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The Benefits of Sharing your Work:
A while back, during a presentation I was making at a faculty workshop, an instructor sitting at the back of the room looked unconvinced as I described the advantages of using open textbooks in the classroom. When the discussion turned to open licenses and how they worked, she raised her hand and asked, “Why should I give my work away?” I had heard this question before and thought it was a legitimate concern. However, that instructor’s blunt query made me think about my own writing experiences and my decade of work with other authors before I joined BCcampus. I remembered a time — before the Internet and open-copyright licenses — when a writer’s livelihood depended on the sale of their articles and books.
I understood an author’s hesitancy about giving their work and the rights to their work away for free. However, things have changed. The sharing and collaboration of material and permissions between educational writers and teachers have and are leading to many good things, though it can feel like a sacrifice to the individual author.
I concluded that individuals asking the question — Why should I give my work away? — have two concerns: one, they worry that by giving away their work they won’t make any money. And two, allowing others to make changes to their textbook means losing control over the content. Let’s take a look at the financial concern first.
I’ll lose money
I wrote two books and was certain that my hard work on each would pay off with a big cheque. Like many book authors, even those who sign a contract with a big publisher, I didn’t see any royalties after my initial advance. But maybe self-published books are different, I thought.
Not so, according to a 2013 survey conducted by Dana Beth Weinberg [New Tab] where she analyzed responses from almost 5,000 authors who took the 2013 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey. She found that nearly one-fifth of self-published authors earned no income from their writing and for those that did, the annual median income was less than $5,000. Even authors who worked with a publisher only made between $5,000 and $10,000 per year.[1]
So you’re probably not going to miss out on riches by sharing your work.
Now for concern number two: won’t let others make changes to your textbook undo your hard work, steal your control, and lead to chaos?
I’ll lose control over the content
In his chapter, “You Can’t Sell Free, and Other OER Problems,” in Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science[2], Robert Biswas-Diener discusses the concern many authors, and potential authors, have with their “control over content” if released into the Commons. He says:
Most peoples’ concerns regarding losing control of their intellectual property or reputation are understandable in spirit but do not play out in fact. A large part of the openness in OER is related to removing obstacles to sharing information.
What’s in it for me?
If you’re no