When It Comes to Contributors, Who's the Boss?

Well, maybe not that cranky.

What happens when an author the publisher is the "boss" over a contributor?

I'll tell you what. The publisher gets cranky.

Let's say you're authoring a book on, say, data management in hospitals. You feel fully confident in writing pretty much every chapter, but you feel less sure about the content in two of those chapters. So you decide to have someone else write those chapters for you.

That person would be a contributor, and their chapters (yes, I wrote "their" instead of "his or hers" or some other dastardly construct) would become part of your book, part of your intellectual material. Contributors are usually compensated for their contribution to the book, but are usually not part of the royalty structure.

In essence, the author hires the contributor to do some work -- in this case, to write two chapters -- and pays the person for that work. The author, then, is the "boss." The budget master. The decider.

This role can seem to conflict with the author's relationship with the publisher, in which the publisher is the boss, so to speak. When that happens, the author may turn to the publisher to do things he should be doing himself. (See how I switched gender up, there?)

Yeah, that's not good.

When you're the author, you are responsible for:

• Finding the contributor
• Telling the contributor exactly what you want done
• Negotiating with the contributor what he will be paid for each piece of work
• Reviewing the contributor's work
• Sending the work back to the contributor if it isn't what you wanted, and then working with the contributor to provide the correct content
• Performing a final review of the work to make sure it's exactly what you want
• Letting the publisher know exactly what you've asked the contributor for, what they supplied, and how much the publisher should pay, assuming the payments will come out of the author's royalties, the typical scenario

The publisher is generally, but not always, responsible for:

• Developing a contributor agreement based on specific information supplied by you, the author
• Sending the agreement for signatures, electronic or otherwise
• Securely storing the executed agreement
• Paying the fee for the contribution, usually when the book publishes, sometimes before

So don't ask the publisher to tell you what you should pay to a contributor. Don't ask the publisher, "Can you take care of paying Such And So for doing those chapters?" Don't assume the publisher will play a boss-like role in that author-contributor relationship, because that will make them cranky. (Whoops, went back to plural, there.)

Happy, good.

Cranky, baaaad.

How Publishers Pay Health Care Textbook Authors

"Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale." —Zig Ziglar

New authors often wonder how they'll get "oxygen" for the book they write. In health care educational publishing, two options are by far the most common, royalties and .work made for hire payments. Let's take a look at each one.

Royalties

The majority of health care textbook authors make money through royalties, an amount of money based on a percentage of sales of the book. The percentage typically used is called a net royalty, meaning that the actual payment will be based on what the publisher actually receives for each book sold.

The list price of a book might be $75.95, but because of discounts to distributors and chain bookstores, the publisher might average just $50.47 for an actual sale. The net royalty is calculated on that amount.

Royalties are often paid twice yearly, once in the spring and once in the fall, though some publishers distribute quarterly. Check with your publisher for their royalty payment schedule.

Work made for hire

Sometimes a health care publisher will form an agreement with one or more individuals to develop a book on a "work made for hire" basis, often abbreviated "work for hire" or WFH. In such cases the author is paid a certain amount to create certain content.

At that point the relationship usually ends. The publisher is typically free to do with that content whatever it wishes, and the author is free to write for another publisher, even on the same topic.

Payment in such cases, as a rule, is based on whether the author has supplied "acceptable" content. If the publisher deems the content acceptable, the payment is generated.

So, which is best?

There is no "best" answer to that question. With a royalty arrangement, the better the book sells the more the author makes. And then twice a year (or more, depending on the publisher), a check arrives without you having to lift a finger.

Royalty arrangements, though, mean that you won't receive any payment until well after the book is finished, bound, and plunked on a bookstore shelf. So the entire time you're writing the book, you're working without payment, something few of us are accustomed too.

For WFH arrangements, payment comes soon after you finish writing, no strings attached (generally). But then the payments are finished, no checks showing up in your mailbox every now and again. And if the book sells well, you won't share in that success; you'll have already made your money.

Either way you make money; often it's more a matter of when.

Behind the Scenes: Preparations for Proposing a New Book

When a potential author prepares a proposal for a new textbook, my work begins. Here's an admittedly incomplete list of the main tasks acquisitions folks like me need to complete before we can bring a formal book proposal to a decision making body.

