How-to: Creating author pages on Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads

Creating a brand for yourself as an author can be one of the most challenging things to accomplish. If you’ve ever attempted to launch a website for yourself as an author or penetrate social media channels to develop a following for your book, chances are you’d agree success is far from immediate.

The good news is that sites like Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads already have a significant audience and make it easy for you to announce yourself as an author to potential readers everywhere. Here we’ll explore the basic steps necessary to get you started on each.

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Member Spotlight: Micki M. Caskey

TAA member Micki M. Caskey is a Professor and academic author in the education and middle grades education writing disciplines.

Her most recent publications include Literature reviews in support of the middle level education research agenda (2018), Imagine a place: Stories from middle grades educators (2017), and The encyclopedia of middle grades education (2016). She has also published 8 other academic books and two other textbooks.

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Member Spotlight: Joan Wink

TAA member Joan Wink is Professor Emerita at California State University, Stanislaus and is both a textbook and academic author in the ESL, TESOL, curriculum & instruction, education, literacy, pedagogy, language acquisition, and critical pedagogy writing disciplines.

Her most recent publications include The Power of Story (2018) Libraries Unlimited/ABC-CLIO, Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World (2011, 4/e) Pearson, Teaching Passionately: What’s Love Got To Do With It? (2004) AllynBacon/Pearson, A Vision of Vygotsky (2002) AllynBacon/Pearson, and scores of academic refereed publications, years of presentations and keynotes, and her blog, WinkWorld, since 2002.

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Exercises in writing accountability – The TAA Writing Gym

The TAA Writing Gym has officially opened its doors for the first time and we are excited to announce that 173 TAA members have committed to a six-week workout regimen in writing accountability.

From July 16 through August 26, TAA Writing Gym participants will be held accountable for their weekly writing goals by logging hours as they work on their individual writing projects. To support and encourage their progress, the gym provides weekly motivational writing classes, writing stations filled with exclusive TAA resources, and a listserv for communication with other gym members.

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The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: July 13, 2018

This week’s collection of articles from around the web start with some writing motivation including the question “Have you started writing yet?” and the discussion of writing productivity through a daily writing habit. There is additional advice on how to get your manuscript submitted, proofreading tips, and developing diversity in your reference lists. We close our list with other topics of interest, including what cannot be said in academia, new tools for open access research, quality concerns related to OER, and one college’s efforts to save on textbook costs.

According to Ayn Rand, “Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.” This week I encourage you to use your words, focus your mind, and move forward on your summer writing projects.

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Pedagogy of the book and chapter questions

Does the organization of the textbook relate to pedagogical approaches used to teach with it? I considered this question in relation to chapter organization in a previous post. In this post I will explore another part of the typical textbook chapter: questions.

Flip to the end of a textbook chapter, and you will usually find a list of questions, exercises, or other suggested assignments. Sometimes you will find additional learning activity ideas and resources on the companion website. Do they serve a purpose, or do readers flip past to get to the next assigned reading?

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