Blurts

A recent post from The Commons proposed that universities might drastically reduce the student cost of textbooks if the institutions funded faculty members to write textbooks. I wrote a couple of textbooks for Houghton Mifflin that eventually ended up with Cengage and had at least one being sold for 15 years. I have an interest in alternate models for textbooks that eventually led me to complete a deal with Cengage allowing me to take back my copyright and explore the alternative model that interested me through Amazon. This post is not about my and my wife’s personal story as textbook authors, but I did want to argue that I have both relevant experiences and an interest in alternate approaches to educational content.

I do believe that expertise and effort deserve compensation. Where this compensation should come from is the issue. I also believe that some folks are better at this than others. This is true of teaching and research and I see a quality textbook as kind of a combination with the added requirement being the capacity to write effectively. With authors writing for textbook companies, the company takes the risk on quality. I am not so naive as to believe that companies always make the best decisions and other factors do come into play, but it is in the financial interest of companies to put their support and reputation behind good products. Since, this requires that the companies expect a profit on their decisions, the issue is whether this capitalist advantage is worth this extra cost to the consumer. It is important to understand that a personally authored textbook does not come with the editorial expertise, design, and multimedia professionals that come with a commercial contract. You also get sales reps, but it really is the first set of resources that are most important to the quality of a project. Because I believe in the contribution made by quality textbooks, I am willing to say that whether OER options are close enough is an interesting, but unresolved question. The OER research is pretty messy by research standards so whatever others read into some of the simplistic conclusions I see are likely motivated by personal perspectives that scholars would not apply to other areas of research. Some type of federally or grant organization effort would be required to really evaluate the quality issue. Unfortunately, most of the funded efforts are more focused on distribution than content creation.

The Commons article proposes a couple of interconnected ideas. The first is that universities should fund textbook development and the second that such textbooks could be remixed by others as a kind of Creative Commons resource.

So here is how I see the experience for an author. Because of the assumption of a remix opportunity for any instructor, this would have to be considered a one shot product for the original author as anyone could revise with no continuing benefit to the initial author. The question becomes how much would it take to entice an author to write a textbook from scratch with no real opportunity for the revision market. To be fair, a commercial author is taking a significant chance even when receiving a small guarantee (say $5000) from a publishing company. The effort could easily be a one and done. Spending the time to author a “one and done” probably means your take would be less than $10,000 for the generation of a 1000+ page manuscript. This is a process that requires considerable research so the writing and revision is only part of the process. The notion that you simply sit down and write based on what you teach was not my experience.

I can’t really remember the time required for our initial product, but it was spare time during the academic year and at least one summer. I could generate a revision in a summer or in about one month per chapter using downtime during the year. Just to be clear spending time in this way comes at the expense of other commitments. Merit pay for me was primarily based on grant submissions and research publications. Summer teaching money would also be an option to spending the summer doing the research and writing for a textbook. With a published book, you have some sense of what you make or lose in this trade off. Working on a first effort for a commercial publisher, you have no idea if you are making a financial mistake. This would be a little different if your were paid a fixed amount to generate a product.

Here is the final issue. I cannot imagine that the institution I worked at for most of my academic career (University of North Dakota) would invest in my time to write a textbook. Even as proven commercial author, I don’t think it would ever happen. This would mean to author an open source textbook and do so with some compenation I would probably have to search for grant funding. I would assume that a Foundation would be the most likely source (e.g., Bush Foundation). This means I would have to invest time in searching for resources and this type of grant brings little in indirect benefits to the institution so there is little local recognition if successful. What you would receive would be the money you could generate for a salary. This would be what I would try if I was motivated to invest time in such a venture. How about $20,000 for a summer commitment and a one shot product?

Or, your students can purchase my Kindle book for $9 (I keep about $6) and use my related online resources at no cost. This is my hobby project and as a retiree this is my professional hobby.