The vast majority of college textbook supplement projects use work-for-hire agreements. This means that you create the supplement, you get paid the agreed-upon amount, and the publisher owns what you created — entirely.
Important features of work-for-hire contracts and their products:
- You do not own the copyright to what you have created, the publisher does.
- The publisher can do whatever it wants with what you created.
- The publisher can choose to credit you as the author-or not.
- The publisher can reuse and repurpose your content in any way it chooses.
In most cases you will be credited as the author. However, one aspect of writing textbook supplements on a work-for-hire basis can be frustrating. Say you write an instructor’s manual for the first edition of an introductory sociology textbook and you are duly credited as the author. Well, when the second edition of the textbook comes out, the publisher may hire someone else to update the instructor’s manual you so lovingly created. And even though that person may only add or change about 5 percent of the material, meaning 95% of what’s in that updated manual is your work, often that person will get sole credit as author and you get none.
Royalty payments are rare for supplement authors. For royalties to be an option, you would typically need to create a supplement that would be sold to students, such as a study guide or a solutions manual for a math or science book. Even for such supplements, the editor will still likely offer you a lump-sum, work-for-hire payment. I’ll discuss royalties in more detail in a later post.
In general, you want a work-for-hire agreement. That way you know you’ll be paid and when you’ll be paid.
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