Summer vacation can be a great time for academic writers to get ahead on their writing projects, but all too often professors and graduate students find themselves scrambling to get something—anything—finished as summer comes to a close, and wondering how the summer slipped away from them.
Passing the torch: Selecting a successor to write future textbook editions
Finding a successor for your textbook(s) can be a daunting, arduous task. At TAA’s June 2013 conference veteran authors Robert Christopherson, Michael Sullivan, and Karen Morris presented a session sharing strategies for finding a successor and successfully transitioning the future editions of your texts.
The following is an overview of that presentation, highlighting ten tips to facilitate successor author transitions — “passing the torch.”
Bringing in a co-author requires ‘reconstitution’ of book project
Finding a co-author for your textbook should involve more than finding someone to share the workload, said Mary Ellen Lepionka,…
Maintain an open ‘ancillary idea file’ for your textbook
As an author of several textbooks and ancillaries over a couple of decades, Kevin Patton, professor of Life Science at…
Featured Member Ric Martini – A veteran textbook author’s insights on contracts, author collaboration & more
Frederic (“Ric”) Martini received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in comparative and functional anatomy for work on the pathophysiology of…
Featured Members June Parsons and Dan Oja – Digital textbooks and pedagogy
Digital book pioneers June Parsons and Dan Oja co-developed the first commercially successful multimedia, interactive digital textbook; one that set the bar for platforms now being developed by educational publishers.
The coauthors began writing and creating educational software for Course Technology in 1992 and between them have authored more than 150 college computer textbooks. They currently have several digital textbooks in print, including the best-selling New Perspectives on Computer Concepts.: