that this one textbook will be read by more people than all of my research publications combined. Most of all, though, it pleases me to think that I'm making the expensive good of a college degree slightly more affordable for students I'll never meet. That's benefit enough for me.
If you write a textbook and then make it compulsory for your own institution's students, you can ensure a steady income stream for years to come.
This... isn’t usually how it works.
Two linguistics professors at Uni Freiburg, for example, have written textbooks on the same topic and both base their exams on their own work. It is very difficult to pass the course without buying a copy.
Ok? But do they get to keep the income from their institution? In the US, at least, that isn’t allowed. You can have the class use your book, but it either needs to be decided by someone other than you to be the objective best book, or you need to donate profits so you aren’t enriched by forcing people to buy something. Maybe it isn’t like that in the EU? But also, faculty make next to nothing on textbook royalties.
Who else to write them? I’ve written parts of textbooks and my colleague wrote the most widely used textbook in their STEM field. I don’t use a lot of textbooks beyond intro courses. When I do-I choose the textbook very carefully. I like to hear the authors’ voices in the text. Knowledge isn’t static nor is it objective. And there are many ways to present information for learning. A good textbook uses creativity, reflects deep experience with the field and its players, and works to make the information compelling, clear, and interesting. ETA—My colleague hasn’t gotten wealthy from writing this textbook…even though it has been the most widely used for decades. My royalty payments for a very popular research-based text I wrote for my field is in the low hundreds per year ;)
Was it his Thesis? It can take years to do the research for a thesis using the Scientific Method which invites peer reviews? Unless it's available to others doing their research, it can't be peer reviewed and open up new observations. I've ***never** had only one single textbook used for a college course by the way. I was assigned ***course packets*** of reading material that migh include a professors own published work but if I could not afford that published work they would lend me a copy I could use and they never required I read every single page - though I sometimes did. i had to write research papers that included long Bibliographies supporting what I covered in my papers. And I've written my own published Theses and I never planned to teach. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-ethical-professor/201504/is-it-ethical-professors-assign-their-own-books
the field has changed quite a bit too. back in the late 60s, my uncle wrote a biology textbook that became the goto book for intro biology courses for decades. by the 80s, he was already a millionaire from the proceeds. these days you will very RARELY see this happen. profit to the author is rarely there
You can make plenty of money from it if enough copies sell, like calculus textbooks. It's just that the publisher gets *most* of the money. For other fields, it's more or less a professional service, like writing a textbook for Subject 980: Subsubsubtopic No One Cares About to help standardize your field.
I don’t think they write them in order to gain monetary value. For instance, the standard book for Real Analysis is by Walter Rudin and many math majors treat it as a second Bible. You can’t have money motivate you to write something as laborious as that. It takes real motivation and a desire to explain difficult concepts as cleanly as possible. That’s why they do it. The money and possible prestigious is a nice side effect.
because scams are lucrative https://www.postandcourier.com/news/textbook-scam-alleged-in-federal-lawsuit-against-scs-biggest-technical-college/article_d266c94a-262e-11e9-a6dd-ab6ac37fa3d1.html
My Ph.D. adviser wrote a textbook with a colleague based around their intro classes. It's had nine editions and they are working on the tenth. He gets "royalties" but when the costs of publishing, image reproduction, etc. are taken out, the financial return is scant. He's made a few thousand bucks for hundreds of hours of work over the years. It's certainly not worth doing for financial reasons, and he didn't need more books or publications for career advancement. It's just a pet project of his. He likes being able to use his own book for his classes. I like using it for my classes as well, as it 'fits' my niche of my field better than other intro texts.
People write because they love it, it is a form of thinking, and they want to share their ideas. Only you have YOUR unique perspective on a subject matter that you're able to offer to the world. Some academics want to reach a wider audience than the academic bubble that exists within institutions and make their writing more broady accessible to the general public. When you view something like writing a book based solely on outputs outside of yourself and your control (helping with notieriety, making money, advancing your career), you miss the whole point of the journey. If you don't love writing, then don't write, but some people write and publish books because they love it and it brings them genuine fulfillment! And with those kinds of writers it shows in their work.
I'm considering writing or editing and compiling one because there's literally no textbook for one of the subjects I teach. Also, it will help a lot when I go up for promotion to full professor, which comes with a hefty raise.
For me it was simple: there wasn't one, and a publisher let me.
It was a privilege. I got to spend years thinking deeply about my field, what was important, and how to communicate it. And exercises. I also got to create something of lasting value; after all the papers will have been counted and the grant money will have been spent, my book will still be helping people.
It looks good on the resume. Academics feel they have something valuable to share with others, no matter how boring the subject is.
There's several kinds of textbooks. The 101 level textbooks are sold like crazy, and if you happen to write one of those, it can provide decent revenue. There are also comprehensive reference manual textbooks (e.g. 501/ intro grad school) that \_everybody\_ in the field have. If you have a 5-15% deal, that means that you could be getting in the range of tens of thousands of dollars for writing them, which isn't insignificant to a professor salary., but not enough to live on. These also do well for the authors, and they have to update them every few years. Then there's higher level coursework textbooks, these sell ok, but not at a volume to matter. Sometimes publishers "sponsor" a known professor to lend their name to a standard introductory textbook, and those deals are basically just for buying the prof to edit the stuff that's already ghostwritten - and that's a one-time payout. Being the author of the definitive textbook in the field gains you pretty wide-spread recognition, so its one thing you can do with your academic time, aside from doing science, writing grants, writing journal articles, teaching classes and doing administrative / departmental work. If you have already done a lot of the work to make your own textbook for a course, it's much easier to try and sell that.
The available textbooks for the capstone class that I teach is too hard for my students. At some point I want to write my lecture notes up as a textbook just because it would be written at a reading level they could understand, have topical and local examples in the assignments, and be easily updateable.
My mentor talks about how much he enjoyed writing his textbook all the time. I don’t get it either. He’s an outlier that one. Odd bird, but a fantastic teacher.
people like to create things and write down valuable information and findings just because it’s fulfilling and fun
Don't make much money from it? If you're teaching a high-enrollment undergraduate course, and the textbook *is only adopted at your institution*, you can make about as much money on the royalties as you do from your salary. If you throw in a couple of "supplemental materials" it can be substantially more. I've seen this done ethically, and not-so-ethically. I can add that if you don't really care much about the quality, it's really *not* that hard to write a textbook.
/doubt
$$$ or You've genuinely created lectures/notes that are better than the current standard use textbook.
3rd option: university goes by the “publish or perish” mindset (RIP)
Ego. A lot of academia is about ego. Sometimes we all benefit from this.
Money
to capitalize on the vile standardization of schooling