The first time I thought about potentially authoring a textbook was in 2005. I was teaching as an adjunct at four different colleges and was using a different textbook for each. Each time I brought the correlating textbook for the correlating College Success class with the correlating handouts, assignments, quizzes, and other materials, it felt like a small victory. As I started to create my own content, I decided that if I ever was hired full time, I would write my own text. A few years later, I accepted a full-time tenure track faculty position at Grossmont College in San Diego and two years after that I began writing my first textbook.
Podcasting for academic authors: A ‘brand’ new experience
Academic authors do what we can to take charge of defining the perception of ourselves and our own work among our professional circle and potential future associates. We know that just leaving it to others to define us may send the wrong message—or worse, it may go nowhere at all. This process of professional branding can involve a lot of different strategies, but the one I’ll focus on now is podcasting.
Podcasting is simply distributing digital audio files widely over the internet. It’s been around for decades, but only recently has caught a wind and is steadily becoming a mainstream source of news and entertainment. Podcasts are most often consumed on mobile devices, which allow listeners to enjoy their favorite episodes while they commute, walk the dog, or mow the lawn.
To keep writing, use a time log
“What did I do today!” you wail. For the life of you, wiped out at the end of the day and ready for binge TV, you can’t remember anything you did except overeat for lunch. Maybe you recall writing for eight minutes midmorning and half-heartedly pecking at your journal article in progress, but otherwise the day’s a blank. And paradoxically, you feel you’re always so busy, dashing from one thing to the next and never getting it all done.
Sound familiar? Where does the time go? Especially for academic writers, with the responsibilities of teaching, mandatory committee meetings, office hours, reading endless memos, emailing responses, and comforting a colleague who just got her article rejected—again—it’s an ongoing challenge to take hold and wrestle our writing time to the ground, or desk.
Online marketplace Bonanza.com takes key steps to prevent the sale of pirated e-textbooks on its platform
Several leading higher education publishers announced that online marketplace Bonanza.com will join them in efforts to stop the sale of pirated e-textbooks by implementing a series of steps designed to prevent their sale on its platform. These steps will help disrupt digital piracy while not impeding innovation and the lawful growth of marketplaces. The educational publishers, Cengage, Elsevier, Macmillan Learning, McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson, have worked hard in recent years in partnership with distributors and sellers to combat the sale of pirated ebooks and counterfeit textbooks, which hurts authors and readers and stifles innovation and the creation of the rich content that consumers want.
Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference to feature sessions on contracts and royalties
TAA’s 32nd Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference speaker and mentor panels will feature several industry experts on topics such as intellectual property, copyright, publishing contracts, and royalties. The conference will be held in Old City, Philadelphia, June 14-15, 2019.
TAA Vice President’s Message: Take a Networking Challenge in 2019
I am the worst at hiding in my office and working over lunch. Yes, we all have lots of work to do and not enough hours in the day to get it done. Why should 2019 be any exception? I should spend more time out of my office. Some would call it socializing, some would call it networking. Whatever you call it, getting out has got to be better for me than staring out the window (I know, at least I have a window).
With you as my witnesses, I have decided to get out regularly and have lunch or coffee with someone in my workplace. We all have to eat or caffeinate, right? There are over 1,400 employees where I work and I know at least a 10% of them, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Would it kill me if once every so often I had lunch with a colleague instead of never? There might actually be some benefits.