EARLY REGISTRATION ENDS MAY 1!
Full member registration is $200.
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Please thank your 2010 TAA Conference Sponsors
sponsor of the Roundtable Discussions Luncheon
sponsor of the Awards Ceremony Luncheon
donated 30 copies of Frank Silverman's Self-Publishing Textbooks and Instructional Materials
donated 30 copies of Writing Your Way to Success: Finding Your Own Voice in Academic Publishing, by Susan M. Drake and Glen A. Jones
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Update your contact information
If your mailing address, email address, or phone number has changed recently, please fill out a Member Update Form online or contact TAA headquarters at 727-563-0020 or TextandAcademicAuthors@taaonline.net
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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!
You will see in this issue of the TAA News Alert that your TAA member username/email and password have been provided for your convenience. This e-mail newsletter is personalized to you. Only your e-mail contains your username and password.
If you do not want your username and password included in your e-mail communications from TAA, please let me know right away. If you have already asked that your username and password not be included in email communications, it wasn't included in this one.
We decided to provide your username and password in e-mail communications as a convenience to you. We know how busy you are and we thought having your username and password handy as you need it -- to register for a teleconference in an email that announces it, to read the full text of an article in the Member Center from this News Alert, or to renew your TAA membership when one of our communications reminds you to do so -- would be a service worth adding.
Although you are the only one receiving your username and password in this News Alert, there's always a chance that it could be read by someone else. So if you have chosen to change the original TAA password you received when you joined, I suggest that it not be the same as one you may use to protect more proprietary information, such as a bank account.
Instead use a different, "throwaway" password so that the worst thing that could happen if someone gets ahold of your password is that they can pretend to be you and login to the TAA Member Center.
To change your password, simply login and click on the "Change Password" link.
Please email me directly with any questions or comments.
Sincerely,
Kim
Kim Pawlak
Associate Executive Director
kim.pawlak@taaonline.net
(608) 687-3106
(507) 459-1363 cell
www.TAAonline.net
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GUEST COLUMN
Let's prepare for the VAT
by Stan Gibilisco
The President's deficit reduction panel will likely
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recommend a national value-added tax (VAT), such as most of the other developed nations have, at the end of this year. This tax, if it becomes law, will come on top of all the existing taxes we pay now. We writers had better watch what happens in 2011 after the panel makes this recommendation and Congress starts to consider it.
If you want to get an idea of how a VAT might actually work in the U.S. and how it might affect the economy, just google on the phrase "value-added tax." That'll keep you busy for a few hours.
The most obvious consequence of a new VAT will be an overnight increase in the price of nearly everything, equal to the percentage of the VAT. For starters in this country, 10 percent would constitute a good guess. In some European countries it exceeds 20 percent. But it could in effect go much further than that for people in certain occupations, book authors among them. I derive all of my income from book royalties, so I'm especially sensitive to this issue.
The VAT, if carelessly written into law by Congress or inappropriately administered by publishers, could devastate the livelihoods of writers who live mostly or entirely off of book royalties. All book authors will, in any event, find their royalties treated as the proceeds of a "sale" and subject to the full force of the VAT, which ordinary businesses treat as a sales tax. Many, if not all, authors will have to "VAT-register" with the federal government and pay the tax on royalties, in addition to income taxes and other taxes.
Read the full column: click here
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Custom, digital instructional materials may be end of TX, CA domination of K-12 textbooks
By Ellie Ashford
Historians and educators are alarmed about new social studies standards approved by the Texas State Board of Education that attempt to incorporate a conservative ideology into public school classrooms. But even though Texas is a huge market for textbooks, and its standards tend to dominate the industry, that influence might be waning with the growth of more customized digital material and instructional materials.
The Texas board passed more than 300 amendments to the standards before voting 10-5 along party lines to adopt them on a preliminary basis. All the Republicans on the board voted in favor of the revised standards. The board will adopt final standards in May following a 30-day comment period.
Among the more controversial amendments approved by the board would de-emphasize the First Amendment's mandate on the separation of church and state and drop Thomas Jefferson from a list of thinkers whose ideas formed the basis of the American democratic system adopted by the Founding Fathers.
Read the entire article: click here
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BOOK REVIEW:
Wendy Laura Belcher
Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success
Reviewed by Grant Eckstein
Wendy Belcher's new book on academic writing, Wendy Laura Belcher Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success  | Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success is not your average tome on scholarly productivity. It is, by appearance and admission of the author, a workbook-one that takes a graduate student or junior faculty member by the hand and leads him or her to successfully write an academic article in the Humanities or Social Sciences that can lead to publication.
