FEATURED SPONSOR
of the 2009 TAA Conference Roundtable Discussions Luncheon
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FEATURED SPONSOR
of the 2009 TAA Conference Networking Hospitality Hour
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2009 TAA CONFERENCE SPONSORS
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SAVE THE DATE!
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Subscribe to TAA Listservs
Subscribe to one or both of TAA's Listservs, one on textbook authoring and one on academic authoring.
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
Read the archives for both Listservs here
If you have any questions, please email Kim Pawlak
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Greetings!
It's not too late to register for the 2009 TAA Conference on Text and Academic Authoring, which will be held in San Antonio, Texas, June 25-27!
TAA Conference attendees will have the opportunity to sign up for a FREE 15-minute mentoring session with an attorney, literary agent or veteran author.
If you've already registered for the TAA Conference you will receive an e-mail next week inviting you to sign up for mentoring, which will be offered first come, first served.
Here's what attendees said about their mentoring sessions at the 2008 TAA Conference:
"The free appointments with authoring attorneys have been very useful. I've met with Stephen Gillen at two conferences, and with just a very short meeting his advice nudged me in a smarter direction. If/when the time comes to need actual representation, I know exactly who I will ask, and how to contact him. I really appreciate Stephen Gillen taking the time to hold these appointments." -- Laura Taalman
"I am happy to report that thanks to the advice that I received from numerous people at the TAA Conference (Stephen Gillen, Michael Lennie, Bill Pasewark, Richard Hull, and especially the encouragement from Janet Belsky and Molefi Kete Asante), I have contacted my publisher and they are still very interested in publishing my long stalled manuscript. We have agreed upon an October 2008 submission date. I've put off contacting them for four years (I know it's crazy) and your conference gave me the spark and confidence to restart this project. Thank You." -- Lorna Zukas
Register for the 2009 TAA Conference by clicking here
The deadline for reserving a room at the El Tropicano Hotel at the $114 conference rate is March 25, 2009.
Sincerely,
Kim Pawlak
Associate Executive Director
kim.pawlak@taaonline.net
(608) 687-3106
(507) 459-1363 cell
www.TAAonline.net
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New TAA Council members announced
  
The TAA Council has announced the results of the 2009 TAA elections. They are: Fred Kleiner (far left), Secretary; and Claudia Sanchez (center) and Michael Spiegler (far right) Council members. All will serve three-year terms starting July 1, 2009.
Kleiner is the author of the 2007 Texty Award-winning A History of Roman Art and co-author of the 2001 Texty and McGuffey Award-winning Art through the Ages, and was elected to TAA's Council of Fellows this year. He is professor of art history and archaeology and chair of the art history department of Boston University, where he has taught since 1978.
Sanchez is an assistant professor in the department of teacher education at Texas Woman's University. Her academic interests include grant writing, mentorship in teacher education programs, multicultural teacher competency, Spanish-English biliteracy, and English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching methods. She is director and co-director of three federal grants totaling over $4 million dollars, which focus on the preparation of teachers in critical need areas.
Spiegler is a professor of psychology at Providence College and previously taught at the University of Texas, Austin. He has been a successful textbook and academic author for more 40 years with several leading textbooks, including Contemporary Behavior Therapy (5th ed.) and Personality: Strategies and Issues (8th ed.). For the past 13 years, Spiegler has worked to promote quality college textbooks by giving workshops and presentations on textbook writing at universities and professional conferences (he is a TAA Workshop presenter). He also teaches a 3-day intensive course on all phases of textbook writing in the national Chautauqua program. He regularly reviews manuscripts for publishers and serves as a consultant/mentor to college textbook authors in diverse disciplines. Spiegler is currently writing a comprehensive Handbook for College Textbook Writing.
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Two authors to be inducted into TAA Council of Fellows
 
Two TAA members, Fred Kleiner and Robert Christopherson, will be inducted into the TAA Council of Fellows, which honors distinguished authors who have a long record of successful publishing, during an Awards Ceremony at the 2009 TAA Conference in San Antonio on June 27.
Fred Kleiner is a professor of art history at Boston University and author of Gardner's Art Through the Ages and A History of Roman Art. The author of more than a hundred articles, reviews, and monographs on Greek and Roman art, architecture, and numismatics, Kleiner's research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society, and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. A History of Roman Art won a 2007 Textbook Excellence Award and Art Through the Ages won a 2001 Textbook Excellence Award and a McGuffey Longevity Award. From 1985 to 1998, he served as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Archaeology. He has won Boston University's Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching as well as the College Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.
