Create and Manage Authors

This article goes over how to add authors to your school, assign authors to products, set author revenue share, manage author bios, and edit author privileges. There is a video tutorial in this article. 

Overview

Authors are users in your school with administrative privileges. They can manage products within your school, and in return can receive a set revenue share per sale. Authors can be assigned to both courses and coaching products.

The Basic plan supports 1 author/owner (including yourself), the Professional plan supports 5 authors/owners, and the Business plan supports 20 authors/owners.

To see what the author dashboard looks like from the author’s point of view, please see this Knowledge Base article.

To set up an author in your school, you will first need to create a new author user account or make an existing student into an author by assigning them an author bio. Then, you will need to assign the user’s author bio to the designated course or coaching product they will manage.

Alternatively, some school owners manage their own products without separate author accounts. In this case, you can still assign an author bio to the product. This author bio is displayed within the student curriculum view.

Create a new author

To add a new user as an author in your school, navigate to the Users > Authors page and select the Add Authors button in the top right corner.

A window will pop up, and you’ll be prompted to fill out the Name, Email, Password, Revenue Share, Image (we recommend you use a 250 x 250px image), and Bio of the owner you are adding. The email address and password entered here will be the credentials used to log into the author account.

You can edit the author bio, image, and revenue share details at any time.

Click Import to add the author. For more information on adding users to your school, please see this Knowledge Base article.

Make an existing student an author

If you have a student you want to make an author, you can add the author role to their existing student account. 

To do so:

1. Navigate to Users and then Students.
2. Select the account of the user you’d like to make an author.
3. Click the Author tab for that user.
4. Click the Activate button.
5. A popup will appear where you can confirm the change. Click Activate to confirm, or Cancel to return to the previous screen.

Once you have made the user into an author, you will be prompted to set up their author bio. Fill out the Display name and Bio fields with the author’s name and information. You can also click the Choose image button underneath the Image field to upload an author bio image (we recommend you use a 250 x 250px image for best results).

Once you have made the student an author, you still need to assign them to the specific course(s)/coaching product(s) you would like them to manage.

Admin caps

The Basic plan supports 2 authors/owners (including yourself), the Professional plan supports 5 authors/owners, and the Business plan supports 20 authors/owners.

If you have reached this admin cap already, you will be unable to make an existing user into an author and will not see the Activate option.

One option is to deactivate an existing author in order to free up an additional slot. Clicking the deactivate link will bring you to the Users > Authors page, where you can select an existing author to remove, or deactivate.

If you are on the Basic or Professional plan, you will have the option to Upgrade your plan to unlock additional admin slots. The Upgrade button will bring you to the Settings > Plan page.

If you are already on the Business plan, you will have the option to Contact our team. Once you fill out the Contact form, somebody from our team will be in touch within a few business days to discuss further options for your business needs.

Assign authors to courses or coaching products

Once you have an author with an associated author bio, you will need to assign that author to the course(s) or coaching product(s) that you would like them to manage.

For courses or coaching products, you can assign an author from the Author section of the Information tab for the product. From the drop down menu, select the bio of the author that you want to assign to the course or coaching product. You will be able to select a bio from the following two categories:

• Authors - The bio is already connected to a specific user/author account in your school. This means the connected user can receive a revenue share for sales and can access an author dashboard. Owner bios will also be included in this list, and can be chosen if you choose not to have a separate author account for your product. Owners can not receive author revenue shares.
• Bios without Authors - The bio is not connected to any specific user/author account in your school. This means there is no separate user account to receive a revenue share or manage the course. For courses, the bio will still appear under the Your Instructor tab of the course view.

Make sure to Save your changes.

Revenue share

Authors can receive a revenue share for each sale made of any course or coaching product they are assigned.

To set a revenue share percentage for each individual author, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Users > Authors and select the author whose share you would like to adjust.
2. From their user page, select the Author tab on the sidebar and navigate to the Revenue Share section.
3. To set a general revenue share rate for all products the author is assigned to, fill out the Default Percentage field with a value from 0 to 100. Click Save.

To change the revenue share amount for specific products, click the Add a product override link. This will open up a new window. To set up the override:

1. Select between the Course and Coaching tab for the specific product type you are overriding default revenue for.
2. Select the specific Product and Pricing plan the override is for from the dropdown menus.
3. Enter in a percentage amount from 0 to 100 and click Save.

You can add as many overrides as you would like for each author—each will be listed under the Revenue Share Overrides heading. To edit an override, click the Edit icon. This will open a window where you can enter in the new revenue share amount for that product. To remove an override, click the X icon.

Revenue shares are applied after all fees (payment processing, Teachable fees, and affiliate payouts) have been deducted from a sale. For example, setting the revenue share to 50% would mean that you (the school owner) and the author will receive the same revenue for the course.

Revenue shares for bundled products is managed within bundles.

Author bios

The author bio for each course is displayed for courses in the left-side menu of the student curriculum view under the Your Instructor tab.

There are two places where you can edit your author bios.

1. You can edit author bios from the Author tab of the User profile. To edit the author bio, update the applicable Image, Display Name, and Bio fields and click Save.

2. You can edit author bios from the Site > Bios menu. This menu will list all bios created in your school. To edit a bio, click the green External Editor icon. To delete a bio, click the red trash icon. 

Remove or delete authors

You can delete your course authors at any time. To do so:

1. Navigate to the author’s profile from your Users > Authors menu.
2. Click the Author tab.
3. Click the Deactivate button.
4. A window will appear asking you to confirm the change. Click Deactivate Author to remove the author. The user will remain in your school as a student.

You can delete the bio by navigating to Site > Bios and clicking the red trash icon on the selected bio.

To delete the user account from your school permanently, please see this Knowledge Base article.

Edit author privileges (Pro plan and up)

On the Professional plan and up, you can customize which privileges your authors have access to. To change these privileges:

1. Go to your admin sidebar and navigate to the Settings > Roles tab.
2. Click the Main Roles tab.
3. Scroll down to the Author permissions section.
4. Toggle on/off the permissions according to your preferences.

You can use the permissions toggles to allow/disallow authors to publish courses, email students, set product prices, create coupons, import students, edit sales pages, and manage and issue certificates of completion.

Certain permissions only apply to authors of courses, and not to authors of coaching products. For example, “Let authors manage certificates for their courses” is a setting only applicable to authors of courses, as coaching products do not have a certificate feature.