TAA Member Ron Larson is a Professor Emeritus, Penn State University and a textbook author in the mathematics writing discipline. His latest publication is Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2.
Vice President’s Message: My publisher has been acquired…Now what? A personal story
This past summer I gave a presentation at TAA’s 2021 Virtual Conference on the joys and benefits of working for a small publisher, which I have done for the past 18 years. Well, guess what? I no longer work for a small publisher because they were recently acquired by a larger publisher. This serves as yet another example of what we all know so well – the publishing business in higher education is changing rapidly and we all need to adapt to new paradigms.
Allow me to share how I have handled this transition so far. The first thing I did was contact my intellectual property attorney to solicit advice on questions to ask my new publisher.
Welcome new members to TAA: December 2021
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 68 new TAA members who joined us in December 2021.
Feedback on student work: a sinkhole or an opportunity – Finding time to write
Students expect and need feedback on their work. The basic goal of feedback is to enhance student learning. An anomaly of feedback is that more is not necessarily better. Research tells us that students may not even read your copious feedback (sigh) and may not understand what to do with statements like, “cite more references” or “this is confusing”. However, giving a judicious amount of feedback in a timely manner will make a difference in student learning. The purpose of this article is to describe how to refine, clarify, streamline, and improve your feedback practices with an eye toward spending less time on the task.
Member Spotlight: Edward S. Neukrug
TAA Member Edward S. Neukrug is Chair of the Department of Counseling and Human Services at Old Dominion University. His latest book is Contemporary Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy. He is currently working on a new book, Introduction to Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
Five chances to reset the terms of your book contract (part 2)
In Part 1 of this article (published in the summer edition of the TAA newsletter), we wrote about the imbalance in negotiating leverage between an author and his/her publisher early in the author’s publishing career. And we noted that there would be opportunities later for an author to retake some of the ground lost in those early negotiations. In particular, we wrote about two of these opportunities:
1) Your publisher calls for work to begin on a new edition and sends an amendment to your contract to memorialize this . . . with a few additional “updates”.