TAA Members Weigh In On the Value of Association Benefits

To help guide planning for the association’s future, TAA recently surveyed members about their primary reasons for joining, what their most valuable member benefits are, and what benefits they think the association should begin offering. Of the 1,953 members surveyed (representing those who have agreed to receive emails), 77 responded.

Thirty-one percent of respondents said that their primary reason for joining TAA was to receive member benefits and services, and 30% said it was ”to network with other textbook and/or academic authors.” Seventeen percent of respondents said they joined for another reason.

10/19 TAA Webinar: Blunders, Bad Ideas, and Bliss: My Experience Writing a Textbook

Are you contemplating writing a textbook? It can be a daunting process but there are many success stories and opportunities to learn from colleagues who have recently published their content.

Please join XanEdu Publishing and Erica Irlbeck, Ed.D, Professor of Agricultural Education and Communications at Texas Tech and author of The Crisis Communication Guide for Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources, on October 19 from 2-3 p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “Blunders, Bad Ideas, and Bliss: My Experience Writing a Textbook.”

TAA Member Phil Wankat: Notable Cartoons from the ‘TAA Report’

The second installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Cartoons, is now available.

Wankat selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. The first installment was Authors Needed.

Register for 10/4 Two-Hour Workshop – ‘Efficiency with Style: Revising Your Manuscript at the Macro & Micro Levels’

Fast-writing and “allowing messy drafts” is often recommended as a productivity strategy for academics. But … how do we most efficiently transform the resulting messes into coherent and powerful prose?

Academic Writing Coach Erin McTigue will be presenting a two-hour interactive virtual workshop, “Efficiency with Style: Revising Your Manuscript at the Macro & Micro Levels.” on October 4 from 3-5 p.m. ET. Learn how to take a “messy draft” of your choice and try out three macro-level revision strategies to hone overall logic and organization of the manuscript and then three micro-level revision tools for coherence and writing style. You’ll leave the workshop with both a sequential approach and individual tools for transforming your future drafts with efficiency.

Members Register Here

Not a member yet? Join for only $30

Long-time TAA Member Phil Wankat Goes Back Into the TAA Newsletter Archives and Finds Gold

TAA Member Phil Wankat, who joined TAA in 1989, pored over his archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. The first installment is Authors Needed.

Michael Sullivan Donates $100,000 to Fund Lecture Series, Matching Gift Challenge

A generous gift from mathematics textbook author and long-time member Michael Sullivan will fund an annual lecture at the TAA annual conference and a 1:1 matching gift challenge to encourage additional gifts to support the association.
His $100,000 donation is the largest gift TAA has ever received. Michael is a past-president of the TAA Council, served several terms as TAA Council Treasurer, and has been a long-time member.

“Michael’s gift will allow TAA to provide a top-notch lecturer with expertise on the textbook or academic authoring and publishing industry to further our mission of supporting textbook and academic authors in their authoring pursuits,” said TAA Executive Director Kim Pawlak.

One-half of the gift, $50,000, will be used to fund the Michael Sullivan Lecture on Textbook & Academic Authoring, honoring the life and work of Michael Sullivan, who has authored or co-authored more than 120 mathematics textbooks, many of which have been published in multiple editions.