"Fred Kleiner is an internationally renowned scholar and teacher in the field of art history, the winner of numerous prestigious awards, and the author of scores of scholarly articles and book chapters, and of textbooks going into editions beyond a dozen. A long-standing and active member of TAA to boot, Fred is an ideal new member of the Council of Fellows," said Paul Siegel, TAA president.
Robert Christopherson, professor emeritus of geography at American River College, and author of the leading physical geography textbooks in the US and Canada. He and his nature photographer wife Bobbe have completed nine expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions since 2003 gathering information and photos for his books, Geosystems, 7/e, a 1998 TAA Textbook Excellence Award winner; Elemental Geosystems, 5/e, a 2006 TAA Textbook Excellence Award winner; Geosystems Canadian Edition, 2/e; and Applied Geography, 7/e. He attended Cal State University-Chico, and Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. His first textbook was published in 1992. His textbooks have received several national textbook awards. Also, he was recognized for excellence in teaching with the 1999 Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award from the National Council for Geographic Education and the Outstanding Educator Award from the California Geographical Society in 1997. He was selected by American River College students as "Teacher of the Year" and received the ARC Patrons Award. TAA presented him with its Presidents' Award in 2005.
"Robert Christopherson is a TAA fixture, in the very best sense of the word," said Paul Siegel, TAA president. "In the sense that we could not imagine associational life without him. His co-presentations with wife Bobbe of our almost annual 'geo-physical orientations' to our conference cities are always highlights of our limited time shared together. His numerous textbooks, most of which are in at least the fifth or sixth editions, are unsurprisingly the market leaders in their fields."
TAA initiated its Council of Fellows program in June 1998 to honor distinguished authors who have a long record of successful publishing. Any author whose textbook or other instructional materials have established his/her presence in the market place over time, who has been innovative in the presentation of material, is qualified for nomination into the TAA Council of Fellows. Induction into the Council of Fellows is the premier honor bestowed by TAA.
TAA's other Council of Fellows member include: Michael Sullivan, 1999; Lee Mountain, 1999; Everette E. Dennis, 1999; Mike Keedy, 1999; Franklin H. Silverman, 1999; Karl J. Smith, 1999; Thomas L. Wheelen, 2000; William R. Pasewark, 2000; Karen Hess, 2001; D. Stanley Eitzen, 2001; J. David Hunger, 2001; Charles D. Holland, 2002; Patrick G. McKeown, 2003; Karen C. Timberlake, 2005; Marilyn T. "Winkie" Fordney, 2005.
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Davis awarded two TAA Publication Grants
By Kim Pawlak
Dr. Dannielle Joy Davis, an assistant professor of education at The University of Texas at Arlington, has been awarded two TAA Publication Grants totaling $699. The first grant, for $529, will cover the cost of transcription work that led to the publication of a book chapter, "The Mentorship of a Sharecropper's Daughter: Being Young, Gifted, and Black in Academe," which will be published in The Handbook of Formal Mentoring in Higher Education: A Case Study Approach, edited by Carol A. Mullen, and published by Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.
The second grant, for $170, will cover the computer and printing costs of moving another article to publication, "Mentorship and the socialization of underrepresented minorities into the professoriate: Examining various influences," which will be published in Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning.
"I am grateful for this support and happy to have my work acknowledged by other academic authors," says Davis. "Receipt of the grant has introduced my work on mentoring outside of the field of education."
Davis's book chapter features a mentoring program in the early phases of its development. This case study uses content analysis of program documents, interview data and participant observation to understand the program's effectiveness. The work concludes with suggestions for future faculty mentoring programs, particularly establishing clear expectations amongst mentors and proteges.
Her article examines the mentoring component of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's (CIC) Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP), a national initiative, implemented on various campuses throughout the United States, that seeks to establish a diverse faculty by encouraging the enrollment and completion rates of minority doctoral candidates. "Results from interviews with former and current undergraduate student participants suggest that mentorship influences the individual, interpersonal, extra-programmatic, and to a lesser extent, collective realms of protégé experiences," said Davis. "Study results emphasize the importance of faculty-directed mentorship in preparing students of color for both graduate education and entrance into the professoriate."
Davis is a tenure-track, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Education Policy Studies, as well as two master's degrees in Higher Education Administration and Public Administration with an individualized program in Comparative Education from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. She holds experience in the classroom at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels. As an international scholar, she has studied and conducted research in Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Her interdisciplinary research examines the experiences of marginalized groups in educational settings. She has published over 20 refereed journal articles, book chapters, academic commentaries, and reviews.
TAA members can apply for publication grants of up to $750 to cover expenses incurred in publishing already accepted print academic journal and book and textbooks including academic journal page costs or university press subventions; the cost of preparing artwork or other charts, diagrams, or images to be included in accepted journal articles or academic books or textbooks; and journal reprint costs. Grants are also available for expenses incurred as a direct result of research leading to publication of a book or article, including:
- Interlibrary loan costs, or computer time costs incurred in the analysis of data, leading to publication of academic print materials.
- Costs of single photocopies of source materials for research related to the publication of an article or book.
- Costs of secretarial (copying and/or delivery) services incurred in the preparation of academic print materials.
- Cost of permissions incurred in the preparation of academic print materials for reprinting images, quoted material.
How to Apply: Download a PDF form and mail to: TAA Executive Director Richard Hull, 3241 Heather Hill Lane, Tallahassee, FL 32309-2307.
TAA has up to $7,500 available for making TAA Publication Grants in 2008-2009. Grants will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. The grant period runs from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009. Members who joined TAA through a workshop and received a gift membership are not eligible to apply until they have renewed their membership for a second year. |
NOTABLE AUTHOR: Karen Timberlake
Textbook author provides vehicle for connecting chemistry and health fields
By Kim Seidel
In her first textbook written 40 years ago, author and professor Karen Timberlake presented real-life chemistry examples that would connect with nursing and other allied health students. The successful textbook, Chemistry: An Introduction to General, Organic and Biological Chemistry, published by Pearson, is in its 10th edition.
The idea for the text, referred to as GOB, was developed at Los Angeles Valley College, Valley Glen, Calif., where she began teaching in 1965. "After a few years of teaching, I was assigned to allied health chemistry, a class I soon realized was completely uninteresting and intimidating to students," Timberlake said. "I also realized that the students were taking the class only as a requirement for nursing and allied health, but they could not understand why."
Timberlake often heard comments such as, "I only want to be a nurse. Why do I have to take chemistry?" She began to sit in nursing classes to see how chemistry fit in. "To my surprise, most topics contained chemistry but the students followed the topics because they were interested in the relationship of chemistry to nursing," she said.
Next, Timberlake read nursing, respiratory therapy and nutrition textbooks to find ways to connect the chemistry she was teaching with topics in allied health. "As I brought these real-life connections to the classroom, I observed a change in attitude in the students," she said. "They became interested in chemistry and began to provide health examples from their own experiences in the health field."
In addition, Timberlake observed more students finishing and passing the class, working successfully in their allied health career choices, passing state nursing exams using their chemistry knowledge and even changing their majors to chemistry.
"This complete turnaround seemed to be a result of paying attention to student difficulties in chemistry and finding a vehicle for learning chemistry by pairing topics with allied health," she said. "In fact, I began to drop traditional topics if I did not find a health connection."
Timberlake concluded that the way to help students learn chemistry was to connect it to the health fields that were the career choices of students.
After about five years of combining chemistry with allied health examples, Timberlake had the opportunity to discuss her ideas with a textbook editor who was visiting her chemistry department.
"I wrote a set of learning goals as my proposal for a new kind of general, organic and biological chemistry text," she said. "Three months later, I received a contract and an advance."
Yet, she had not written one chapter of the textbook. This presented a problem until Timberlake decided that she would write the text in the same way that she taught her chemistry class. She started writing the first edition in 1973, and the first edition of GOB was published in 1976.
Since then, Timberlake has added two more texts, one for a two-semester GOB class, and another for a preparatory chemistry class. Published by Pearson, these textbooks are General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry Structures of Life (first edition published in 2002) and Basic Chemistry (first published in 2004).
In addition, Timberlake wrote the laboratory manual for General, Organic and Biological Chemistry, first published in 1976. Timberlake's Essentials Laboratory Manual was first published in 2001.
Throughout her teaching and writing years, Timberlake has witnessed that the field of teaching chemistry became more involved with how students learn.
"With this trend, I introduced more and more pedagogical aids to help students learn how to study and learn chemistry, using their individual learning styles," Timberlake said. "Also during this time, learning resources began to appear on the Internet."
All three of her textbooks have manuals and study guides published with them. The textbooks and its supplements include:
ˇ GOB: Instructor's Solutions Manual, 10th edition, first published 1976; Study Guide and Selected Solutions, 10th edition, first published 1976; and a Test Bank.
ˇ GOB: Structures of Life: Study Guide and Selected Solutions, third edition; Test Bank; Instructor's Solutions Manual, all first published in 2002.
ˇ Basic Chemistry: Instructor's Solutions Manual; Study Guide; Test; all first published in 2004.
In addition, Timberlake created a website for her textbook several years ago, before publishers entered the Internet and added online materials to textbook pages.
At www.karentimberlake.com, students can access learning and teaching activities that complement her chemistry classes for allied health, as well as her first textbook, GOB. The website was developed for the text's seventh edition, and it's old by Internet standards, she said. However, Timberlake leaves the website up, because it's still visited and linked by instructors to their classes.
