Timeline for Why are textbook authors often not the most famous/cited researchers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| May 23, 2018 at 15:29 | comment | added | Jeffiekins | Textbooks pay off better than you think, especially in the sciences. They are usually "refreshed" with a new edition every few years, which increases new book sales, and a book that costs multiple hundreds of dollars pays a reasonable royalty to the author. The other factor to consider is that writing a textbook takes a lot of time away from research. People doing research on a top level are probably not using their time so well to spend it writing a book containing (only) well-known aspects of their discipline. | |
| May 23, 2018 at 11:44 | comment | added | Maarten Buis | @SolarMike Sure, if you do that to make money, then that is possible, but you will have to write that for an undergraduate class in a large discipline. I have heard cases where such a book doubled the authors income or more. But more specialized textbooks will not come even close to pay off financially. | |
| May 23, 2018 at 11:13 | comment | added | Solar Mike | and a textbook in a specialised field will not sell in the numbers that a novel or piece of fiction will so the returns are not high... coupled with that is the expense of producing a quality text book cf a novel... | |
| May 23, 2018 at 11:10 | history | answered | Maarten Buis | CC BY-SA 4.0 |