I recently reached out to winners of the 2016 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about how they made the decision to write their textbook, how they interested a publisher, what they do to boost their writing confidence, how they fit writing time into their schedule, and more. I will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks. This week’s installment focuses on why they decided to write their textbook, how they got started, and what they do to boost their confidence as a writer.
Hull, Trujillo elected to TAA Council
Richard Hull and Al Trujillo have been elected to the TAA Council, the association’s governing board. They will serve three-year terms beginning July 1, 2016.
Hull is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at SUNY at Buffalo, and was TAA’s executive director for eight years. Trujillo is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Earth Sciences at Palomar Community College, and coauthor of two leading college-level oceanography textbooks.
The textbook of the future: What will it look like?
What does the textbook of the future look like? I asked my students to explore this question, and their answers will surprise and, perhaps, inspire today’s textbook authors.
Join us for the 4/21 webinar, ‘3 Essential Steps to Breaking Your Writing Block’
You know the feeling. You have a writing project and you have a deadline. You think about the project all…
5 Ways to tame your publishing lions
Forget kindergarten. All I really need to know about being a textbook author, I learned as a lion tamer.
I’m a textbook author and professor now, but in my youth I was an apprentice lion tamer. And it continues to surprise and delight me that many of the principles I learned during those adventures have helped me in my career.
TAA once again stands up for authors in Google Books case
More than a decade ago, in 2004, Google initiated a program, in concert with several university and large public libraries, to scan and digitize the entire contents of millions of books without regard to whether they were or were not still under copyright, ultimately making complete digital copies of more than 20 million books. Google’s goal was to expand its search business to include print works as well as online works. It spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this project, suggesting what Google believed to be its commercial potential.