2009 TAA Conference to be held in San Antonio
The 2009 TAA Conference will be held at the El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, June 25-27.
Conference room rates are $114 per night. The El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel is located on the banks of the San Antonio River and offers a state of the art fitness facility, pool, sundeck, and a lounge that overlooks the River.
The Hotel is six blocks from the Alamo, and nine blocks from Hemisfair Plaza and the Rivercenter Mall. It is 30 minutes away from Sea World, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, and Schlitterbahn Waterpark.
Trolleys to downtown attractions leave approximately every 10 minutes outside the hotel. River taxis leave from the Hotel every 40 minutes.
Visit the El Tropicano Riverwalk Hotel website
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Before entering co-authoring relationship, sign a collaboration agreement
The first thing you should write before entering into a co-authoring relationship is a collaboration agreement, said Stephen Gillen, an authoring attorney with Greenebaum Doll & McDonald, during his 2008 TAA Conference presentation, "Don't Get MAD: The Joys and Heartaches of Co-Authorship."
"Do it before you write the manuscript, before you sign the publisher's contract, before you write the sample chapters, before you write the outline, and before you write the proposal," he said. "Do it first. If it's too late to do it first, do it NOW! If you think you don't need one, you're wrong. By the time you realize you do, it's probably too late."
There are a couple of primary reasons why a collaboration agreement is needed before authors begin a co-authoring relationship, said Gillen. One of those reasons is that the default rules of U.S. Copyright Law state that a "joint work is a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole," and "The authors of a joint work are co-owners of a copyright in the work." What this means, he said, it that as co-owners, each author has an undivided proportionate interest in the whole work.
Read the rest of this article
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2008 TAA Conference
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Greetings!
TAA recently announced that the 2009 TAA Conference will be held at the El Tropicano Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, June 25-27.
I hope you will be able to join us in San Antonio next year. We have already begun planning for the 2009 Conference and much of what we will offer next year will be based on this year's conference evaluations and suggestions made at the conference.
If you haven't already visited the 2008 Post-Conference website, I encourage you to do so. It contains news and information from the conference as well as testimonials from attendees, PDFs of conference handouts and a photo gallery.
I hope you enjoy this issue of the TAA News Alert.
Sincerely,
Kim Pawlak
Associate Executive Director
Text and Academic Authors Association
Send me an email
(608) 687-3106
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TAA announces results of royalty rate survey
TAA has announced the results from a recent survey of its textbook author members regarding their domestic and foreign royalty rates. Fifty-seven members responded to the 12-question survey, which was sent to TAA's textbook author members in May 2008. The purpose of the survey was to gather information that would provide TAA members with a useful tool in negotiating new contracts and/or amending existing contracts.
"The survey information is very useful in that it represents a significant number of respondents, publishers and disciplines," said TAA Past-President John Wakefield. "It will provide our textbook author members with information about prospective publishers in their fields, which will help in their decision of which publisher to approach with a manuscript."
Read the entire article
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TAA President responds to 'Wall Street Journal' article that blasts custom books
TAA President Paul Siegel responded to a July 10, 2008 Wall Street Journal article that condemns publishers' use of custom books as a solution to the loss of revenue from the sale of used books.
Read the text of his July 11, 2008 letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal
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Chilean Ministry of Education to hold 2008 International Seminar on History and Social Sciences Textbooks
Based on the success of its 2006 seminar, "Seminario Internacional de Textos Escolares -SITE 2006", which demonstrated that high-quality textbooks were one of the most important factors in making the learning experience more relevant to students and teachers, The Chilean Ministry of Education, through its Textbook Unit, will hold a second international forum in Santiago, Chile, November 11 and 12, 2008.
Learn more
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Judge rules against Pearson in royalty suit
At a June 17, 2008 U.S. District Court hearing, Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum denied Pearson Education's motion to dismiss textbook authors Courtland Bovee and John Thill's claims that the publisher assigned the wrong royalty rate to certain sales through foreign subsidiaries and affiliates or electronic versions of custom-published books. She did grant the publisher's motion to dismiss the authors' claims regarding royalties for sales of print versions of custom-published books.
Bovee and Thill filed a suit against Pearson in May 2008 claiming the publisher had breached their contract and the covenant of good faith and fair dealing with regard to their author agreements.
Read Cedarbaum's Memorandum Opinion and Order under Industry News on TAA homepage
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Editor seeking submissions from practicing librarians for new book on librarian authors
Editor Carol Smallwood is seeking U.S. and Canadian contributors for a new book entitled, The Published Librarian: Successful Professional and Personal Writing, which will be published by the American Library Association (ALA). Deadline for submissions is August 30, 2008.
Learn more
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Textbook and Academic Authoring Column
When the professor wrote the textbook
By Michael Arnzen
I recently contributed a chapter to a book called On Writing Horror which could become a textbook I assign some day in my graduate courses at Seton Hill University, where we have a Master's program in Writing Popular Fiction. I've been working, too, on editing an instructional text on that very subject -- Writing Popular Fiction -- along with an alum from the program. The longer I do this, the more closely aligned what I write and what I teach become.