The website currently is managed by Pearson, which continues publishing the latest editions of her books. When the textbooks are used in class, students use the internet website linked to the textbook by Pearson.
Timberlake has continued to write new editions and to keep up on trends. She updates health, environment and green applications to her textbooks.
Since 1973, Timberlake has collaborated on the textbooks and supplements with her husband Bill, who taught chemistry at Los Angeles Harbor College and West Los Angeles College. They have a good combination for writing the textbooks - his degree was in organic chemistry and hers was in biochemistry.
While they are retired from teaching, the Timberlakes continue to write. "All three textbooks, supplements, and laboratory manuals are in production," she said. "A new edition of each text and its supplements are published every three years, which means we complete a manuscript for a text and its supplements each year. We begin a new edition in January and the book is in print by the following January."
The GOB third edition 2010 and its supplements have recently been published. The Timberlakes are currently working on the manuscript and supplements for the third edition of Basic Chemistry with a publication date of 2011.
Timberlake follows a process for writing new editions. She begins receiving reviews of a text in December, which gives her ideas for revising the text. In each update, she writes new material and deletes old material, and she moves sections and chapters of the text into a different sequence. She reviews the art, updates the photos and adds new art and photos into the textbook.
"The updated manuscript is sent out for reviews, which are used to finalize the new manuscript," she said. "After a review or two of final pages, the text is published as a new edition."
This can be considered a great compliment to a textbook author: "Even today, students say they can hear me teaching in the classroom as they read the text," Timberlake said.
Throughout her years of teaching and writing, she has achieved her objectives through her textbooks. "One obvious goal is to help students successfully learn chemistry," she said. "Another goal is that students want to open the text. I hope that they look forward to learning interesting things when they read the book, so it is not a chore. I hope that the students develop a positive attitude to chemistry."
Instead of students saying to their children, "I never liked chemistry," Timberlake hopes they say, "I really liked chemistry when I was college because it helped me understand many things."
While some students may never use chemistry again, it's Timberlake's goal that they "develop a positive attitude about science for life."
Looking back at balancing writing and teaching, she said it seemed she was doing both all the time. "Weekends were never for rest, but time to catch up with teaching or writing," she said.
Both Karen and Bill taught chemistry for 36 years. "We spend our spare time playing tennis, watching our grandkids, ages 5 and 8, and traveling extensively," she said. "I often have a computer with me on our trips."
In fact, Timberlake responded to questions for this article, writing on her laptop in Kauai, Hawaii.
Kim Seidel is a professional writer who lives in Wisconsin.
Read more Notable Author profiles here
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TAA offers several incentives for starting a TAA Chapter in your area, including a $500 start-up grant and one free TAA sponsored workshop for chapters of 30 or more members.
Learn more: click here
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Finding a mentor
By Mary Dean Sorcinelli and Jung H. Yun, University of Massachusetts Amherst
To navigate the complex world of modern academic life, faculty may need more help than a traditional one-size-fits-all mentor can provide.
Many of our campuses have expended a lot of time, effort, and funding in order to replenish our faculty ranks with a new generation of scholars. But the success of our new colleagues involves far more than simply recruiting and hiring them. Research shows that new faculty often encounter roadblocks that slow or halt their progress into the professoriate.
Because mentoring has been seen as a means of easing this transition many institutions- ours included- have established mentoring programs to better support the short- and long-term needs of its newcomers.
Traditionally, mentoring in academia has followed a top-down model in which a senior faculty member guides the career development of his/her protégé. In recent years, however, we've seen the emergence of new approaches to mentoring, in which no single faculty member is expected to possess the expertise of many.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we've been experimenting with an innovative, flexible, and faculty-driven model of mentoring that encourages faculty at all stages of the academic career to build networks of mentoring partners who can address a wide variety of career competencies. We call this approach "Mutual Mentoring."
Read the full article here
Editor's Note: This article was reprinted with the permission of the authors, Mary Deane Sorcinelli and Jung H. Yun. It originally appeared in the National Education Association's publication, Thriving in Academe.
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Tech Bit: Clean up your hard drive for more speed
By Gregg Marshall
Is your computer getting slower? I've often thought that Microsoft and Intel have conspired to slow computers down over time so you'll buy a new one every year.
Actually as you use your computer, install new programs and get updates, your computer develops what I call plaque, just like your teeth.
So it's time to "brush" your computer.
Start by getting rid of all the "bloatware" that came with your computer. The easiest solution to that is PC Decrapifier (yes that's its name, it's at http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/).
