People want to be published. Whether it is a journal article, textbook, monograph, dissertation, or something else, the urge to be published is palpable with many scholars, researchers, and academics. I work with many people and they all have different motivations: tenure, career advancement, to have their work disseminated, financial rewards, and more. Many have a sense of urgency to them.
But will getting published achieve what you think it will?
In October 2019, six authors, intending to form a class action together with other Cengage authors, filed a lawsuit against Cengage alleging that Cengage’s royalty accounting for proceeds from distribution of their products through the MindTap and Cengage Unlimited business models breached the publisher’s royalty arrangements with authors. In addition to the breach of contract claim, the authors alleged that Cengage acted in bad faith towards authors regarding the two products. Before a trial could get underway, Cengage responded by asking for all counts to be dismissed, and that the attempt to form a class action be denied.
I’ll never forget that encounter I had with Kathy a number of years ago. Kathy and I are friends now, but I’d never met her before that moment when she introduced herself at our annual anatomy and physiology (A&P) teaching conference. She asked if I had a moment to chat about how illustrations are chosen for textbooks. As you can imagine, I love talking about the process of creating textbooks, so we stepped aside for a quick chat.
It turns out that she was chatting up as many A&P textbook authors as she could, including a few other TAA members, with a question that stemmed from her interest in diversity issues. Kathy wanted to know about the illustration process because she wanted to know why women and other groups were underrepresented.
Twenty-nine textbooks have been awarded 2020 Textbook Awards by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA). Seven textbooks received William…
Are you curious what royalty rates other textbook authors are receiving for print and digital books? What about what they’ve…
It’s time for a new edition of Doing Qualitative Research Online! At SAGE, that decision isn’t an automated step. The decision is thoroughly considered and vetted. I had several meetings with my excellent acquisitions editor, then created a proposal which was sent out for review. Comments from reviewers were discussed in further conversations, and we came to an agreement.
Now I have to do the work. How should I start? Every time I write a book, I am determined to avoid problems encountered in past projects. No matter how hard I try, I end up with some degree of frenzy at the end. To lay a positive foundation, here are the questions I am exploring and the steps I am taking:
