4 Key requirements for building an author website

In part 2 of her webinar series, “Designing a Web Presence for Your Book (Beyond the Publisher Website)”, Dr. Katie Linder, creator of The Academic Book Promotion Toolkit shared detailed insight into technical requirements to consider when designing a web presence for your book. Among these requirements were domain names, hosting providers, content management systems, and themes, widgets & plug-ins.

In this article, we summarize key aspects of these four technical requirements as presented by Dr. Linder.

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9 Reasons to design your own author website

In part 1 of her webinar series, “Designing a Web Presence for Your Book (Beyond the Publisher Website)”, Dr. Katie Linder, creator of The Academic Book Promotion Toolkit shared valuable tips for considering your options when designing a web presence for your book. Among these tips were questions for consideration on whether your book needs a website, pros and cons of publisher vs. author sites, what to include on a book website, and dos and don’ts of website design.

In this article, we focus on nine reasons you should consider creating your own author website for your book. As presented by Dr. Linder, some of these reasons are disadvantages of having a publisher website, and others are advantages to creating an author website for your book.

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3 ways to illustrate your point in a textbook

According to a 2006 cover story in the APA magazine, Monitor on Psychology, titled “How laughing leads to learning”, well-placed comedy in the learning environment has been shown to reduce tension, boost participation, increase motivation, and help students retain information.

In this article, cartoonist Dan Rosandich shares three ways for effectively incorporating cartoons and illustrations into your next textbook.

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Creating a companion site for your textbook: What to consider

Companion sites can enrich the learning experience for readers by offering valuable features that can’t be shared on a printed page and/or might be too costly to include in an e-book. There are many factors to consider when planning or developing a companion site for your textbook. Janet Salmons, an independent researcher, writer, consultant, and founder of Vision2Lead, offers detailed advice for authors interested in creating companion sites for their textbooks.

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E-books, digital rights management, and the first-sale doctrine

There has been much buzz over the last couple of decades about the future of the textbook. Will print books continue to dominate? Will book rentals take a more prominent role? Will the market shift to e-books or to subscription-based access to cloud stored content or to more complex adaptive learning systems? Or will proprietary publishing fade to black as Open Education Resources improve in quality and increase in number?

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2018 Textbook Award Nominations Now Open

Nominations for the 2018 Textbook Excellence Award (“Texty”), McGuffey Longevity Award (“McGuffey”), and Most Promising New Textbook Award, opened September 1 and will run through November 1.

For more than 20 years, TAA has supported textbook and academic authors through these highly-recognized awards, given annually to emerging and veteran published authors in eight subject categories.

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