• Work with author to refine proposal, table of contents, sample chapters, and such


• Create survey to gain feedback on project


• Find and assign reviewers to complete the survey


• Compile survey feedback and review with author


• 
  
  Request production estimate, which lists the various costs of each component of the book. To do that, I need to provide these estimates and other data:
  
  
  
  
  • Title and subtitle
  
  
  • Trim size
  
  
  • Number of book pages
  
  
  • Type of cover and binding
  
  
  • Number of colors for cover and interior (black-and-white interior is 1-color, black; black and, say, magenta interior is 2-color; what you call full color is 4-color to us, the colors being cyan [blue], magenta, yellow, and black)
  
  
  • Number of photos and how they will be supplied (film, hard copy, or electronic)
  
  
  • Number and approximate complexity of illustrations (for instance, 100 illustrations: 60% complex, 20% moderately complex, 20% simple)
  
  
  • Anticipated manuscript submission date
  
  
  • Anticipated publication date
  
  
  • Price and other business model considerations
  
  
  • Anticipated total fees for developmental editor
  
  
  • 
    
    Ancillaries to be offered, such as:
    
    
    
    
    • PowerPoints, including number of slides and images to be inserted
    
    
    • Test bank including number of test items
    
    
    • Instructor's guide, including number of pages and images to be inserted
    
    
    • Interactive software
    
    
    • Online resources
    
    
    • Image bank including number of images
    
    
    • Flash cards, including format (print, electronic on CD-ROM, electronic online), total number, and number of illustrations, if any
    
    
    • Accompanying workbook (which actually gets its own proposal and financials)
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Estimated cost of building ancillaries
  
  
  
  


• 
  
  Complete what we call here a gross profit estimate, or GPE, for which I need to supply the following:
  
  
  
  
  • Expected unit sales over life of title (LOT) for each market (MA, PA, NP, etc)
  
  
  • Expected unit sales for first year
  
  
  • Average discount for distributors and retailers
  
  
  • Number of complimentary copies needed to properly market the book
  
  
  
  


• 
  
  Prepare formal proposal document, including:
  
  
  
  
  • Overview of the product and ancillaries
  
  
  • Why the proposed author is the right person to write the right book at the right time for the right market
  
  
  • Summary of reviewer feedback
  
  
  • Royalty rate, amount of author grant, and other author-related financial information
  
  
  • 
    
    Full competitive summary, including:
    
    
    
    
    • Title, author, edition number, publisher, copyright year, ISBN, page count, price, and so forth
    
    
    • Ancillaries available
    
    
    • Strengths
    
    
    • Weaknesses
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Market analysis
  
  
  • Any other information we believe will help the decision making body, in my case the Editorial Board, determine whether to publish a book
  
  
  
  

Whew, no wonder I'm always behind!

How Much Will I Make from Authoring a Textbook for Allied Health?

Occasionally a potential author will ask about compensation before they have even written a book proposal. These educators (typically) have often asked a loved one for advice and then come back to me and say, "My husband/wife/friend/relative says I shouldn't write a book unless it makes sense financially. Can you tell me how much I can expect to make?"

I understand the concern, I really do, but until I have a proposal in hand, until I can really "see" what the book will be and where in the market it will best fit, I can't really talk about compensation.

These folks still deserve an answer, of course, and in a nutshell, this is what I tell them. (Keep in mind that I'm referring to authors of textbook publishers for allied health. Nursing textbook authors often make considerably more because there are so many more nursing students than those in any single discipline in allied health.)

You're thinking about writing a book for, say, medical assistants. The MA market is pretty solid, well over 150,000 students a year, but unless you're planning to author a book for a core course that all MA programs offer, you're looking at only a slice of that MA pie.

Even then, books for a core course are competing against a host of other textbooks, so take that slice and then divide it again.

If you're planning to write a book for a less ubiquitous course, or perhaps a book that supplements other books, your slice of the pie will be really small.

So know going into this that your book will most likely not make you rich, it just won't. You won't be able to send your kids through college on the royalties, but twice a year, in April and October, a nice little paycheck will arrive in your bank account.

If you're lucky, you could purchase some nice patio furniture with it or a lovely new rug for the dining room.

If you're really lucky, if your book sells really well, you could put a hefty down payment on a new car or install a new deck off your back door.

Only a precious few authors, though, make six-figure incomes for any single edition of their book.

Textbook authors by and large write because they have something to say, because they want to make an impact on their profession, because they want to earn the praise and respect of their peers, or for any number of other wonderful and fulfilling reasons, but the seldom do it for the money.

If someone's main reason for writing a textbook is to make money, they'll probably be disappointed. I'm not saying they won't make money, because they probably will. I mean, why would I sign a book that I believe isn't going to make us or the author money?

So a bit of advice if you're considering authoring a textbook. Don't do it purely for the money; you won't succeed. Do it for your profession and know that in April and October you'll receive a lovely little gift, which will make you glad you decided to write.