Michael Arnzen

I recently contributed a chapter to a book called On Writing Horror which could become a textbook I assign some day in my graduate courses at Seton Hill University, where we have a Master's program in Writing Popular Fiction. I've been working, too, on editing an instructional text on that very subject -- Writing Popular Fiction -- along with an alum from the program. The longer I do this, the more closely aligned what I write and what I teach become.

This is ideally what most scholars do: produce scholarship, in the form of books and other publications. It would seem self-evidently beneficial for a student to take a course with a professor who "wrote the book" on the subject. The author is an authority on the subject and knows the book so well that she'd be the best person to teach from it.

But is there a conflict of interest when a teacher assigns a text of their own authorship to a class, earning royalties from the sales?

The American Association of University Professors' statement "On Professors Assigning Their Own Texts to Students" (available online at aaup.org) provides a great overview of the ethical issues this matter raises. As they put it, there is a risk of abusing their "captive audience":

Because professors are encouraged to publish the results of their research, they should certainly be free to require their own students to read what they have written. At the same time, however, students in a classroom can be a captive audience if they must purchase an assigned text.... Because professors sometimes realize profits from sales to their students (although, more often than not, the profits are trivial or nonexistent), professors may seem to be inappropriately enriching themselves at the expense of their students. (aaup.org)

The AAUP article goes on to show some model ways in which selected campus policies have dealt with the issue: from requiring committee (or supervisory) approval of required course texts to the school picking up the tab in order to distribute a professor's texts for free. These are all good ideas, but, as the AAUP also reminds us, it is ultimately best for faculty themselves to have the academic freedom to determine which texts are the best ones to teach a subject -- so long as they do not take advantage of students by abusing the authority inherent in their position.

Of course, this ethical dilemma doesn't just pertain to assigning one's own titles in a class just to make a few dimes in royalties. I've seen (and had) profs who have required texts written by friends, colleagues, spouses, and advisors; I've seen them require books that can only be purchased at one specific specialty bookstore or, with course packs, via one privileged copy shop; some have students buy them through their website, by clicking on a button with a hidden referral fee (a.k.a. a "kickback") built into the web code. While many of these professors probably have the best intentions, and probably teach these books well, the economic interest they have in these methods could raise questions, and there are alternative avenues of delivery that they should have taken into consideration.

In fact, faculty who do assign their own books can take the initiative and sometimes help students save money. They could put extra copies on reserve in the library or make electronic editions of the manuscript available free of charge. Or they could buy books at their contracted author discounts and pass the savings on to the students. Another idea might be to have course fees or a departmental budget pay for buying enough texts to cover a section, and then loan them to the students each term the course is taught, retrieving them at the end. In the very least, they could encourage students to sell them as used editions at the end of the term. And when money-saving measures are unrealistic (say, with a brand new title), one could promise -- in the syllabus, in writing -- to donate the personal royalties earned from class purchases to a course-related charity.

According to persuasive testimony in an article at Yale-Daily News on this issue, students are often more comfortable buying a professor-authored book for a class than the professor is selling them. Many students feel that having the author of the book in the classroom is a bonus and it can enhance the learning -- and since they are paying for the course already, paying for the textbook as well is not a problem. One issue the article mentions, however, is that sometimes the professor risks repeating the book verbatim, and the use of the book creates much redundancy. Profs who teach their own work need to be careful to use the book as but one avenue into the material, not a "bible" on the subject.

It may be better, in fact, to have a class actually help with the creation of a textbook rather than deliver the material to them post facto. It might actually make more sense to bring students behind the scenes of a work-in-progress rather than just sharing the end results of a work of scholarship in the unmalleable form of an already-finished and published book. Students would get more involved in their learning and may even help the prof with research in a productive way. I once had a sociology teacher who assigned a few of the books he had read as a precursor to the book he was currently working on, and he shared his book outline with the class in the form of lectures, soliciting feedback, questions, and inviting us to share our own ideas. Although it was a little too teacher-centered for my tastes, I found this collaborative process very enriching. If he would have published the book (he sadly died before he could), I'm sure he would have credited our class in the acknowledgments.

If a professor-authored book is assigned (or even an article, poem, or play, for that matter), then the teacher should be open to criticism and even invite suggestions for expansion and revision. As a teacher, I have assigned both my own creative writing and my own criticism in my courses. While I've never put my books in the bookstore as mandatory buys, I have freely shared my writing in oral form (performing a fiction/poetry reading to my classes), in handouts I pass around (having students critique my own short-short fiction and poetry), and in assigned readings put on reserve in the library (articles I've written on books or films we've studied in the class). The only disadvantage I see with doing this is that sometimes students are reluctant to critique me honestly; but I do perform a lot of self-critique so they can see that I am open to it, and I always actively solicit feedback and ideas.

Creative writing books are a bit different than, say, a biology textbook. I read an article in a student paper online (Southern Nevada's Coyote Press), where the student writer felt professors shouldn't assign their own novels at all. She smartly reminds us that "writing THE book" and "writing A book" are two very different things. And with creative works, ego is often involved, whereas non-fiction at least has some semblance of objectivity. It's bad enough that the students might perceive the assigned book as a sort of highway robbery -- they might even consider it professorial narcissism.

Personally, when I share my own creative writing with students, one of my purposes is to model what it's like to be an "artist as thinker" -- that is, someone who is thoughtful about what they are doing and not just writing blindly under the auspices of "entertainment." And as a literary critic, I am trying to practice what I preach about writing for a discourse community...because, in my opinion, good writing always raises issues for discussion and this discussion is where learning often happens. Ultimately, when I assign my own texts for a class I do so not because I am "the authority" or because I want an ego stroke, but because it gives me an opportunity to show students what it means for a writer/scholar to be open to criticism. When I put one of my own texts on the table, I solicit the same sort of critical probing and editorial inquiry I would like to see happening when they discuss any text, particularly in their own writing workshops and peer editing sessions (which are usually mandatory in my classes, particularly for end-of-term papers).

What I'm suggesting is that the teacher who assigns his or her own books has to be a particular kind of teacher and a particular kind of author. At bottom, they have to be a very humble or courageous one, I would imagine. One who doesn't limit interpretation of the book to "what he intended." One who is extremely receptive to criticism from students and not afraid to admit errors. One who is as open to hearing about the flaws of the text as he should be skeptical when told about the strengths. In other words, a writer who models how writers learn from listening to their readers rather than a writer who wields the text like a cop might flash his shiny new badge -- as some sort of evidence of authority over the students. Being teacher is already authority -- and ego-boo -- enough.

Michael A. Arnzen is an Associate Professor of English at Seton Hill University (http://fiction.setonhill.edu). He has won three Bram Stoker Awards and the International Horror Guild Award for his horror writing, which includes the books 100 Jolts and Proverbs for Monsters. His doctoral dissertation, The Popular Uncanny, is forthcoming from Guide Dog Books later this year. 

An early version of this article first appeared on his weblog focused on the scholarship of teaching, Pedablogue, at: http://blogs.setonhill.edu/MikeArnzen/