2020 Conference Roundtable Discussions Preview

Early registration is now open for TAA’s 33rd Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference in San Diego, CA this June! This event is always an incredible opportunity to network with authors from a variety of disciplines and to learn about the latest trends, best practices, and industry changes.

One of the highlights of the annual event is the engaging roundtable discussion sessions that close out the Saturday afternoon schedule. This year, conference participants have six topics to choose from. A complete overview of the roundtable sessions is below.

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An important and positive change to TAA’s not-for-profit classification

How much do you know—or care to know—about the wide variety of not-for-profit organizations that are recognized by the US government in the IRS tax code? Perhaps not much, and that’s fine, of course. I hope you know and see it as appropriate that TAA is a non-profit. Indeed we are, but recently have undergone a classification change. I hope you’ll indulge me in this brief column while I explain the importance of that change.

In December 2019, the IRS officially agreed to reclassify TAA from a 501(c)6 organization to a 501(c)3. The odd alpha-numeric classification system is of no interest, but you might like to know that our former classification is more often applied to entities that are akin to labor unions. That’s not crazy, because TAA does advocate for the interests and needs of authors, as a labor union might. But we’re not quite analogous to a labor union. For example, when TAA advocates a position, we take into consideration, and intend to benefit, the entire community of authors – even those who aren’t currently TAA members.

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3 Important steps to reconceiving your dissertation as a book

Early career academics and newly minted PhDs in the humanities and social sciences often want to turn their dissertation into a book. While this is a laudable goal, it is important to keep in mind that university presses seldom publish unrevised or lightly revised dissertations. Instead, they seek books that grow out of dissertation projects and are substantially more developed. Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz’s TAA webinar offered terrific advice about the big picture of moving from dissertation to book. TAA members can review her webinar for an overview of the whole process.

Where most writers get stuck, I’ve found in my work coaching academics for the past decade, is in the early stage of reconceiving their project. Taking the following three steps can help you shake off the familiar old conception of your work that you’ve lived with for years and chart a new map for a truly book-worthy project.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: February 28, 2020

Are you determined to succeed? At the end of the day, are you satisfied with your results? George Lorimer once said, “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” So what are you determined to do with your textbook and academic writing?

This week’s collection of articles from around the web includes discussion on the future of scholarly communication, how to get published, and an approach to teaching writing that works. It also includes ideas for experimenting and playing with data, looking at different aspects of the same problem, and funding research and innovation through open science efforts.

What all of these ideas, innovations, and results have in common is the determination of one or more individuals to bring an idea to fruition and share it with others. As you approach your writing projects this week, start each day with determination and end them with satisfaction. Happy writing!

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