Call for Proposals: click here
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Sponsor of the 2011 TAA Conference Welcome Breakfast  |  Sponsor the TAA Conference for as little as $200: Learn more |
Please 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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Visit the new TAA Audio Conference podcast page
Visit the new TAA Audio Conference Podcast page, where members can listen to recordings of TAA audio conferences.
The easy category search makes it to easier to find information.
Academic authors looking for writing assistance, for example, can click on "Writing" and find all podcasts on writing in the same section. Other content categories include Professional, Editing, Grant Writing, Book Publishing, Publicity, Taxes, Proposals, Contracts, Royalties, Copyright, Supplements and Indexing.
All podcasts are free for members: Click here
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TAA on blogtalkradio
Go to TAA's blogtalkradio page and listen to these 30-minute episodes
(15-min content, 15-min Q&A). These episodes are open to members
and non-members, so tell your friends!
TAA Podcasts available on blogtalkradio:
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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
No subject line and nothing in the message field.
Subscribe to the Academic Authoring Listserv by sending an email to TAAAcademicAuthoring-on@mail-list.com
No subject line and nothing in the message field.
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!
If you need to get motivated to get your writing projects completed this fall, don't miss next week's TAA audio conference by accountability and productivity consultant Rachel Z. Cornell of ProNagger: Motivational Techniques: 'Professional Nag' Uses Creative and Innovative Tricks, Tools, & Techniques to Motivate Authors.
This one-hour audio conference will be held Tuesday, September 14 at 2:30 p.m. ET. Register today!
Rachel will share some creative tricks, tools and techniques to motivate you to move forward with your writing projects. You can listen to a 30-minute sneak peek of her session on TAA's blogtalkradio page.
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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NOTABLE AUTHOR: Tara Gray
Scholar devoted to helping academics succeed
by Leanne Silverman
Tara Gray grew up in an academic family and always wanted Tara Gray  | to pursue a life in higher education. In one sense, everything has proceeded exactly as planned: today she directs the Teaching Academy at New Mexico State University and retains a tenured position there. But Gray's career path could also be described as a long and winding road that took her places she hadn't imagined-and turned her into an advocate of professional development designed to help fellow academics achieve  their goals.
After high school, Gray joined the second class of women ever admitted to the United States Naval Academy. "I loved it," she said. But as her sophomore year drew to a close, she realized "I didn't want to have a five-year detour" in the Navy. She transferred to a college in her home state of Kansas and went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Economics at Oklahoma State University.
Gray landed a tenure-track position in economics at Denison University. Her early focus was on the prison system. "Most economists study the business sector," she said. "What I studied fell into 'public economics' so it was outside the norm, but not beyond the pale." When she was denied tenure at Denison-the market had become significantly more competitive between her hiring and the tenure decision-Gray found her background and training to be a better fit in the field of criminal justice. "I would rather teach criminal justice anyway, so I switched," she said.
Read more
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Upcoming Audio Conferences9-14 @ 2:30 p.m. EST: Motivational Techniques: 'Professional Nag' Uses Creative and Innovative Tricks, Tools, & Techniques to Motivate Authors
Presented by Rachel Z. Cornell, Accountability and Productivity Consultant, "Professional Nag" (http://pronagger.com)
Does this sound like you? You're stuck. You've lost your focus. You have too many time commitments and end up getting very little done on an important project. You need to self-motivate. If so, learn how a "professional nag" can help you increase your writing productivity and keep you moving forward with your project by providing you with daily, direct support.
You'll also hear from an author whose use of a professional nag has proved successful, as well as professional motivational tips that you can use to keep your projects on track.
Listen to Rachel's blogtalkradio interview
Sign up, free for members
9-23 @ 10 a.m. EST: The 10 Worst Legal Mistakes a Textbook or Academic Author Can Make
Presented by Zick Rubin, Publishing Lawyer and Textbook Author, The Law Office of Zick Rubin (www.zickrubin.com)
Publishing lawyer Zick Rubin will provide a countdown of the 10 worst legal mistakes that a textbook or academic author can make. He will alert you to the legal traps that can be found in a range of areas, including provisions in publishing contracts, collaboration agreements, and copyright and permission issues.
Listen to Zick's blogtalkradio interview
Sign up, free for members |
New TAA workshop: 'Book-worthy: How Smart Academics Write To Get Published'
TAA is sponsoring a new workshop by former
university press Rachel Toor  | acquisitions editor Rachel Toor entitled, "Book-worthy:
How Smart Academics Write To Get Published."
This workshop is designed for people who
understand that all writers, especially good ones, struggle to be
better. It will assist writers in determining whether their topic is
actually book-worthy (and adapt it if it's not); how to write so that
others want to read their work; how to approach publishers and what to
expect from the process; and what attitudes, behaviors and disciplines
are required to write and publish a book.
