Strange offer

March 1, 2011 7:25 AM

I've just received a request to use one of my online articles in a textbook. Is this weird?

I just received an email from Bedford/St. Martin's requesting permission to use one of my Suite101 articles in a textbook that they're publishing in December 2011. This seems a little weird to me. Do textbooks generally use articles that they've sourced off the internet?

They sent me a contract to sign that includes "print fee" and "electronic fee" with blanks after them. Am I supposed to write in how much I want them to pay me for rights? I don't know anything about this stuff, but the whole thing seems a little off to me.

Any insights?

I don't want to post the whole thing here, but if you know about this stuff I can send you more information.

Thanks!

posted by crazylegs to Work & Money (5 answers total)

My former employer had an online article picked up by a textbook publisher, and it was legit. I think they're always on the lookout for inexpensive sidebar material. Don't know what/if he was paid, though.
posted by richyoung at 7:35 AM on March 1, 2011

My university textbooks used source material from the internet as well as traditional academic journals. They used the material as direct quotes, as citations that became part of the book's discussion and explanations, and in a few cases, the entire articles were reproduced as an appendix of "further information on this topic." These articles reproduced in entirety were frequently used as source material for assignments in the form of "summarize this article, and discuss whether it presents a convincing case for X. What strengths and weaknesses are there, and do you agree with the author's position on X?" I have no idea what your article is about, but could it be possible this is what the book writers have in mind?

I have no helpful comment to make about the wording of the contract though. Hopefully someone else knows more than me.
posted by talitha_kumi at 7:37 AM on March 1, 2011

I wrangle reprint publication requests for my work and we get a ton of requests from textbook companies. Much of what we produce is available only online. So, yes, this is normal.

Unfortunately, I can't help with fees, since we don't charge them.

But somewhere on the request they sent you will be a place for how it should be credited, and you should make sure that it's credited in such a way that the textbook reader could find the original without too much trouble. Our credit line and permissions language looks like this:

Thank you for your copyright permission request. This is to grant permission to you and your organization for one-time use* of the material cited in your request. Permission is granted with the understanding that the material is not to be altered or presented out of context.


Please source the material as follows:

"[Name of Publication]", ([Publication number, if there is one]) [Our organization name], [Month/Year of publication of original] (you could include the URL here if you wanted to)


Our permission statement is:

This information was reprinted with permission from the [my work]. [Bunch of information about my work that's irrelevant for your purposes.]

*The "one-time use" language, for us, means "once per edition, including print and electronic rights" - so if they want to include that same piece in a future edition of the textbook, they have to ask us again.
posted by rtha at 8:55 AM on March 1, 2011

It's not uncommon for these publishers to source material online, especially for undergrad textbooks where academic journal articles may not be appropriate, as talitha_kumi says. The textbook I'm teaching from this semester for a freshman-level class has probably 20 such articles in it, and the book gives full attribution to the original author and summarizes the original context (such as, Sam Samson first wrote this blog post on his personal website in September 2009 in response to ... or "Article Title" was originally published on [name of website] in [date] by [author] and [yada, yada, context]).

Sometimes there are student works included in a textbook as well, and one professor I knew would solicit these by email on a listserve (Hey, anyone have a good student sample paper on Topic X in Genre Y?). The student then would be contacted to give permission, but I don't think they were compensated. Another professor hired grad students to write these student samples. However, many textbooks also want some "real world" writing samples, so this doesn't seem odd to me.

However, they're probably soliciting a lot of these types of articles in the hope that a few authors will respond to their request, so your stuff might never actually appear in the book after all if other authors respond as well.

Bedford/St. M is a reputable publisher. Is there any contact information for someone you can contact there about what sort of fee range is common/acceptable and can clarify what you actually need to put in those blanks?
posted by BlooPen at 9:00 AM on March 1, 2011

Cool. St. Martin's is a legit publisher, so this is likely a legit offer. Call them up an dask for more information; could be an opening to more opportunities.
posted by theora55 at 9:56 AM on March 1, 2011