As textbook and academic authors, your copyrights are your livelihood, and the value of your copyrights is often enhanced by registering them in the U.S. Copyright Office – something that you can easily do for yourself. Yet, as publishing and copyright attorneys, we find that many text and academic authors know less than they should about copyright registration. Here’s our sample Q&;A conversation with an author who wanted to know more about when, why, and how to register the author’s copyrights:
Quote or paraphrase? Three tips from a pro
It’s a pity when surface problems scuttle otherwise strong scholarship. As an academic editor, I’ve noticed that poorly handled quotations are particularly damning. Inelegant use of prior scholarship can give the impression that a writer is unsophisticated, or even amateur.
Naturally, research does involve mining books and articles to inform our own arguments, which are ideally novel and substantial but still reference that prior work. Often there may be temptation to repurpose existing literature that seems to say exactly what needs to be said in order to get to ideas that are original. It can certainly be difficult to think around the particular ways in which influential scholars have formulated cornerstone concepts.
11 Tricks and tips to get those words on a page
Whether we’re in the throes of a dissertation, article, or book, most of us have trouble writing—starting, continuing, finishing. Especially after our original flush of enthusiasm and amazed production at the first few paragraphs or pages, we find that each of our writing projects carries its own problems.
From my own experiences with tortured writing and those of my academic coaching and editing clients, here I’ll share eleven tricks and tips to help you ease into or continue your writing. If you need convincing, included too are credible rationales for how each method can help you.
Join us 5/18 for the TAA webinar, ‘5 Ways to Use Your Dissertation for Publications’
You spent a lot of time conducting research and writing a dissertation, thesis, or capstone project. You are well aware of the pressure to get your work published, in order to get hired or advance in your academic or professional field. Where do you start?
Janet Salmons, PhD, of Vision2Lead, Inc., mined every element of her dissertation to launch a publishing strategy that has resulted in five books, numerous chapters and cases, articles and blog posts. She created a typology of five options for drawing from, building on, or applying your student writing. This webinar is relevant those who have graduated recently as well as to people whose dissertations have been sitting on the shelf for a while.
TAA Vice President’s Message: What TAA means to me
I am excited for TAA’s upcoming 29th Annual Conference in June! In just a few short months I will join fellow textbook and academic authors at the Hotel Contessa in San Antonio for two full days of connecting, collaborating and being inspired by fellow TAA members. This will be my fourth conference since joining TAA in 2012. Last year at the conference I shared with some colleagues what TAA means to me, and how being a part of TAA has advanced my writing career and helped me to become more successful. I compared my experience, prior to joining TAA, as being born with three eyes. While having three eyes could be a positive attribute, I felt isolated, misunderstood, underrepresented. Different. As a textbook and academic author in a community college in Alabama, I had no method of connecting with other 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…