With membership in TAA, you are not alone. You become part of a diverse community of textbook and academic authors with similar interests and goals. We are pleased to announce the addition of 98 new TAA members who joined us in April 2018.Â
Your writing accountability partner this summer: The TAA Writing Gym
Flex your writing muscles in the TAA Writing Gym. This 6-week work-out-on-your-own gym time will serve as your writing accountability partner as you work to achieve your writing goals. The gym is free with your TAA membership, and is open to those writing textbooks, scholarly journal articles, and dissertations.
The gym will be open 24 hours from July 16-August 26, 2018. The deadline for signing up is July 9.
#AcWriChat TweetChat: Not on Twitter? Watch live here on 5/4 at 11 a.m. ET
Join TAA on Twitter on Friday, May 4 at 11 a.m. ET using the hashtag #AcWriChat for our latest TweetChat focused on presenting your work.
Not on Twitter? Not sure what a “Tweet Chat” is? Follow us here (you won’t be able to actively participate, but you will be able to follow the chat live).
The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: May 4, 2018
A.D. Posey once said, “Sometimes writing is like playing with fire…like trying to tame an uncontrollable beast.” Each year as May arrives, bringing with it the end of an academic school year for many, things can often feel out of control. This week’s collection of articles addresses some of the common issues faced by academics and authors.
For starters, concerns of overwhelm, contribution, speed, soft skills, and academic behavior are highlighted in the posts. We then found articles that discussed relationships both with other researchers, and with family during times of research.
How to develop a great webinar to promote your book
A webinar is an excellent promotional tool for your books, work, and services. Combining PowerPoint slides and audio on a subject to which viewers/listeners plug in on the Internet, a webinar delivers valuable information and shows you’re the one to deliver more. But to accomplish this purpose, you’ve gotta do it well. As the proud veteran of one webinar (I blush to admit with some excellent feedback), here I’ll share some points about designing and delivering an excellent webinar.
For the webinar on my book Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), I had wonderful help and structure from the publisher’s promotion director. But you can achieve similar results alone or with a few seasoned colleagues. In any case, the steps are similar.
2018 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 2): Boosting writing confidence, scheduling writing time, software
We recently reached out to winners of the 2018 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about their textbook writing. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks. The first installment focused on why they decided to write their textbook and how they got started.
This second installment in the four-part series focuses on how they boost their confidence as a writer, how they fit writing time into their schedule, and what software they use.