TAA Featured in Episode of The A&P Professor Podcast

TAA was featured in an episode of The A&P Professor podcast on April 12, “Pulse of Progress, Looking Back, Moving Forward,” with host Kevin Patton, an award-winning anatomy and physiology textbook author. Kevin’s comments about the benefits of TAA membership and invitation to attend TAA’s 2024 Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring come in at 50:22.

In the episode, Kevin says: “With a strongly supportive network of colleagues, TAA provides many resources and active, engaging opportunities for growth and network-forming. TAA meets the needs of those interested in creating textbooks, lab manuals, workbooks, and other learning resources, as well as those who focus on academic writing, such as journal articles, dissertations/theses, monographs, and scholarly or other nonfiction works.”

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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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Collaborating across differences: Cover letters to facilitate writing feedback

The first three articles in this series, “Building relationships with co-author agreements,” “Reflect on writing habits in co-author processes,” and “Keep writing communication simple with the 5 Ps,” covered strategies for building trust and shared understanding among co-authors. In this final installment on collaborating across differences, we explore feedback techniques for co-authors that reinforce trust and understanding among writers to support positive writing productivity.

Of the techniques we cover in our collaborative writing workshops for faculty and graduate student co-authors, the feedback cover letter is one of the most valued by participants.Its popularity is due to its simplicity as well as the letter’s facilitation of clear communication across a feedback exchange that can often feel awkward, befuddling, or even risky for submitting and reviewing authors alike.

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Leveraging collaboration among authors and editors

When I started writing anatomy and physiology textbooks in the 1980s, I never gave much thought to this last part of my adventure: my exit. And here I am, getting ready to step back and hand it all over to others in a few short years.

I’m finding out that some of my friends in TAA who have exited or are on the “offramp” are valuable counselors who freely give advice from their experience. Most recently, four colleagues presented their experiences at the 2022 TAA Conference in a panel called Time to Slow Down: Finding an Offramp from the Authoring Freeway. Even with all this help, my offramp has been a bit bumpy.

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Collaborating across differences: Keep writing communication simple with the 5Ps

In the two previous newsletter pieces in this series, we learned how non-binding co-author agreements and reflective conversations can build trust and understanding among collaborators. In this piece, we will consider how developing a shared vocabulary about a writing project can support writing partners or teams.

A campus partner and I are at the end of a three-year study of collaborative writers in which we work with faculty and graduate students who co-author manuscripts for publication or proposals for funding. One of our important, preliminary insights is that many writers share the concern about miscommunicating in ways that interfere with next steps, recommended revisions, and co-author contributions.

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Conference networking in the age of Zoom

Conferences and conventions have been one of many things that have changed in the age of COVID. While much of the great education and content is still available through virtual conventions, one aspect of conference attendance that has changed significantly is networking.

Losing out on networking in the age of virtual conference would be quite a loss. But how do you proceed without the in-person experience? Fear not. There are solutions.

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