If you share the materials from a course you already teach, you earn a royalty on the textbooks they help build. This page is what you earn, when you are paid, and what we ask you for.

You earn up to 2% of the net revenue of every textbook your materials helped build.

Net revenue. Students buy the textbook online, at their campus bookstore or from an ebook store. Whoever sells it keeps a share, usually between 2% and 30%, and the rest reaches us, less any refunds. That is net revenue. Your royalty is a share of what reaches us, not of the price the student pays.

What sets your rate. Your rate depends on what you share.

Other materials, such as slides on their own, can be accepted too, at a rate we agree with you. A student pays about $125 for the textbook. After the store's share, about $100 reaches us, and 2% of that is about $2. The exact amount varies with the textbook's price and where the student buys it, but this is typical for our textbooks.

When your rate is agreed. We confirm your rate with you in writing after we evaluate the materials you submit and before we use them to build anything. That rate then applies to every version built from them.

How many of you there are. Each textbook is built from the materials of up to ten instructors. Your rate is your own and is not split with the others.

You earn royalties on students at every university, including your own, unless your agreement with us says otherwise. Some instructors prefer not to earn from assigning their own book. If that is you, tick Exclude royalties from students at my university on your Royalties page. If your agreement already leaves out your own university, the box starts ticked and marked Set by your agreement, and you can change it yourself. While it is ticked, students at your university earn you no royalties. Each change applies from that day, and anything already earned stays yours. How it works.

Instructors are often asked whether they profit from the material they assign. While Exclude royalties from students at my university is ticked, you can say plainly that you do not. Wording you can paste into a syllabus:

“I contributed teaching materials that were used to build this textbook. I receive no royalty from any student at this university.”

If your institution has a conflict-of-interest process, that is usually what it wants to see. We are happy to confirm your arrangement and the student price in writing. Ask us from the help center.

Royalties are currently paid twice a year with the rest of your earnings, every September and every February. This schedule may change from time to time, and we will tell you at least 30 days before a change takes effect.

Earnings are counted per semester. Summer is included in the spring semester and winter is included in the fall semester, so there are two statements a year: the spring semester is paid in September, and the fall semester is paid in February.

A royalty is counted once the money it is based on has reached us, and that money arrives steadily through the semester as students take up access. Because it travels through an intermediary first, some of it lands a few months after a student pays. Payments are made by bank transfer. If you are in the US, each January we send you a Form 1099-MISC for the royalties we paid you the year before.

We build a title in versions. You earn on every version your materials were used to build, for as long as that textbook sells. It is not tied to a calendar year and it is not tied to the life of the title.

Each version is a new textbook. When we build one, we choose its source materials afresh. If your materials are among them, or the version reuses what we made from them, you earn on that version. If neither, you don't. Anything already earned is still paid.

Once we have built a textbook, the text, videos and questions we made are ours, and we can keep using them in later versions. If a later version reuses text, videos or questions we made from your materials, you earn on that version too.

Only what you already have from teaching the course:

You make nothing new. There is no writing to do, no recording session to sit for, and no review cycle to keep up with.

We evaluate what you send and tell you within two weeks whether we will use it. Until then, it is used only for evaluation, and you can withdraw it at any time. Before we use anyone's materials, we email them, hold a Zoom call and agree their rate. If we are not going to use yours, we delete them within 30 days. They are not kept, and they are not used to build anything.

Your materials stay yours. You are free to reuse and publish them however you like. We use them as source material only. Your recordings and slides tell us what a course in this subject actually covers and in what order. The text, the videos and the questions we publish are generated from that understanding. Apart from credited featured items, we do not republish your materials, and we do not train AI models on them.

Featured materials. As we build the textbook, we may decide to use or closely adapt a specific item of yours, such as a spreadsheet model, a slide design or a worked example. When we do, we credit you beside it, and it shows in your account. It stays yours: we only hold a license to use it, and your rate doesn't change. Using a general approach, or your way of explaining a topic, is not featuring.

Every title lists its contributing instructors by name. The page says plainly what that means: you provided the teaching materials the textbook was built from, and you did not write or review the text. We never use your face or voice, or make a digital replica of you.

Your earnings pages show the materials you have sent, with the status of each, the textbook it was used in and what it has earned; your royalties earned, paid and outstanding each month, each semester and in total; and how many students your materials have reached, in total, by semester and by university.

Example of your earnings page. Your figures will differ.

This article describes the contributing-instructor deal. If you signed a creator agreement with us, those terms stand as agreed. Your share, and how it is worked out, are what your contract says, and nothing here changes them.

These terms apply from 1 October 2026. The terms that applied when you contributed are the terms we pay on. We may change how royalties work for future contributions, and any change applies only from the day we publish it. The full terms are in the Contributing Instructor Agreement. You sign it once we agree your rate, by hand, through an e-signature service or by clicking to accept.

If anything here is unclear, email us at [email protected] and we'll answer. We can't give personal tax advice, so for tax questions please speak to your own advisor.