Then uninstall all those neat programs you might have decided to try and never use. Go to your control panel and choose Add/Remove Programs (XP) or Programs And Features (Vista).
If you don't know what's on your PC, try WinAudit (http://www.pxserver.com/winaudit.htm), a great utility for generating a comprehensive report of everything about your computer.
After cleaning off all the extraneous programs, do a disk defragmentation. You can use Windows defragmenter by going to Start then My Computer and right clicking on the C drive. From the context menu that pops up, select properties, then tools. Do a disk clean up first, then do a defragment. Another option is to use Diskkeeper (http://www.diskeeper.com/defrag.asp) that automatically defragments your disk in the background. My favorite is Disktrix' Ultimate Defrag (http://www.disktrix.com), which not only defragments your hard drive, it moves frequently used files to the same area to keep the seek time to a minimum.
That will clean up your hard drive, next time we clean the Windows.
Gregg Marshall, CPMR, CSP, is a speaker, author and consultant. He can be reached by e-mail at
gmarshall (AT) repconnection.com, or visit his website at http://www.repconnection.com
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Listen to recordings of 2009 TAA Teleconferences
TAA members can now listen to the following 2009 TAA Teleconference recordings:
- Taxes and Authors - What You Should Know
- Royalties: Are You Unknowingly Losing Money?
- Writing and Editing Effectively Using 'Fast Writing' and 'Slow Editing'
- Negotiation of Author-Publisher Contracts for the Experienced Author, Part One & Two
- Grants Gamesmanship
- Is Textbook Writing for You?
- You Want to Write a Textbook? Here's How to Do It!
- How to Apply Mainstream Book Publicity Strategies to Academia
Listen to the recordings here
You will need your member username and password to access the recordings. Please email kim.pawlak@taaonline.net if you don't have a username and password.
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COLUMN:
Turning bad editing into good writing
By Nick J. Sciullo
Whether soliciting advice from friends, family, or colleagues, on the receiving end of letters and track changes from journal editors, all authors have received bad editing. Bad editing is part of the writing game. Not everyone who is an editor is an excellent writer, in fact many are not. Although we'd like to think that our manuscripts are read by people with an interest or specialization in the material our articles or books cover, that's not always the case. Readers can have bad days. Professors can be bogged down by exams; student editors may be more concerned with tests.
I've received bad editing from peer reviewed and non peer reviewed journals alike. No journal has a monopoly on good editing nor does any journal have a monopoly on bad editing. As author's we're often inclined to dismiss criticism in frustration and then after a little reflection labels ourselves as obviously defensive. I argue that is not necessarily a constructive way to engage the editing process. Sometimes the writer will be correct and the editor will be wrong. But, it is still the author's job to learn from whatever criticism one receives.
What might the author learn? Assuming the criticism/edits also result in a rejection this might tell you that you chose the wrong journal. If you tried for the best journal in your field, perhaps you simply should have tried for a middle of the pack journal. Perhaps you write conservative economic articles and you submitted to a liberal-leaning journal. Maybe what you wrote is more public policy than it is political theory. Understand that harsh criticism/editorial comments do not always mean that an article is unpublishable. Redirect your energies and think about the choices you made the entire way through the authorship process.
Authors might also recognize the need for a new article. How many times have you looked at edits and wracked your brain over comments only to realize that what you needed to do was rework the current article and write another article to more fully address the arguments of your editors? Maybe the very process of editing inspires you to write an article about the peer or non-peer review editorial process. Even the worst editing might be a pathway to new arguments and new articles.
Lastly, even bad editing likely has some redeeming qualities. Do not reject editing you do not like simply because it offends your sensibilities or literary integrity. Do not retreat from your thoughts and research, but be amenable to working with them in slightly different ways. There may in fact be times where you cannot bear to make certain changes in an article for fear of losing the argument that you wished to make, but editing that significantly alters your argument to such an extent that you feel it forces a different argument is likely rare. Look for the useable and use it to produce the publishable.
Everything we write is not the greatest material ever conceived. Sometimes we know this when writing and sometimes it takes others to tell us. All the comments and edits we receive are likewise not the most helpful or thoughtful constructive criticism. The challenge for authors is to holistically evaluate their edits and criticisms and move forward to write more and write better.
Nick J. Sciullo writes on critical race theory, rhetorical theory, and public policy. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. The author may be contacted at nicksciullo@hotmail.com.
Read more Columns here
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Author self-publishes three math texts online
By Kim Seidel
Math textbook author Pat McKeague recently published three mathematics textbooks online as a way to have more control over the content, marketing and price of the books. He also wanted to try some new techniques, such as integrating video with the text material.
The books, Basic Mathematics, Elementary Algebra and Intermediate Algebra can be found on his website: www.MathTV.com.
