For those whose works are included in the historic copyright infringement settlement, Bartz v. Anthropic, the official notice with your unique ID should be arriving near the end of November. Join Brenda Ulrich, an attorney with Archstone Law, and TAA Executive Director Kim Pawlak on Wednesday, December 10 from 2-3 p.m. ET, for a special webinar, “Bartz v. Anthropic: An Update on the Claims Process for Textbook & Academic Authors:.” Learn how your unique ID will help you when filing claims, as well as other updates on the claims process and TAA’s recommendations for textbook and academic authors whose works are included in the settlement.
An Interview with 2025 TAA Conference Keynote Speaker Gerald Friedland on the Future of AI and Textbook Publishing
What happens when a veteran mathematics textbook author and a leading AI scientist exchange ideas on the future of textbook publishing? In anticipation of his namesake keynote at TAA’s 2025 Virtual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference, Michael Sullivan connected with Gerald Friedland—textbook author and AI Scientist at Amazon AWS—for a thoughtful conversation on artificial intelligence, authorship, and the evolving landscape of academic publishing. Friedland will expand on these ideas in his session, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Textbook Publishing: Opportunities and Challenges,” on Friday, June 6, from 9–10 a.m. ET.
AI, Uber-Textbooks, and Knowing Your Own Strengths
By Dave Harris
Is there is a danger that LLMs (or other AI) will create an “uber-textbook” using the work of individual authors, basically stealing the best of all the individual work of scholars for profit, while paying the authors nothing? This question came up in the November 6, 2024 TAA Conversation Circle on royalties, and I wanted to touch on it again, after writing a related piece this past spring.
The previous piece argued (1) that current AI is too limited to do good intellectual work, and, (2) regardless of the capability of AI, that it’s important to take one’s own interests, desires, and personal experience into account because writing and research are personally uplifting positive experiences worth having, even if you’re not necessarily selling your work.
Your Textbook Deserves Recognition: Nominate it for a TAA Textbook Award
You’ve put so much time and passion into your textbook. Now is the time for that work to be recognized by nominating it for one of TAA’s industry-respected awards:
- Most Promising New Textbook Award: this award recognizes promising textbooks and learning materials in their first edition.
- Textbook Excellence Award: this award recognizes excellence in current textbooks and learning materials.
- McGuffey Longevity Award: this award recognizes long-standing textbooks and learning materials that have been in print for at least 15 years.
Larson Texts and Big Ideas Learning Unify Under a Single Brand Identity
Larson Texts and Big Ideas Learning, founded by TAA member and multiple TAA Textbook Award winner Dr. Ron Larson, announced the unification of its two brand identities to Big Ideas Learning, a Larson Texts Company.
Both companies are leaders in K-Higher-Ed math education. According to a September 20, 2024 press release, Larson’s “contribution to mathematics education is monumental. From the publication of his first Calculus textbook in 1978 to the foundation of Big Ideas Learning, his vision has always been to make math accessible and engaging for students.”
A Copyeditor’s Suggestions for Tightening Up Your Prose
By Laura Poole
I’ve been copyediting scholarly nonfiction for many years now, and I have some gentle suggestions to academic writers who would like to tighten up their prose.
These are all suggestions at the phrase level, not the sentence level, to reduce wordiness, impose active voice, and improve flow. There are NOT hard-and-fast rules and should not be done as a knee-jerk reflex. There are times when these suggested edits won’t work or will change the meaning of the phrase; in these cases, don’t do them!