Gain recognition with your fellow authors and within the textbook publishing industry by nominating your textbook for a 2016 TAA Textbook Award now through December 1, 2015.

The Textbook Excellence Award recognizes excellence in current textbooks and learning materials. The McGuffey Longevity Award recognizes textbooks and learning materials whose excellence has been demonstrated over time.  The Most Promising New Textbook Award recognizes excellence in 1st edition textbooks and learning materials.

The top 5 reasons to nominate your textbook for a 2016 TAA Textbook Award:

#1 Receiving a textbook award from TAA is not only a great honor it can also increase sales by bringing more exposure to your books and elevating the credibility of both the book and its authors.

#2 A book award tends to get the attention of the media. TAA provides winners with both a general press release that announces all of the winners and an individual press release that focuses on your individual book and award. If you provide the list of recipients and their contact information, TAA will distribute the press release for you. Textbook Award winners are announced on the TAA Blog, Abstract, in the association’s eNewsletter and print member newsletter, and at a special award ceremony at TAA’s annual conference. Last year’s blog article about the awards has been consistently one of the top five most popular posts on Abstract since the awards were announced last March.

#3 When it comes to adoption decisions, an award-winning textbook has a competitive advantage. TAA provides award seal stickers that can be placed on books you send out to adopters for review, on the next print run of your book, and on books displayed at conferences. Winners receive 25 free seals and can purchase additional seals per 100. You can also print the award logo and a short description of the award on the inside or cover of your book.

#4 Book awards are a huge boost in your marketing campaign— big return on a small investment. Tout the award on all of your marketing materials, both print and electronic. Previous winners have leveraged their TAA awards by:

• Including a description of the award and the award logo on the book’s web page and on Amazon and other online retailers, and in the catalog listing.
• Announcing it on the publisher and author(s) social media pages.
• Posting an article about it on the publisher and author(s) blog.
• Notifying sales reps about the award.
• Mentioning the award on conference presentation slides and handouts.
• Sending a press release to the author(s) university, local newspapers, and associations to which they belong.
• Sending a press release to trade journals and other industry publications.
• Adding the award to author(s) curriculum vitae, university web pages, and personal websites.

#5 Don’t just take our word for it, see what previous TAA Textbook Award Winners are saying:

“To know that a group of your peers holds your book, based on pedagogy, content, scholarship, writing, appearance, and design, in such high esteem as to give it this award is validation of our hard work. To receive this award three times is truly an honor.”

Linda Null and Julia Lobur, authors of Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture, Textbook Excellence Award (Texty) Winner

“We were very excited to receive this recognition for our text. The award validated through objective judges our own beliefs that we had produced a high quality textbook.”

Sue and Malcolm Kahn, authors of College Success & You: Achieving Your Goals, Most Promising New Textbook Award Winner

Judy Rasminsky, coauthor of Challenging Behavior in Young Children and Challenging Behavior in Elementary and Middle School, both of which have received Textbook Excellence Awards, said she and her coauthor Barbara Kaiser have leveraged the award in several ways, including:

• Posting the Texty logo in several places on their challenging behavior websites.
• Sending a press release announcing the award to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). The NAEYC included information about the award in its catalog, newsletter, and journal, and also purchased Texty seals to put on the books they sell.

Chuck Corbin, whose physical fitness textbooks have won both Textbook Excellence Awards and a McGuffey Longevity Award, added the awards to his curriculum vitae. He also included the award in his website bio and plans to mention it in the prefaces of future editions of each book. Corbin also notified his university and local newspapers in order to publicize the award to students, faculty, and the community.

Eric Schulz, coauthor of Calculus, which won a Textbook Excellence Award, encouraged his publisher to promote the award as much as possible. Pearson posted an announcement about the award on Facebook and included information about it in their literature. Schulz also let Wolfram, the technology company that makes the unique software used to create the e-book version of Calculus, know about the award. Wolfram published a press release on their blog. Like Corbin, Schulz also worked with his university to spread the word to his local academic community.