More Archival Topics From TAA’s Print Newsletter with Commentary From Long-Time Member Phil Wankat

Long-time TAA Member Phil Wankat has dug back into his TAA print newsletter archive, this time into the black-and-white early issues published between 1994 and 2010, finding more gold to share with you along with his brief commentary of the value of each article.

We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” along with the other articles he shared from the TAA Report, over the next few months. The articles are organized into 12 categories, including Authors Needed, Bios, Contracts and Legal Comments, Diversity, Managing and Planning, Money, Production, Publishing first book, Recognition and Rewards, Teaching, Textbook Scholarship and Textbooks in Promotion Cases, and Writing and Writer’s Block.
The first set of articles we are sharing, in the Authors Needed category, include:

“Co-authoring a book originally written by another,” by Frank Silverman. “Look for a book that has an author who is retired, or close to retirement or, well, deceased,” says Wankat.

“Authors uneasy over Pearson deal.” “Big mergers ‘reduce the opportunities for new authors and even close the door on experienced authors,'” says Wankat.

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Majority of Members Surveyed Report Using Generative AI To Make Writing Process More Efficient

TAA surveyed 1,900 members between September 24 and October 8, 2023 to determine how they’re utilizing Generative AI in authoring and promoting their textbooks, academic articles, and books, and to share that information with other members who have yet to begin using it. Just over 54% of respondents reported being primarily academic authors and almost 46% reported being primarily textbook authors.

Of the 82 members that responded to the survey, 40 percent said they have used generative AI. Of that 40 percent, almost half said they’re using it to make their writing process more efficient, including helping them brainstorm, generate titles, summarize articles, generate discussion and reading questions for teaching, and altogether reduce time spent on early tasks in the writing process. Multiple respondents stated that AI helps them write emails, with one member saying, “it helps me move faster on functional writing… so I can concentrate my creative energy on writing that matters.”

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TAA Member Phil Wankat: Evergreen Advice on Textbook Contracts From the ‘TAA Report’

The third installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Contracts, is now available.

Wankat selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. 

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The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process (Part 3)

Hello fellow TAA members, thank you for reading this third post of “The Psychology Behind Writing.” With monthly offerings, we’ll get into some of the psychological processes that support our academic writing as well as the ones that derail our writing. And, we will definitely explore strategies for amplifying the positive and mitigating the negative. Read the first post in this series, The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process, and second post, The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process..

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10/19 TAA Webinar: Blunders, Bad Ideas, and Bliss: My Experience Writing a Textbook

Are you contemplating writing a textbook? It can be a daunting process but there are many success stories and opportunities to learn from colleagues who have recently published their content.

Please join XanEdu Publishing and Erica Irlbeck, Ed.D, Professor of Agricultural Education and Communications at Texas Tech and author of The Crisis Communication Guide for Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, on October 19 from 2-3 p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “Blunders, Bad Ideas, and Bliss: My Experience Writing a Textbook.”

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TAA Members Say They Want More How-tos, Strategies, Tools

On October 3, 2023, TAA sent 2,115 members the first in a series of survey questions the association will use in preparation for a meeting of the TAA Council and staff in January 2024. The responses to these questions will be used to determine how the association can best serve members over the next year.

Of the 101 members who responded to the question, “As a TAA member, what do you want more of?,” more than half (55%) said they wanted more how-tos, strategies, and tools. Fifteen percent said they wanted more educational offerings, and 13% said they wanted information that will help them negotiate better contracts. Eight percent want advocacy on issues they care about, and 4% said they wanted opportunities to connect with other members.

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