Side gig- fair payment?

[LizOB]

I have been asked by a board prep company to do some writing for them.

Payment is by royalties only, which will be 25% of profit (sales minus expenses including supplies/printing and editing). They are working on getting me some numbers so I can get a better idea of what the expenses will actually run, as well as their anticipated sales price and numbers they anticipate to sell.

Does this seem fair or should I try to negotiate a higher percentage, or an up front payment for the work I'm doing? I got the impression this is the standard payment model for everyone who does writing for this company so there may not be much room to move. Curious for thoughts from anyone else who has done this type of work.

[q-school]

many decades ago i used to write questions.  they paid me per question accepted.

i can't remember how much, but it was a few bucks per question.  i must have submitted a few thousand over a couple year period.  they weren't all going to stick. 

i made a couple thousand.  they said they had enough and we stopped.

 

[jfoxcpacfp]

q-school wrote:

many decades ago i used to write questions.  they paid me per question accepted.

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Writing questions sounds like an intriguing and unusual job - I've never heard of that! Did you have to provide the answers, too? Were these medical test questions or questions about something else?

[LizOB]

jfoxcpacfp wrote:

q-school wrote:

many decades ago i used to write questions.  they paid me per question accepted. 

Click to expand…

Writing questions sounds like an intriguing and unusual job – I’ve never heard of that! Did you have to provide the answers, too? Were these medical test questions or questions about something else?

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Yes, for the test prep companies you write the answers and explanations- the idea is that people use them to study for boards. Yes, they are medical questions.

Writing questions for the actual boards is a whole different ballgame- they are much more regulated and go through testing to ensure validity

[q-school]

For my boards they don’t pay to write the questions and they force everyone to take them whether they want to or not. They invite people to write questions and then review them and throw the ones they like into the exam and see what happens.

I’m not sure I agree that they are more valid. As they move from fact questions to combination do you know a fact and what to do about it judgement questions they are more about what he board wants people to do than whether they are inherently right or wrong. Plus since they don’t actually reveal the grading system and why questions are thrown out or accepted we really don’t know if reasonably validated. Certainly they appear to have a system utilizing answer discrimination to ‘validate’ questions.

Jmo. Ymmv.

I hate board and think whole thing is a scam.

[ReFinDoc]

Why not? You never know where these things might lead. Any side gig is a good one.

[Hatton]

Do they automatically accept the questions?  I would hate you to put a lot of time in and then they reject the questions.  Also if they are deducting all the expenses from the profit why is the split not 50/50.  It sounds interesting.

[The White Coat Investor]

LizOB wrote:

I have been asked by a board prep company to do some writing for them.

Payment is by royalties only, which will be 25% of profit (sales minus expenses including supplies/printing and editing). They are working on getting me some numbers so I can get a better idea of what the expenses will actually run, as well as their anticipated sales price and numbers they anticipate to sell.

Does this seem fair or should I try to negotiate a higher percentage, or an up front payment for the work I’m doing? I got the impression this is the standard payment model for everyone who does writing for this company so there may not be much room to move. Curious for thoughts from anyone else who has done this type of work.

Click to expand...

Why not self-publish? Then you get 100% of profit. What are they doing to get 75% of the profit if you're doing the writing? Are they doing the marketing?

[LizOB]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

LizOB wrote:

I have been asked by a board prep company to do some writing for them.

Payment is by royalties only, which will be 25% of profit (sales minus expenses including supplies/printing and editing). They are working on getting me some numbers so I can get a better idea of what the expenses will actually run, as well as their anticipated sales price and numbers they anticipate to sell.

Does this seem fair or should I try to negotiate a higher percentage, or an up front payment for the work I’m doing? I got the impression this is the standard payment model for everyone who does writing for this company so there may not be much room to move. Curious for thoughts from anyone else who has done this type of work.

Click to expand…

Why not self-publish? Then you get 100% of profit. What are they doing to get 75% of the profit if you’re doing the writing? Are they doing the marketing?

Click to expand...

They are doing the marketing. They say a lot of folks buy the prep materials as a package bundle so I would benefit from that.

They tried to make it sound like 25% was a lot compared to what traditional publishers will pay- I'm wondering whether this is true.

The upside is that as long as I update once a year I will continue to receive royalties. So the first year would probably be the lowest in terms of dollars per hours of work but would increase after that since the updating will take a lot less time

[The White Coat Investor]

LizOB wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

LizOB wrote:

I have been asked by a board prep company to do some writing for them.

Payment is by royalties only, which will be 25% of profit (sales minus expenses including supplies/printing and editing). They are working on getting me some numbers so I can get a better idea of what the expenses will actually run, as well as their anticipated sales price and numbers they anticipate to sell.

Does this seem fair or should I try to negotiate a higher percentage, or an up front payment for the work I’m doing? I got the impression this is the standard payment model for everyone who does writing for this company so there may not be much room to move. Curious for thoughts from anyone else who has done this type of work.