McKeague, a part-time college instructor and a national speaker, has authored math textbooks for more than 30 years. He has had 16 other textbooks published by traditional publishers. He said his experiences with publishers have been positive and he maintains good relationships with publishers today. He wanted to self-publish to move his projects along more quickly than he could with traditional publishers, and to see if it would be possible to lower the price of his textbooks, he said.
McKeague is funding his new MathTV project himself. "If you just look at equipment, wages, software, programming, and rent, the start-up costs are around $100,000," he said. "If you add in production on the print books, it is a lot more than that.
"There is a myth that some really good material on the Internet is free. It's not. It all costs money, sometimes lots of money. Just because you can get it for free on the Internet, does not mean it is actually free. Someone is paying for it."
McKeague's first priority with the textbooks is to offer a low cost alternative to the materials currently available to students. "At the same time, I want the site to be profitable," he said. "That way it can serve as a model for other people to do something similar."
Another objective with the textbooks is to remove the video decision from the textbook adoption decision. "Our videos are free to anyone coming to the site, regardless of whether they are using one of my books, or someone else's book," McKeague said. "In the long run, I am hoping that publishers will follow my lead and do the same thing with online homework systems."
Currently in developmental math, he said, people make decisions about which book to use based on the software that accompanies the book. "I am hoping to change that," McKeague said.
"Most of all, I want to enjoy my working life and this project allows me to do that. I like making videos and writing books. And working with my crew and the student instructors is a joy."
The first chapter of each online book is free. "That way a student can start the course without purchasing anything right away," McKeague said. "They have some time to decide if they want to purchase the online version of the book, or the print version."
McKeague is looking to charge $20 for a six-month subscription to the online books, and around $50 for a print book. The videos that accompany the books will be free regardless of which version of the book they purchase.
McKeague wants the project to be profitable, and at the same time, he wants the videos to be free. To meet those objectives, he needs to generate income from the free videos. They are testing out whether Google ads can help meet those goals.
"Google ads are an easy way to generate income," he said. "They can be implemented so that they are unobtrusive; we don't want the ads to get in the way of viewing the videos, or to detract from the attractiveness of our site. We don't yet know whether Google ads are a good idea or not."
The main www.MathTV.com website is simple but has many interesting features. It contains problems from basic mathematics and algebra through trigonometry and calculus. Below each problem are pictures of instructors. Users can choose the instructor they want to work the problem for them.
In addition, the site allows users to arrange the problems by topic, or according to the table of contents of one of McKeague's books.
"We also have a playlist feature that lets instructors select the problems they want their students to watch," McKeague said. "For example, if they are giving a test on quadratic equations, they can make a playlist of the problems on MathTV that they want their students to review."
The main site branches off to the online book site. McKeague said he wants this area to be as close to being in the classroom as possible. "Even though our users may be working alone, we want them to feel like they are part of a community," he said.
Users choose the book they're interested in, and then the site displays a window with the text part of the book on one side, and the corresponding videos on the other side. Users have the option with both the videos and the text of going to a full-screen view. Along with instructional videos, videos on study skills, enrichment problems, common mistakes and success skills are offered.
Some booklets on how to study for the SAT exam and other topics also will be put online. "The website is very flexible and allows us to add features as we discover them," he said.
McKeague lives on the central coast of California in San Luis Obispo. He and his wife have two children. Their son has worked with him full time for 15 years with both the print books and the website. His son keeps the company current on technology and created the website. His daughter, a former textbook sales rep, works part-time with the student instructors. She assists McKeague with sales and marketing.
"We have seven grandchildren that live in town, and I have a variety of friends with varied interests, so life is exciting and diverse," he said. McKeague offers advice to new authors: "Contact experienced authors when you have questions, join TAA and use TAA's resources so you can start out with good contracts."
For example, McKeague has a clause in his contracts with traditional publishers which states he has to approve custom versions of his books. "That clause has saved me from all kinds of difficult situations. We never discuss things like royalty rate on custom projects because my publisher knows that I will only approve them if the royalty rate is the same as my regular royalty rate. I have never said no to a custom project. The difficulties never come up because of that clause. Was that clause easy to get? No, but that is true of most of the important clauses in a contract."
Kim Seidel is a freelance writer, based in Onalaska, Wis.
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TAA Gift Memberships
You can give a TAA Gift Membership for only $15.
Providing a gift membership to a family member, friend, student or colleague is a great way to assist them with their writing and show your support for TAA's mission.
Learn more
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Flat World Knowledge publishes first textbooks
By Kim Seidel
Online textbook company Flat World Knowledge (FWK) has published its first eight textbooks and three more will be published in the next few weeks. All of their books are available in full versions online for free. Paperbacks, audio, and self-printable versions cost under $30.
