College instructors teach courses in the subjects on which they
are experts. Faculty also share their expertise by writing books on the same
subjects. What should professors do when they’re tapped to lead courses on the
identical subject matter covered by their books?
Some
faculty choose to assign their own books as required reading, but are taking
great pains to avoid profiting much—if at all—from the sale of books to their
students, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In these cases, the books in question aren’t
particularly costly as textbooks go, so the issue centers on the royalties paid
to the authors.
Some
instructors negotiate special discounts with their publishers on behalf of
students to offset the royalties. Others estimate how much in royalties they
might receive from students’ purchases and donate that amount to a campus cause
or scholarship, or treat the class to lunch. For some classes, professors may
use just one or two chapters of their book and provide free printouts to
students.
Another
tactic is to allow students to borrow the instructor’s copies of the book,
although one professor noted in the article that only one student had accepted
his loan so far.
One
adjunct professor interviewed for the article considers most textbooks on the
same topic to be “interchangeable” and she “questioned the need for assigning
one’s own work.” In the event a professor decides to adopt his own book anyway,
she suggested asking the publisher to simply pocket the royalties on books sold
to the class instead of paying it.
