Hello fellow TAA members, thank you for reading this third post of “The Psychology Behind Writing.” With monthly offerings, we’ll get into some of the psychological processes that support our academic writing as well as the ones that derail our writing. And, we will definitely explore strategies for amplifying the positive and mitigating the negative. Read the first post in this series, The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process, and second post, The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process..
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.
Court Certifies Class of Textbook Authors in Class Action Against Cengage
By Zick Rubin and Brenda Ulrich, Archstone Law Group PC
On September 25, 2023, Judge Andrew Carter of the federal district court in New York City certified a class of textbook authors in a class action brought against Cengage Learning (Bernstein v. Cengage Learning, Inc.). The lawsuit alleges that Cengage unfairly apportioned the revenues it received from sales of “MindTap” digital interactive versions of the authors’ texts, arbitrarily allocating to the authors either 50% or 75% of these revenues and reducing royalties accordingly. In the wake of the class certification, lawyers for the authors can proceed to seek reimbursement on a class-wide basis for the allegedly underpaid royalties. The class may consist of hundreds or thousands of authors, and the total claimed underpayment may total many millions of dollars.
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.
Not a member yet? Join for only $30
Nominate Your Textbook for a 2024 TAA Textbook Award
Nominations for TAA’s 2024 Textbook Awards is now open. Recognize your textbook today by nominating it for one our industry-respected awards:
McGuffey Longevity Award – to recognize long-standing textbooks and learning materials that have been in print for at least 15 years.
Textbook Excellence Award – to recognize excellence in current textbooks and learning materials.
Most Promising New Textbook Award – to recognize promising textbooks and learning materials in their first edition.