“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.
10 Tips for your next textbook deal
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.
Textbook award-winning insight (part 3): Advice and lessons for other writers
A few weeks ago, I reached out to winners of the 2016 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about their textbook writing. I had so many great responses I decided to create a three-part series to share them. The first installment focused on why they decided to write their textbook, how they got started, and what they do to boost their confidence as a writer. The second installment focused on how they fit writing time into their schedule, what software they use, what their favorite pedagogical elements are, and what involvement they have had in marketing their book. This last installment in the three-part series focuses on the advice they have to share with other authors and what they wish they had known before they started their writing journey.
TAA Vice President’s Message: What TAA means to me
I am excited for TAA’s upcoming 29th Annual Conference in June! In just a few short months I will join fellow textbook and academic authors at the Hotel Contessa in San Antonio for two full days of connecting, collaborating and being inspired by fellow TAA members. This will be my fourth conference since joining TAA in 2012. Last year at the conference I shared with some colleagues what TAA means to me, and how being a part of TAA has advanced my writing career and helped me to become more successful. I compared my experience, prior to joining TAA, as being born with three eyes. While having three eyes could be a positive attribute, I felt isolated, misunderstood, underrepresented. Different. As a textbook and academic author in a community college in Alabama, I had no method of connecting with other authors.
5 Ways to tame your publishing lions
Forget kindergarten. All I really need to know about being a textbook author, I learned as a lion tamer.
I’m a textbook author and professor now, but in my youth I was an apprentice lion tamer. And it continues to surprise and delight me that many of the principles I learned during those adventures have helped me in my career.
TAA once again stands up for authors in Google Books case
More than a decade ago, in 2004, Google initiated a program, in concert with several university and large public libraries, to scan and digitize the entire contents of millions of books without regard to whether they were or were not still under copyright, ultimately making complete digital copies of more than 20 million books. Google’s goal was to expand its search business to include print works as well as online works. It spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this project, suggesting what Google believed to be its commercial potential.