Vice President’s Message: My publisher has been acquired…Now what? A personal story

This past summer I gave a presentation at TAA’s 2021 Virtual Conference on the joys and benefits of working for a small publisher, which I have done for the past 18 years. Well, guess what? I no longer work for a small publisher because they were recently acquired by a larger publisher. This serves as yet another example of what we all know so well – the publishing business in higher education is changing rapidly and we all need to adapt to new paradigms.

Allow me to share how I have handled this transition so far. The first thing I did was contact my intellectual property attorney to solicit advice on questions to ask my new publisher.

Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: January 4, 2019

The new year is always an opportunity to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. In this first week of 2019, we begin our collection of posts with two that look back at works from 1923 which have now entered the public domain and the related future of copyright reform. We continue with a couple posts focused on how writing is taught at the college level and advice for PhDs and PhD seekers interviewing and networking at conferences this year. Finally, we have found a few articles focused on the publishing industry at large, including the future of PLOS, open access publishing, and “The Great Acceleration”.

Whatever your writing efforts have in store this week, we hope the new beginnings of a new year provide time for reflection, preparation, and anticipation of what is to come. Happy Writing!