When I sat down with my publisher at Pearson to negotiate terms for writing the Boost! Longman Integrated Skills Series, the issue of material for teacher's guides came up. My publisher looked me in the eye and said in no uncertain terms "Don't worry, you will of course be paid royalties from the sales of the teacher's guides. We'll use the same rate as per the student books you write. Does that sound okay?"
It did sound okay. Filling in the gaps and providing answer keys and explanations for teachers is laborious work - sometimes taking as much time and effort as that involved in the actual material writing for the main student books. I said yes.
Almost four years later, and more than two since the complete series of 20 student books and 20 teacher's guides became available (with my name clearly spelled out on the covers), I have yet to see a single cent from sales of those TGs. My regular enquiries into the matter (usually after two or three rounds of completely ignoring my emails about this matter) came back with vague explanations along the lines of:
- Sales and revenue from teacher's guides are pretty much negligible*
- Most schools just photocopy them
- Teacher's guides are mostly given to schools free of charge
And then, about a month ago, the person this matter was handpassed to (as the original publisher had gone on to enjoy a pretty massive promotion and perhaps felt such enquiries were unworthy of his attention) finally confessed that Pearson Asia ELT had no intention whatsoever of paying me a single dime for any of the work that appeared in the teacher's guides.
There are many potential lessons from this experience (the biggest of which for me are: (1) don't start doing any work on something for which a contract has not already been signed, and (2) don't take it for granted when a publisher tells you they represent "the utmost integrity and ethical standards in ELT publishing" that this is automatically true), but as an eternal optimist, I'd like to focus on the silver lining to this (for me) particularly noxious Pearson cloud.
You see, as a writer of ELT materials, I don't particularly mind not getting paid for something that helps teachers do their jobs better...
... so long as you the teacher (or school) are not paying for it.
Now, according to those explanations above for not paying a writer for his work (though I'm not sure they are representative of a fine publishing tradition encompassing almost 400 years, and somehow I can't imagine Thomas Longman trying this sort of thing on as one of only six official booksellers chosen to work with Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary), the people at Pearson (1) expect to give most teacher's guides away free of charge, and/or (2) publish them with the prediction that they will mostly just be photocopied and not generate any income.
So please, if you are a teacher using (or interested in using) the Boost! Longman Integrated Skills Series, make sure you contact your local Pearson representative and request your free teacher's guides!
There are 20 of them in total with my name on them. They make for an impressive set of resources on your teacher's room shelves. Knowing that you are getting them at no charge and are hopefully getting lots of ideas and help from them will go some way towards making those hours in front of a computer (in a tiny apartment in Korea, exhausted from writing after a full day's teaching and then a half-sleepless night to the tune of our recently born baby boy) feel somehow worth it.
Contact your local Pearson representative. Demand to get your TGs for free.
If they make any sort of fuss, tell them the author sent you.
:-)
* I assert that the idea of revenue being "negligible" may differ significantly in interpretation depending on whether you are an author or a giant ELT publisher generating billions of dollars in profit each year. I also assert that actual amount of revenue is irrelevant - it is the ethics involved.
