How much should I charge to write an ESL textbook?

June 9, 2007 5:31 AM

How much should I charge to author a textbook for a Taiwanese company? A Taiwanese publishing company has asked me to author a short English textbook (the final edit should have around 35,000 words). I have a good amount of experience with ESL (teaching, creating new material, worked on multi-media stuff, etc) and I'm doing my PhD in linguistics now - but I'm no expert. They've asked me tell them how much I'd like to earn. What is a fair price for this? (Either per word or for the entire project.) Should my first offer be a bit higher than what I expect, or is that sleazy somehow? I'd appreciate any advice - Thanks!
posted by mateuslee to education (8 comments total)

shot in the dark - £10k
posted by trashcan at 7:09 AM on June 9, 2007

I don't think it's sleazy to aim high on an opening bid. Don't know anything about textbooks, but I do know freelancers in the US who get $1/word for journalistic writing.

(If you're expected to secure permissions to reprint ANYTHING in the textbook, be sure that doesn't come out of your compensation.)
posted by rdn at 7:39 AM on June 9, 2007

Just went through this with my own adventure in freelancing. If they're asking you to name your price without offering any guidelines as to what they consider reasonable, then definitely shoot for more than you expect. They can always bargain you down if they think it's excessive, but after you've made that initial offer you can't bargain them back up. I think it's easy to feel afraid of appearing greedy in these sorts of situations, but if they don't like your price, they can always offer you less.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 8:41 AM on June 9, 2007

I am in the educational publishing industry in the US, and we usually pay $10,000 US for a short book like that. But we are kind of cheap. Ask for $15-20K, see what they say. Aim a little higher than you originally think, because there is probably a lot of post-submission work they will ask you to do (i.e. revisions). Can you get in on the royalty game? That would be even more valuable than an extra thousand up front. If they are unwilling to give you royalties, see if they will give you a "kicker," an extra amount of money to be awarded if/when a certain number (15,000 or whatever) of these books sell.
I don't know if any of this will be applicable in Taiwan, but it is always worth a try. Do be willing to come down in price if they are put off by your original quote.
Don't go by price per word; try to work out your hourly rate and estimate the amount of time it will take to write and revise the book as a whole.
posted by rmless at 8:48 AM on June 9, 2007

I was thinking of going for $0.03 or $0.04/word... Does that seem reasonable?
posted by mateuslee at 8:51 AM on June 9, 2007

There's not a lot of money in writing textbooks, even if you go for a royalties deal, unless you write one of the top books in your particular field. Even then you'll still have to keep the day job.

If you do make money, via royalties, it'll take a long time to come through (quite literally years), and you'll be expected to write second and third editions.

Unless you absolutely love the subject, and are evangelical about it, the only real reason to write a textbook is so you can tell people that you wrote a textbook on your resume/CV. It's a professional thing.

If you do it just for the money, you'll just end-up burning yourself out, especially if you're already working on a PhD. In fact, you might get part-way in and have to drop-out when you find it's just not worth the effort. And it will be a LOT of effort. Authoring a book goes beyond just sitting down and tapping away at a word processor. There's structuring, researching, and then lots and lots and lots of revisioning.

That said, there's a huge sense of achievement in writing a book, and it's almost worth it for that alone.

I speak as an author and erstwhile textbook editor.
posted by humblepigeon at 9:46 AM on June 9, 2007

I'm an editor at an ESL publisher in Taiwan. The going rate for mass-market ESL books is around NT$3~5/word (US$0.09~0.15). Depending on the devilish details, the rate for a textbook should be slightly higher.

Ask for royalties. Ask about international rights. (Many books here are sold to publishers in China, and a few make their way to Japan and Korea.) And ask about taxes, which could reduce your payment by 20%.

Humblepigeon nailed it. It's low pay and hard work, but worthwhile if you have other reasons for doing it besides the money.
posted by ultrogonic at 10:47 AM on June 9, 2007

Thanks for the tips - this isn't my first time doing this, so I'm not totally blind - and no, I'm not doing it for the money - rather just for the CV... Truth be told, I'm an aspiring theoretical phonologist with little interest in this sort of thing - I just think its cool and I also think that these sorts of connections and experiences may often lead somewhere interesting, even indirectly.

Good idea about the royalties/international rights.

My plan now is to shoot for $0.15/word and go down a few cents if necessary. I'd like to charge hourly, as per rmless' suggestion - but in my experience, this really is unusual in Taiwan.

Thanks a lot everyone...

You've all stolen my MeFi virginity. How crude.
posted by mateuslee at 1:48 PM on June 9, 2007