About $3000.
That’s how much law professor Brian Tamanaha estimates he has made for each of three books he has published. He says he gets about $5 for every hardcover that’s sold, and $2 for every paperback. Needless to say, he wasn’t interested in figuring the hourly rate of return for his labor.
I never thought people made serious dough from writing an academic book, but dang. Good reality check.
Since reading his article I’ve asked around and heard some unsavory stories about academic publishers. One professor was given a choice by a prestigious university press: he could either cut most of his footnotes, or agree not to see any of the profit from book sales until 800 copies had been sold. As an upstanding, principled academic, he decided to keep the footnotes.
Every now and then the press would contact him to let him know how many books had been sold. For a while things were decent. Two hundred sold, then 300…and then the letters stopped.
After several months he wondered how things were going, so he contacted the press. Besides current sales, he was curious about how many books had been published to begin with, so he asked. The answer?
Seven hundred and ninety-nine.
Why do it?
Brian’s conclusion is that writing books is not about the money. It can’t be. Instead, he says:
…for many authors the most important factor is our conviction that the ideas and information contained in the book matter. Above all else, we want the book to be read in the hope that people will think about what we have written.
Sounds about right.
And for those who still want to profit from academic books, consider selling them.
(P.S. Kudos to Brian for using a haiku to pitch his book!)
4 comments ↓
Right On! Do what you do because it needs to be done, write what you write because it needs to be written, and for that matter, blog what you blog because it needs to be blogged (is blogged a word?) keep on bloggin in the free world.
peace
Proof that there’s big $ in academics:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/.....907346.htm
I feel that a person of your stature should feel reasonably well assured that it’s only a matter of time . . .
@Mark: Preach it!
@Matslacker: I’m not holding my breath. But thanks for reminding me that I’ve been meaning to write about a Charles Taylor lecture I saw in Berlin last summer (on 6/6/06 to be precise).
I guess only the publisher wins, if anyone.
Students have to pay inflated prices, and the author doesn’t even make anything.
And if there is a successful textbook that sells a lot, the publisher will change it every two or three years so that no one can buy it used.
Sort of like Norton’s Anthology. The same works of literature have been in that book for the last 30 years AT LEAST, but they change it up so that the page numbers don’t match up so that students can’t just buy the same used copies over and over again.
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