Digital is coming for your textbooks

While it has long been prophesied that the print textbook would disappear, it has actually taken quite a bit longer than people anticipated.

In the final session of TAA’s Summer Webinar Series, “Digital is Coming for Your Textbooks” at 2pm ET on July 30th, Christopher Kenneally, Director of Business Development, Copyright Clearance Center and Independent Publishing Industry Consultant, Michael Cairns, will review the latest developments in the creation, sourcing, and delivery of digital textbooks and will examine the looming fight for control of usage data.

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Increase your publishing success by understanding the metrics that matter

John Bond, Publishing Consultant at Riverwinds Consulting, brings more than 25 years experience in scholarly publishing to TAA’s Summer Webinar Series on Thursday, June 25th as he presents “Publishing Metrics: Understanding the Basics and Using Them to Your Advantage”.

Daily, Bond advises authors and publishers on creating and delivering great content. He is the author of 4 books and as a publisher has overseen the publishing of 20,000 journal articles and 500 scholarly books. In this 90-minute interactive discussion, he’ll give you a simple, approachable explanation of the common basic metrics and ways to use them to your advantage.

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Ask the Expert: What to look for in publisher-driven ‘new’ textbook contracts

Q: I’m a published author. I signed a textbook contract with a publisher 32 years ago and the first edition of my text was published 30 years ago. It’s since been revised 9 times, all under the original contract, and is due to be revised again soon. Recently, my publisher wrote and said they wanted to sign a new contract for the new edition because the industry had changed, their business model had changed, and the old contract was no longer in step with their current practices. Should I go along with this and sign the new contract?

A: Maybe. . . but not without doing a little homework first. Your original contract almost certainly contemplated that your text, if successful, would need periodically to be revised. What it probably said about this was that “if and when” the publisher thought a revision was warranted, the publisher would call upon you to prepare it. And if you were willing and able to do that, the revision would be prepared and published under the terms of your then existing agreement as if it were the work being published for the first time.

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2020 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 5): Longevity

We recently reached out to winners of the 2020 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about why they made the decision to write their textbook, strategies they used for successful writing, advice on contracts, editing, marketing, co-authoring, and more. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

This final installment of the five-part series focuses on achieving long-term success for a manuscript.

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Cengage and McGraw-Hill call it quits

On Monday, May 4, McGraw-Hill and Cengage separately made public the termination of their merger agreement that was announced just a year ago on May 1, 2019.

Both releases state that the decision to terminate was mutually reached, and both noted that the two publishers will part ways without financial liability to one another. McGraw-Hill CEO Simon Allen cited as the main reason for the termination that “…required divestitures would have made the merger uneconomical.” The Cengage announcement reflects that rationale and further asserts that the termination came about “due to a prolonged regulatory review process and the inability to agree to a divestitures package with the U.S. Department of Justice.”

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2020 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 4): Co-authoring

We recently reached out to winners of the 2020 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about why they made the decision to write their textbook, strategies they used for successful writing, advice on contracts, editing, marketing, co-authoring, and more. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

This fourth installment of the five-part series focuses on working with co-authors.

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