The author draws on her extensive experience conducting scholarly productivity workshops and background as an academic editor of a peer-reviewed journal to discuss academic writing and establish a regimen for scholarly productivity. Her purpose: to get graduate students and junior faculty published in a peer-reviewed journal. Belcher suggests revising an existing piece rather than starting from scratch with the promise that revising well will lead to better writing. To scaffold the revision process, the workbook is broken into 12 weeks, not chapters, each with its own collection of instruction, strategies for successful revising, and worksheets meant to get thinking or writing going.
Read the full review: click here
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2010 TAA Conference early registration ends May 1
Early registration for the 2010 TAA Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 25-26, will end May 1. After that date, registrations in all categories will increase by $50.
Member registration is $200 ($250 after May 1) and non-member registration is $230 ($280 after May 1). One-day member registration is $145 ($195 after May 1) and one-day non-member registration is $175 ($225 after May 1). Register online today.
Take advantage of the special group rate this year: $15 for members and $180 for non-members per person (minimum group rate is five). Groups must register by mail.
Rooms at the Ramada Mall of America for conference attendees are only $105 per night. Get the special conference rate by calling 1-800-328-1931 or 952-834-3411. Use the group code "TEXTBOOK" when you register. You can also reserve a room online at www.ramadamoa.com/
The conference will feature more than a dozen sessions, a Roundtable Discussions Luncheon, an Awards Ceremony Luncheon honoring TAA's 2010 Textbook Excellence Award and McGuffey Longevity Award winners and this year's Council of Fellows inductee, a Hospitality Networking Hour each night, and mentoring.
Conference sessions will include: - Tax Tips for Authors
- Take the Technological Mystery Tour: Web Resources Authors Can Really Use
- Open Access Electronic Textbooks and Journals
- Google Book Settlement: Where It Stands, What It Means For You
- How Open Licensing Improved Our Textbook and Our Careers
- Getting the Best-Looking Book: Best Production Practices for Authors
- Negotiating Publishing Contracts for Textbooks and Journal Articles
- Finding Images and Media Online: Understand Licensing and Use of the Public Domain
- Should You Write a Textbook? Almost Everything You Need to Know
- Authoring Into Retirement: Too Much Invested to Quit
- Finding Our Shared Humanity in an Academic Writing Community
- Fine-Tuning Your Work: Writing, Editing & Publication Preparation Skills for Scholarly Authors
TAA's 2010 Conference Committee members are Barbara Waxer and Michael Spiegler.
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TAA TELECONFERENCE
REGISTER FOR THE LAST TELECONFERENCE OF THE SEASON!
Writing, Procrastination and Resistance: How to Identify Your Funk and Move Through It
Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 12-1 p.m. EDT
Presented by Kerry Ann Rockquemore, a speaker in the field of faculty development and leadership, and author of The Black Academic's Guide to Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul
This one-hour teleconference is for faculty, post-docs and/or advanced graduate students who: - Feel stuck and aren't making progress toward finishing your article, dissertation, or book
- Can't seem to produce unless a deadline is looming
- Feel like everyone else in your environment is moving forward while you're standing still
- Are experiencing a sense of dread because your third year review is around the corner and you know you haven't met your department's publication expectations
- Have recently had a critical third year review, promised yourself you would start writing more but haven't quite lived up to that promise
- Wonder regularly if you really want to be an academic
- Find yourself in a writing funk, but don't know why or how to get out of it
- Feel paralyzed because you haven't written in so long you don't know where to start
- Still can't figure out how your semesters fly by without progress on your research, writing, and publication
This teleconference will also help you:
Learn the behaviors that lead to writing productivity, Understand the factors underlying persistent patterns of procrastination, Identify individual forms of writing resistance, Implement concrete strategies for moving around resistance, Develop a community of support for difficult times
Participants of Rockquemore's teleconference will receive a subscription to her weekly Monday Motivator e-mail to reinforce the concepts they learned in the teleconference and to encourage application and implementation. They will also receive access to a professional development discussion forum; a bibliography of professional development books, articles, and online resources; and access to online writing support and accountability groups.
Register
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Missed a TAA Teleconference? Recordings are available online
Free for members!
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ASJA Writers Conference, April 23-25
Register for the 39th Annual American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Writers Conference, which will be held April 23-25 at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan.
Award-winning author and brain tumor survivor Liz Holzemer and PR guru Peter Shankman will give keynote presentations. The event includes 28 different sessions on the ever-changing business and craft of nonfiction freelance writing and publishing. Topics will include environmental, investigative and medical journalism, biographical, humor and opinion writing, book publishing and securing movie rights as well as emerging media and technology trends and business management and promotional tactics for freelance writers. One-on-one mentoring will also be available.
For more information or to register, visit the ASJA Conference website
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DISCLAIMER: TAA has not tested and neither endorses nor opposes any product or procedure recommended or referenced in any TAA publications, teleconferences, or workshops.
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