Click to expand…

Why not self-publish? Then you get 100% of profit. What are they doing to get 75% of the profit if you’re doing the writing? Are they doing the marketing?

Click to expand…

They are doing the marketing. They say a lot of folks buy the prep materials as a package bundle so I would benefit from that.

They tried to make it sound like 25% was a lot compared to what traditional publishers will pay- I’m wondering whether this is true.

The upside is that as long as I update once a year I will continue to receive royalties. So the first year would probably be the lowest in terms of dollars per hours of work but would increase after that since the updating will take a lot less time

Click to expand...

Yes, it is true. But it's a small amount compared to what you would get self-publishing, like less than half.

I think it is ridiculous that you must do ongoing work to keep getting royalties. Maybe you can negotiate that- like a flat rate to do updates or a lower royalty rate if you don't do the updates or something.

Here's one way to think about royalties. If you self publish at Amazon, and the book is sold for $20, you'll get about $12. The other $8 goes to Amazon to print, ship, and market within Amazon and to their members and for their profit. Any additional marketing is on you.

So that's 60%. Are these guys going to do marketing that is at least twice as good as what Amazon is going to do? How much will you make if you let these guys handle the book versus if you self-publish on Amazon? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself.

[LizOB]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

LizOB wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

LizOB wrote:

I have been asked by a board prep company to do some writing for them.

Payment is by royalties only, which will be 25% of profit (sales minus expenses including supplies/printing and editing). They are working on getting me some numbers so I can get a better idea of what the expenses will actually run, as well as their anticipated sales price and numbers they anticipate to sell.

Does this seem fair or should I try to negotiate a higher percentage, or an up front payment for the work I’m doing? I got the impression this is the standard payment model for everyone who does writing for this company so there may not be much room to move. Curious for thoughts from anyone else who has done this type of work.

Click to expand…

Why not self-publish? Then you get 100% of profit. What are they doing to get 75% of the profit if you’re doing the writing? Are they doing the marketing?

Click to expand…

They are doing the marketing. They say a lot of folks buy the prep materials as a package bundle so I would benefit from that.

They tried to make it sound like 25% was a lot compared to what traditional publishers will pay- I’m wondering whether this is true.

The upside is that as long as I update once a year I will continue to receive royalties. So the first year would probably be the lowest in terms of dollars per hours of work but would increase after that since the updating will take a lot less time

Click to expand…

Yes, it is true. But it’s a small amount compared to what you would get self-publishing, like less than half.

I think it is ridiculous that you must do ongoing work to keep getting royalties. Maybe you can negotiate that- like a flat rate to do updates or a lower royalty rate if you don’t do the updates or something.

Here’s one way to think about royalties. If you self publish at Amazon, and the book is sold for $20, you’ll get about $12. The other $8 goes to Amazon to print, ship, and market within Amazon and to their members and for their profit. Any additional marketing is on you.

So that’s 60%. Are these guys going to do marketing that is at least twice as good as what Amazon is going to do? How much will you make if you let these guys handle the book versus if you self-publish on Amazon? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the input. Lots to think about.

[VagabondMD]

I am not wild about the percentage of profits model for compensation. What if they tell you that they sold 1000 units but due to unexpected costs, they broke even (or lost money)? 25% of nothing is nothing.

[Bmac]

Presumably if this is a legitimate board prep company that has been doing this sort of thing for awhile they should be able to give you some sort of proforma or expected income based on previous experience. Or at least contact information for some other physician that has done similar work for them. If not, then I'd be less inclined to do it.

[I Find This Humerus]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

LizOB wrote:

I have been asked by a board prep company to do some writing for them.

Payment is by royalties only, which will be 25% of profit (sales minus expenses including supplies/printing and editing). They are working on getting me some numbers so I can get a better idea of what the expenses will actually run, as well as their anticipated sales price and numbers they anticipate to sell.

Does this seem fair or should I try to negotiate a higher percentage, or an up front payment for the work I’m doing? I got the impression this is the standard payment model for everyone who does writing for this company so there may not be much room to move. Curious for thoughts from anyone else who has done this type of work.

Click to expand…

Why not self-publish? Then you get 100% of profit. What are they doing to get 75% of the profit if you’re doing the writing? Are they doing the marketing?

Click to expand...

Agree with this. Start your own book!

[AR]

Unless you enjoy this type of work, you'll make a lot more money by just doing more medicine.

I think that writing a single good question with a thorough question would take me about an hour.  Maybe if I wrote several questions on the same subtopic, I could do a few in that time.  I just don't see how they can pay you anywhere near what you would get if you spent the same amount of time seeing more patients.  Maybe with the royalties, but I guess we need more details to figure that out. Even with that, I doubt it.

Of course, if this is something you enjoy doing, then doing it is fine and getting paid something is a nice benefit.