TAA member Kevin Patton’s The A&P Professor podcast, won a 2025 APEX Award for Publication Excellence. Patton is author of the award-winning textbook, Anatomy & Physiology. Congratulations, Kevin!
Dear Dr. Noelle: Stuck Without Words
By Dr. Noelle Sterne
Q: I know what I want to write about, but I can’t seem to get anything down on the page.
— Wordless
A: Writing—whatever the type—is hard. Whether we must write a proposal, dissertation, article, book, or thank you letter, most of us have trouble starting, continuing, and finishing. Like you, I’ve had many tortured writing—or not writing—experiences, as do the clients I coach and whose work I edit. Observing all of our ridiculous roadblocks, I’ve developed eleven tricks to help us ease into or continue our writing. If you need convincing, credible rationales are here too for how each method can help you.
1. Feel Good.
Industry News Round-Up Week of 8/11/25
Stay updated on the latest news, advancements, and changes that are shaping the textbook and academic authoring industry with our bi-weekly Industry News Round-Up. Have an item to share? Email Sierra.Pawlak@TAAonline.net.
UCLA Researchers Get NSF Grants Back Thanks to Court Order (August 14, 2025)
Federal Appeals Court Ruling Allows DOGE Access to Education Department Data (August 12, 2025)
2025 TAA Conference Bookstore Featured Book: ‘Keep Writing’
Keep Writing: 101 Strategies for Academic Writers, by Patricia Goodson, Ph.D. and Margarita Huerta, Ph.D.. is a reader-friendly book that contains a wealth of approaches, strategies, and tools related to academic writing. Organized into 101 short entries (fewer than 500 words each), the text is crafted to inspire and motivate academics to keep writing throughout their entire careers.
Writing with Virtually No Internet: Diminished Digital Dependence
By Michele D. Kegley, PhD
I had the opportunity to attend the Writing In Depth Retreat July 24-27, co-sponsored by TAA and hosted at Hope Springs Institute in Peebles, Ohio. As I was preparing to leave, I was talking to myself, “You packed your clothes, shoes, computer, writing journal, pens, phone, water bottle, what am I forgetting? Oh, my files are all in the cloud! I need to download my files onto my hard drive on my PC. I am going to a writing retreat, and they have warned us that there is limited internet access.”
I do not know about you, but I didn’t know how digitally dependent I was until my watch, mobile tablet, laptop, and phone couldn’t access the internet, and that limited access for four days was glorious.
What Does Your Contract Allow Your Publisher to Do?
In her 2025 TAA Virtual Conference session, “Can My Publisher Really Do That?”, Brenda Ulrich, an intellectual property attorney with Archstone Law, said that authors often ask her questions that boil down to “can my publisher do that?”, but what they’re really asking is, “what does my contract allow my publisher to do?”.
“At the end of the day, the rules of your relationship with your publisher come down to what’s in the contract,” she said. “That’s why it is really important to carefully negotiate a contract from the start and make sure that from the start you understand what it means. That way, when things get dicey and divisive, the contract is the road map that you, the publisher, your lawyer, and ultimately, perhaps even a court, will look at to determine whether you or your publisher can ‘do that.’”
She shared some of the most common questions she hears from authors. Here are two: