As an author I have been aware of custom book sales for some time. My own books have been customized over the years to provide instructors with books that meet their unique needs. In some cases an instructor or a department, in the case of departmental adoptions, will choose selected chapters from a book. In others they will choose selected chapters and add material of their own. Finally, there are those that combine chapters from several books to provide materials that meet the specific needs of their students. In these cases they select the “best” materials for their students and are able to use high quality ancillary materials created by the publisher.

Because of different factors such as number of credits for a specific course, unique need for specific content at a local level, and a variety of other factors, I have felt that the practice of using custom books is justified when it is the best option for students. Recently, however, I became aware of a practice that I had not encountered in the past. I became aware of a department at a university that publishes its own text for a required survey course. I have more than a little concern about the practice.

At the school mentioned above, faculty members are required to contribute chapters and the profits go to the department. In this case, and other similar cases, there are several concerns. Some relate to the profits going to departments rather than authors. Others relate to the ethics of producing and requiring use of departmentally produced books.

Some of my concerns are:

• Ethics of requiring scholarly work for departmental monetary gain.
  
  
• Ethics of requiring students to buy books with a goal of earning money for an academic department.
  
  
• Ethics of requiring faculty to produce scholarly work that would normally earn royalties for the author from a recognized publisher.
  
  
• Ethics of requiring faculty to produce scholarly work in areas outside their expertise.
  
  
• Questions about the overall quality of the work.
  
  
• Lack of ancillary materials typically provided by recognized publishers.
  
  
• Ethics of not considering competing texts that may meet student needs better than the departmental text.
  
  
• Failure to consider the best interests of students in selecting texts.

In the July 10, 2008 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Howard, raised concerns about the ethics of custom books for departmental profit. She noted that a Big 10 university recently ended a custom book deal that brought revenue to a university department because, as one university official noted, the university didn’t feel comfortable “making money on students like that.”