This is ideally what most scholars do: produce scholarship, in the form of books and other publications. It would seem self-evidently beneficial for a student to take a course with a professor who "wrote the book" on the subject. The author is an authority on the subject and knows the book so well that she'd be the best person to teach from it.
But is there a conflict of interest when a teacher assigns a text of their own authorship to a class, earning royalties from the sales?
The American Association of University Professors' statement "On Professors Assigning Their Own Texts to Students" (available online at aaup.org) provides a great overview of the ethical issues this matter raises. As they put it, there is a risk of abusing their "captive audience":
Because professors are encouraged to publish the results of their research, they should certainly be free to require their own students to read what they have written. At the same time, however, students in a classroom can be a captive audience if they must purchase an assigned text.... Because professors sometimes realize profits from sales to their students (although, more often than not, the profits are trivial or nonexistent), professors may seem to be inappropriately enriching themselves at the expense of their students. (aaup.org)
Read the entire article
Read other Textbook and Academic Authoring Columns
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How-to
10 tips for preparing your next edition
by Steven Barkan
Steven Barkan, a professor of sociology at the University of Maine, and the author of five textbooks and one tradebook, shares the following ten tips for preparing your next edition:
1. The worst is over, but much yet is to be done. The first edition of a textbook takes much more time than any later editions, so the worst is over as you begin to prepare the next edition. However, the next edition can take much more time that one might expect. Research, data, and references must all be updated. Regardless of how long you expect the preparation of the next edition to take, it will probably take longer. The good news is that it will still take much less time than the first edition.
2. Know your (new?) editor. Editors seem to come and go. If you have a new editor since your first edition was published, talk to the editor about what she or he thinks about the first edition and would like to see in the next edition. Also be sure to have a clear idea about the editor's plan and schedule for the revision.
3. Know your (new?) publisher. Thanks to numerous corporate acquisitions, the textbook world is down to a few major publishers. Your publisher may have changed since the first edition of your textbook was printed. The integration of lists after acquisitions can be difficult, as the (now larger) publisher may now have books that compete with each other. This might affect the enthusiasm that your editor will have for having your book come out in a new edition. Be aware of what makes your book different from, and better than, competing books by the same publisher, and be ready to communicate that to your editor.
4. Obtain a very workable electronic file of the publisher's copyedited version of the previous edition. This may be less a problem now than in years past, but your life will be a lot easier if your publisher can give you a workable electronic file of the previous edition.
5. Don't start writing too soon, especially regarding data and statistics, but don't start too late. If you start writing too soon, your material will be that much more out of date by the time the book is printed, which can be as much as a year after you finish your manuscript and thus more than a year since you wrote a chapter containing the material. If you start writing too late, you won't make the deadline for the completion of your revision.
Read the rest of Barkan's tips
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Two new how-to articles on writing
Read two new How-To articles on writing by prolific author Kenneth Henson, presenter of the TAA sponsored workshops, "Writing for Publication" and "Grant Writing." The articles, entitled "Don't Use a Scalpel to Peel an Apple" and "The Most Important Writing Tool", will be published in a new book by New Forums, Inc. in Stillwater, Oklahoma, entitled, It Works for Me, edited by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet.
"Don't Use a Scalpel to Peel an Apple": Read here
"The Most Important Writing Tool": Read here
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TAA Listserv split in two
TAA has split the TAA Listserv into two separate Listservs, one for textbook authors and one for academic authors. Choose which Listserv (or you can subscribe to both) you would like to subscribe to, and subscribe yourself. The current TAA Listserv will only remain active for a few months to allow members to switch over to the new Listservs.
Subscribe to the Textbook Authoring Listserv by sending an email to TAATextbookAuthoring-on@mail-list.com
Subscribe to the Academic Authoring Listserv by sending an email to TAAAcademicAuthoring-on@mail-list.com
You can switch to the Digest version of the Textbook Authoring Listserv, in which you receive only one email message per week with all that week's posts contained within it, by sending an email to TAATextbookAuthoring-switch@mail-list.com
once you have been subscribed.
To switch to the Digest version of the Academic Authoring Listserv, send an email to TAAAcademicAuthoring-switch@mail-list.com once you have been subscribed.
After you are subscribed to the Textbook Authoring Listserv, send messages to TAATextbookAuthoring@mail-list.com
After you are subscribed to the Academic Authoring Listserv, send messages to TAAAcademicAuthoring@mail-list.com
If you have any questions, please email Kim Pawlak
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TAA Teleconference Series
Listen to the recordings from TAA's Spring Teleconference series in the members-only section of the TAA website.
"Tips & Tricks for the Do-It-Yourself Indexer" moderated by Seth Maislin: Listen Now
"Don't Settle For a Publisher's Standard Contract: Terms You Can & Should Negotiate" moderated by Authoring Attorney Stephen Gillen: Listen Now
"A Coach's Perspective on Finishing a Dissertation" Teleconference moderated by Dave Harris: Listen Now
"Royalty Q&A" Teleconference moderated by Paul Rosenzweig, former president of Royalty Review Service: Listen Now
"Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar" Teleconference moderated by Tara Gray: Listen Now
Suggest Topics for the Fall TAA Teleconference Series
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