TAA Member Phil Wankat: Archival Articles on Money From the ‘TAA Report’

The fifth installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Money, is now available. Articles include “Frustrations of a University Book Author,” “The Simplified Employee Pension,” “The New Paradox of the College Textbook,” and more.

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 NeededCartoonsContractsEthicsMoney, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. 

Organizing your professional affairs: Set up a ‘Business Executor’

What will happen to your professional affairs if you suddenly die?

True customer service and support requires preparing for such possibility. Getting your affairs in order can also be helpful for basic recordkeeping and file management.

As a long-time freelancer, I’ve always worried about what would happen, and how my clients would get notified if something happened to me, or worse. Then, a few years ago, a close professional colleague died suddenly. It was disastrous for his loved ones, and bad for his customers and clients as well. We miss him sorely.