The first eight textbooks are: Exploring Business by Karen Collins; Principles of Management by Mason Carpenter, Talya Bauer and Berrin Erdogan; Organizational Behavior by Talya Bauer and Berrin Erdogan; Launch! Advertising and Promotion by Mike Solomon, Lisa Duke and Amit Nizan; Fundamentals of Income Tax Theory and Practice by Dieter Kiefer; Microeconomics by Libby Rittenberg and Tim Tregarthen; Intermediate Economics by R. Preston McAfee and Tracy R. Lewis; and Money and Banking by Robert E. Wright and Vincenzo Quadrini.
All of FWK's books are currently in the fields of business and economics, and range from intro to MBA level, said Eric Frank, who co-created the company with Jeff Shelstad in February 2007.
Within weeks of going live in March 2009, FWK had visitors from 189 countries and territories. This spring, they've had adoptions of the textbooks in university classes in England, Lithuania and Guam. They recently hired a chief financial officer, editorial director, director of business development, project manager and software developer.
FWK uses a Creative Commons license on its content, meaning that instructors who adopt the company's textbooks have the ability to edit the content as long as they meet three criteria: attribute the author/publisher; share the resulting derivative work under the same license; and do not engage in commercial activity around their derivative.
"This week we are releasing an online interface to easily enable customers to move chapters and sections up/down, and delete them if they desire," Frank said. "This summer we expect to release the ability for customers to add 'annotations' into the book - think of sticky notes with notes to their students.
"Then, late this year, we aim to release an online editor, which would actually enable them to modify an example, change a definition, etcetera. Our system will capture those changes and display them as modifications, so that the reader can distinguish between what was original versus what was modified/added by a user."
The advantages to FWK's authors and the publisher in enabling the Creative Commons license include the following, said Frank:
Gain market share: A potential customer who believes he/she is able to modify content to better suit his/her class is much more likely to adopt a FWK book versus a book which they will have to teach around by saying things to their students like "skip that section; ignore that definition and use the one I wrote on the board, etcetera."
Build loyal customers: A customer who is able to change something they are not satisfied with in a book is much more likely to be a loyal, long-term customer because they continuously make the book better fit what they do. Further, the barrier to exit for that customer to leave the book to go to another is much higher - they have made an investment in this particular book and they are more likely to stay with it.
Gain behavioral intelligence about users: One of an author's greatest frustrations is not knowing how customers actually use the book. By enabling customers to make changes to the book and then capturing all of the changes in a reportable format, FWK is able to provide authors with real intelligence, based on user behavior, about how people use their book. The author will be far better equipped to make changes to the next edition of the book based on this type of behavioral data than they are today, thus producing an increasingly effective book with each modification.
Fight used books: FWK will have far fewer used books in their model versus the traditional publishers. One reason for this is giving the customer the ability to customize. The more one customizes, and the more frequently, the less used books are available in the market.
"As with a traditional publisher, we will work with our authors to publish new editions," he said. "Unlike publishers, though, we are less driven to do so by market forces - used books, global gray market versions, pirated copies, etcetera - and more driven to do so based on when changes have occurred in the discipline area that necessitate a new edition. So, we will produce new editions when we and our authors believe a new edition is merited. We will then give the choice to the customer as to whether he/she uses the new edition, or continues to remain with the previous edition. Because our model of print sales is based on printing-on-demand, this works for us and our customers."
There are several advantages to working with the authors on new editions, said Frank, including, again, that market share is gained: "Customers are furious about being forced by publishers to go to new editions increasingly frequently. We know that publishers - and authors - must do this to battle the used book market, but it is not good customer practice, and a customer choosing between a book where they will be 'forced' to new editions on the publishers schedule versus a book where they can opt for the new edition on their own schedule will choose the latter."
In addition, this practice fights used books. "We will have far less used books in our model than a traditional publisher has, but we will still have some," he said. "Having customers spread out over multiple editions and versions over time is a good thing - it keeps the national used book market fragmented versus the current model where there is a single, huge used book market for the current edition and the one just prior."
Learn more about FWK by reading an earlier TAA article, "Online textbook company goes live, publishing texts, securing authors:" Click here
Kim Seidel is a freelance writer based in Onalaska, Wis.
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Three textbook publishers, five universities to pilot e-textbooks on Amazon's Kindle DX
By Kim Seidel
Three of the largest textbook publishers, Cengage Learning, Pearson PLC and John Wiley & Sons, have partnered with Amazon to sell their textbooks on the company's new Kindle DX
wireless reading device.
