When I wrote my first textbook, I didn't realize it was even a textbook. My idea was a collection of materials for my students. I assembled the materials by hand at home on the kitchen table, took it to campus, and the department secretary typed it up. We then made a copy for all my students, and they were tested on it. Yes, the office secretary also typed the tests. In other words, the students were my guinea pigs. It was fine with them. They liked my materials better than their assigned text. That's why I compiled the material in the first place.

As I said, I hadn't planned the material for use beyond my classes. Then a publisher, scouting for an author, came along and asked for it. Currently it's in a third edition.

Now, some colleges, not mine, are wanting a slice of the royalties earned by their faculty-authors. My answer: No. I considered what I was doing at the time was a favor for my students -- and the college. I was going the extra mile.

Something else needs to be considered too. Few professors regard their teaching as an eight-hour-a-day job. I always did a lot of my college work at home. My guess, on writing, is that I probably did as much writing at home as on campus. The time would come out pretty equal. I don't feel like I misused the company's time.

Someone, I realize, might argue that the college had supplied the paper on which I wrote and also the time of the secretary who typed materials. But the material was mine. I created it. It was not mandated. It was not part of the job description.

Does this mean that my college shouldn't benefit at all from my enterprise. Hardly. When a faculty member writes a book, the college shares in the recognition. Good publicity should be reward enough.

I know, however, that the kind of author-college relationship I came to know over my career of teaching can be abused. I have seen graduate students have their entire theses typed by the department secretaries and then bound at the campus print shop at college expense. That wouldn't be so different from a book as far as I can tell: The students expected to make some money from their work, whether a better-paying job or perhaps royalties if they could finesse the theses into books. To me, though, this is going too far. Everything, I think, is relative.

I do know, however, that the tradition I've known is a good one. It encourages faculty to use college resources for academic writing (although not romance novels, although I expect some may have done that :-).

These new royalty-sharing proposals, which keep popping up at even the best colleges, seem aimed at faculty who take advantage and abuse the system. But, simplistically, they are applied to everyone. The result is counter-productive: The quality of the faculty output at a college requiring royalty sharing will suffer. Why give the college a cut of my extra work at home on my kitchen table?

We authors, more assertive now than we used to be, won't let it happen. If somehow it happens anyway, many of us, with less financial incentive for writing, will retreat from the arduous work of writing textbooks. That would be sad. Our teaching would lose the richness that comes from staying abreast and adding depth to the knowledge that makes us good authors and good teachers.