The 2016 TAA Conference was a big success! Attendees from across the country representing a variety of writing disciplines gathered to discuss the latest information and trends in the field of textbook and academic authoring and publishing.
TAA thanks all those who contributed to the program as well as the attendees who enriched the discussions throughout the conference.
Seventeen textbooks have been awarded 2016 TAA Textbook Awards. Eight textbooks received Most Promising New Textbook Awards. Six received Textbook Excellence Awards, and three received William Holmes McGuffey Longevity Awards. The awards were presented at the 2016 TAA Conference in San Antonio on June 24. Nominations for the 2017 TAA Textbook Awards open September 1.
The following review of Guide to Textbook Publishing Contracts was published in the June 2016 issue of Wisconsin Bookwatch, published by Midwest Book Review. It is being posted here with permission.
“Next stop, mobile apps!”—that was the title of a webinar I attended last week, presented by one of the major textbook publishers. Like most educators, I’m skeptical about technology-driven claims made about mobile apps or other tools. Technology should serve learning, not drive it. Students and instructors should be supported in using the most appropriate and accessible tools and technologies for a given situation. Newer is not necessarily better.
If you’ve been published, then you’ve seen it before — a “whereas” and a “therefore” followed by eight or more pages of pre-printed, pedantic prose offered up by the editor as the house’s “standard publishing contract.” Other than a few tiny spaces for your name, the title of your work, and the manuscript delivery date, the bulk of it looks as though it were long ago locked down in Century Schoolbook type.
But the truth is that there is more to review than the spelling of your name, choice of title, and projected completion date, and more to negotiate than you might realize. Here are 10 tips to help you understand what is (or ought to be) worthy of negotiation.
Janet Salmons, PhD, mined every element of her dissertation to launch a publishing strategy that has resulted in five books, and numerous chapters and cases, articles and blog posts. She created a typology of five options for drawing from, building on, or applying student writing, which she shared in the May 18 TAA Webinar, “5 Ways to Use Your Dissertation for Publications”. Here are 5 key takeaways from the presentation:
