Member Spotlight: Joan M. Saslow

TAA member Joan M. Saslow is an independent author concentrating entirely on authorship of English language teaching materials.

Her most recent publication is Summit: English for Today’s World, coauthored with Allen Ascher and published by Pearson, now in third edition. She’s also published the Top Notch series (coauthored with Allen Ascher) now in its third edition, and the following titles, all of which are multi-level series with multimedia: Teen2Teen (4-level series with Allen Ascher, Oxford University Press) Ready to Go: Language Lifeskills, Civics (4-level series, Pearson) Workplace Plus: Living and Working in English (4-level series, Pearson) Literacy Plus (2-level series, Pearson), and English in Context: Reading Comprehension for Science and Technology (3-level series, Prentice-Hall).

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Not for the faint of heart: The art of truly understanding your royalty statement

A royalty statement should be simple to understand, right? “Show me my sales and my royalty rate, perform a simple mathematical calculation, and — boom! There’s my royalty check!” But how often have you looked at your publisher’s royalty statement and muttered, “I have no idea where these numbers are coming from,” and spent hours trying to understand the calculations? Or perhaps you’ve become so frustrated that you simply gave up, took the royalty check out of the envelope, cashed it, and threw the rest of the statement in the recycling bin, reassuring yourself that the amount must be correct if it’s this complicated.

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Academic Writing for Social Good – TAA Webinar 12/4

Academic writers want to disseminate their research for many reasons. Many are motivated by university requirements for certain kinds of publications. Others want to contribute to their fields by communicating with other researchers. Some of us want to communicate with professionals or practitioners, entrepreneurs or activists, makers or inventors who work outside the ivory tower. We hope our findings can be applied to make a difference. How can we use our research and insights in ways that contribute to the social good?

Join us Monday, December 4 from 3-4 p.m. ET for “Academic Writing for Social Good”, where textbook writer Janet Salmons and environmental non-profit leader Lynn Wilson will  share examples and suggestions for socially beneficial ways to think about our publication strategies.

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Pay to play: Are submission fees common for publication in journals?

There seem to be many recent email messages, advertisements, and calls for journal submissions that have touted competitive or lower than average submission fees. From a traditional perspective of submitting work to academic journals, you may 1) never paid for submission of articles, and 2) been wary of those journals who required payment for submission, thinking them to be less credible “pay to play” sources of publication.

With evidence of a more common practice of submission fee requirements, we solicited the opinions of TAA members Jörg Waltje, executive director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at Texas Woman’s University, and Patricia Goodson, presidential professor for Teaching Excellence and director of POWER Services for Texas A&M University, who provided different perspectives.

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#AcWriChat Tweet Chat: Not on Twitter? Watch live here on 12/1 at 11 am ET

TAA and SAGE Methodspace are co-hosting a series of Tweetchats for the exchange of ideas and resources about academic writing and publishing. Join SAGE Methodspace’s Janet Salmons and TAA’s Eric Schmieder on Twitter Friday, December 1 at 11 a.m. ET using the hashtag #AcWriChat to discuss submitting proposals, or watch here on the TAA Blog on our live Twitter feed. View a recap of the 11/3 Tweet Chat – Get Organized View a recap of the 11/17 Tweet Chat – Writing Productivity

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The most useful textbook & academic posts of the week: November 24, 2017

During this last full week of Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) 2017, we focused on sharing ideas. In this post, we share some of the top posts of the week including information on a new publishing company, what makes a good article title, how to express authorial presence, manuscript drafting advice, student reading patterns and OER, and tips for finishing your book. Paulo Coelho reminds us that “Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.” This week, share your ideas and, as always, write.

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