Lessons learned from false starts

We are all parts of various communities. The ones we physically live in. Our extended family is a community. You are part of an academic discipline which is an important group, as is where you work.

As a writer (even a beginner), you are part of a community. I do worry sometimes, that the writing community is made up a large group of individuals each on their own island. Each of us may be experiencing the same challenges and be suffering them in silence as we try to solve own our issues. Groups like TAA and this blog help address challenges. How do you create a writing schedule and stick to it? How do you approach revising your own work? When is your project “done” and ready for submission?

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Textbook pedagogy helps students review and retain subject matter

My field, mathematics, is a discipline in which the complexity of the subject increases with each course and each course requires a certain amount of recall from prior courses. While some students do quite well in transitioning to the next mathematical challenge, there are many who don’t bridge easily to the new content. Furthermore, students are prone to forget material learned earlier in the current course that they now need.

As a professor of mathematics, having taught for over 35 years, I am well acquainted with the reluctance of students to review material when their recall of it is imperfect. When I faced up to this issue a while back in revising my four-book Precalculus series, now in the 11th edition, I decided to confront the problem head-on.

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2020 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 5): Longevity

We recently reached out to winners of the 2020 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about why they made the decision to write their textbook, strategies they used for successful writing, advice on contracts, editing, marketing, co-authoring, and more. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

This final installment of the five-part series focuses on achieving long-term success for a manuscript.

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Cengage and McGraw-Hill call it quits

On Monday, May 4, McGraw-Hill and Cengage separately made public the termination of their merger agreement that was announced just a year ago on May 1, 2019.

Both releases state that the decision to terminate was mutually reached, and both noted that the two publishers will part ways without financial liability to one another. McGraw-Hill CEO Simon Allen cited as the main reason for the termination that “…required divestitures would have made the merger uneconomical.” The Cengage announcement reflects that rationale and further asserts that the termination came about “due to a prolonged regulatory review process and the inability to agree to a divestitures package with the U.S. Department of Justice.”

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