The new Kindle, which will sell for $489, has a 9.78-inch screen, 2.5 times larger than the original Kindle. It holds up to 3,500 books, periodicals, and documents, 2,000 more than Kindle 2. It is 3G wireless and requires no monthly fee, so books can be downloaded anywhere, anytime.
In addition Kindle DX has a built-in PDF reader and dictionary. Users can use the keyboard to add annotations to the text; edit, delete and export notes; highlight and clip key passages; and bookmark pages.
Pearson has agreed to provide Amazon with higher education textbook content for delivery on the Kindle DX. "We welcome the opportunity to give college students another option of accessing digital textbooks," said Wendy Spiegel, spokesperson for the education business of Pearson. "At this time, we have not made a decision about which titles in which disciplines or at what price points these will be offered on the Kindle DX."
Pearson has pointed to a number of enhancements that make the Kindle DX more suitable for textbooks than the previous Kindles. The use of the A4 letter-sized format means that textbooks don't need to be reformatted to fit the screen and the screen size can be maximized by turning the device to the left or right.
In addition, the device has options for changing text size and line length. The new display presents like paper and now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images, Spiegel said.
Five universities have also partnered with Amazon to replace the Kindle DX with textbooks for some students when it becomes available next year. They are Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Pilots will begin in the fall.
"The opportunity to pilot a device that has the potential to improve the students' educational experience by lowering their textbook costs and eliminating their need to carry around heavy textbooks, while moving to a environmentally-friendly solution, is exactly the type of exploration in which ASU wants to be involved," says Kari Barlow, ASU's assistant vice president, Strategic Alliances & Special Initiatives, University Technology Office.
At ASU, one section of the Human Event course, approximately 65 students, will be involved in the pilot. It's a two-semester trans-disciplinary honors course that introduces students to honors studies at ASU. The students will receive their textbooks not as bound books but on a brand new Kindle DX.
The Kindle's performance will be evaluated against a control group of students that work with traditional paper-based texts.
"How the Kindle will compete and whether students are willing to carry a Kindle and a laptop remains to be seen," Spiegel said. "However, I suspect that most students already carry multiple devices."
At Case University, 40 incoming freshman will pilot the Kindle DX in the fall. Computer science and chemistry courses and a first-year seminar course will be targeted. "We will continue to conduct our investigation in the spring semester, but have not yet identified these courses," said Wendy Shapiro, Case's senior academic technology officer and director of Information Technology and Academic Computing department.
Along with the textbooks, some of the materials used in these classes will be in a pdf format, Shapiro said. These files will be "pushed" directly to the students' Kindles. "It is believed this process will make finding and keeping course materials more convenient. We also will be looking to see if this type of delivery helps keep students more organized."
The purpose of the pilot study at Case, Shapiro said, is to determine what effect the Kindle DX has on learning. Case will look at the following components during the pilot: organization; time on task; navigation; usefulness of embedding notes and annotations; efficiency; ease of use; study skills; and portability.
Princeton is using Kindle DX in a small number of classes during the upcoming fall term. A major aim of the pilot is to help determine if e-readers can cut down on the use of paper at Princeton, without adversely affecting the classroom experience.
According to Princeton's website, the university last year printed 50 million sheets of paper at the cost of $5 million. More than 10 million sheets were printed in student computing clusters, much of that generated by printing digitized text. If, through the use of e-readers, the university can cut down that printing by even 1 percent, they will have more than made up for what was spent on the pilot.
"Princeton's focus in this pilot is to determine to what extent e-readers can substitute for paper, both from a sustainability and a pedagogical perspective. At the end of the pilot, we will assess what affect, positive or negative, the readers have had both with respect to printing and with respect to the pedagogical goals of the participating faculty and students.
"That assessment will be made available publicly. Our hope is that Amazon, and others, will be able to use those results to design e-readers that can help Princeton and other institutions with respect to sustainability and pedagogy. Although Princeton does not, and will not, endorse any specific device, we hope that the pilot will help companies develop e-readers that are attractive to our students and faculty."
Kim Seidel is a professional writer in Onalaska, Wis.
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TAA 2008 Teleconference Series
TAA members can now listen to recordings from TAA's 2008 Teleconference Series. The playback options have been enhanced to enable members to rewind, fast-forward and pause the recordings in addition to stop and play. The recordings can also now be downloaded and listened to on a computer or Mp3 player.
These recordings are for members-only. Only TAA members have permission to download TAA Teleconference recordings. Recordings may not be copied, shared with, or distributed to non-members.
Listen to or download the recordings:
Learn more about these teleconferences at http://www.taaonline.net/TAATeleconferences/schedule.html
Don't have your member username and password? Email Kim Pawlak
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