2020 Textbook award-winning insight (Part 1): Purpose, timeline, and results

We recently reached out to winners of the 2020 TAA Textbook Awards and asked them to answer some questions about why they made the decision to write their textbook, strategies they used for successful writing, advice on contracts, editing, marketing, co-authoring, and more. We will be sharing their answers in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

This first installment of the five-part series focuses on why the authors decided to write their textbook, how long it took to complete the process, and the benefits and challenges of doing so.

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Special Features of TAA Award-Winning Textbooks: From the 2019 Awardees

At the 32nd Annual Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference in Philadelphia, PA, TAA members Al Trujillo and Dave Dillon hosted a panel of textbook award-winning authors to share features that they considered instrumental in the success of their books.  

The panel consisted of Jocelyn Nelson, author of Gateway to Music: An Introduction to American Vernacular, Western Art, and World Musical Traditions, 1st Edition, Frank Carrano and Timothy Henry, co-authors of Data Structures and Abstractions with Java, 5th Edition, and Monica Sherwin and Dave Hall, co-authors of two winning titles, Oklahoma Studies Weekly – Our State, 6th Edition and New Mexico Studies Weekly – Our State, 1st Edition. Below is a summary of the textbook features they felt were most significant in the achievement of their 2019 Textbook Excellence awards.

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Author Interview with Dr. Callie Rennison

Has this ever happened to you? You are reading online about someone’s work, then discover they are close-by in your own community? When I was looking at the impressive winners of this year’s TAA awards, I was struck by the fact that one SAGE author won prizes for two books. This is a very rigorous peer-reviewed award, so winning twice in the same year is remarkable. As luck would have it, Dr. Callie Rennison is a local.

Back in the halcyon days of last week, when we could actually meet someone in person for coffee, I had a chance to speak with her. I was so impressed by her whole approach to research, writing, and teaching, I wanted to give MethodSpace readers a chance to hear from her. So rather than give you a written exchange, we met in GoToWebinar for this interview.

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