"We're all enamored with our topics," said Toor,
who currently teaches creative writing in Eastern Washington
University's MFA program and is on the faculty of Pacific University's
low-residency MFA program. "Most academic writers deliver content in a
way that fails to keep the reader in mind. This workshop will address,
in a way that should not be too painful, how to move through your
infatuation-or desperation-to figure out what is worth writing about,
how best to present your material, and how to get it published."
To learn more about this workshop or to bring this workshop to your institution, click here
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Book promotion strategies: Participation in national sales meetings
By Leanne Silverman
The success of any textbook often
originates at the national sales meetings held by textbook publishers
and larger academic presses each year. But what, exactly, is a national
sales meeting (NSM)?
"They're huge events," said Reid Hester, a 15-year veteran
in textbook sales and marketing. Each January and August, the
publisher's marketing teams, editors, and sales reps gather to review
the season's textbooks-and to establish what's a priority for the reps
to sell.
In large companies, there are often three separate teams
of sales reps: "soft side," "hard side," and "generalists." Each team
handles a wide array of disciplines. For example, Pearson Education's
soft sales force represents anthropology, art, communications, English,
history, music, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion,
social work, sociology and world languages.
Read more
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BOOK REVIEW:
Eleanor Harman, Ian Montagnes, Siobhan McMenemy and Chris Bucci
The Thesis and the Book: A Guide for First-Time Academic Authors
Reviewed by Jose A. Carmona
The Thesis and the Book: A Guide for First-Time Academic Eleanor Harman, Ian Montagnes, Siobhan McMenemy and Chris Bucci The Thesis and the Book: A Guide for First-Time Academic Authors, University of Toronto Press, 2nd ed., 2008 ISBN: 0-8020-8588-1  | Authors contains a great deal of information and useful advice for both the novice and professional academic writers alike. It was originally written for graduate students as a "how to" guide to assist with the "publish or perish" academic world.
This revised edition of the original published back in 1976 superimposes the previous one by revising and expanding existing chapters to meet today's publishing demands. The original edition was composed of articles taken from Scholarly Publishing, now known as the Journal of Scholarly Publishing.
The first part of the book discusses what a good thesis should be, audience and style as well as the dissertation's "deadly sins." Robert Plant Armstrong's chapter about the ladder categorizes these interdependent six sins as amateurism, redundancy, trivialization, specializationism, reductionism, and arrogance.
Read the full review: Click here
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Deadline for nominating your book for a 2011 Texty, McGuffey Award is Oct. 15
Nominate your book for a TAA 2011 Textbook Excellence Award or McGuffey Longevity Award. The deadline for sending the nomination form is October 15, 2010.
The Textbook Excellence Award, open to members and non-members, was created in 1992 to recognize current textbooks and learning materials. To be nominated, a work must carry a copyright date for the previous or current year.
The McGuffey Longevity Award, open to members and non-members, was created in 1993 to  recognize textbooks and learning materials whose excellence has been demonstrated over time. To be nominated, a work must have been in print 15 years and still be selling.
The
nomination fee, which can be paid by the author or publisher, is $300. The deadline to receive books for judging is
November 15, 2010. (These deadlines can be somewhat flexible according
to publication dates.)
McGuffey Awards
2011 Author Nomination Form
2011 Publisher Nomination Form
Texty Awards
2011 Author Nomination Form
2011 Publisher Nomination Form
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Busy TAA People:
Jacques Drabier, John Hodges
TAA members Jacques Drabier, age 88, and John Hodges, age  51, will be giving presentations to senior citizen audiences on War Pilot Memoirs: A Mirror on 1939, which was penned in French then translated by John, pen name J. Anomdeplume. The first presentation is on Friday, September 17, at 2 p.m. at Gencare in Sun City, Arizona.
An excerpt from their talk: " Young aviators must be a fascinating group in almost any setting, but France of the year 1940 takes 'fascinating' to a whole new level. Aviation itself was only a generation and a half from Kitty Hawk, by God! The little Potez 25's and such that you'll read about were immensely popular 'stunt' planes of 1930s aero clubs, but they surely were little... like underpowered Cessnas, say."
Mary Kay Switzer
TAA Vice President Mary Kay Switzer co-authored an adaptation  of "An Evening with Mark Twain: His Own Words and Works." Catch a Star Theatrical Players will present the play at The Beaumont Women's Club (Beaumont, CA) September 24-26 and October 1-2. Of his writing, Twain had this to say, "If I had known what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't have tackled it. But I made the great discovery that when the tank runs dry you've only to leave it alone and it will fill up again in time, while you are asleep--also while you are at work at other things and are quite unaware that this unconscious and profitable cerebration is goin on. Fools who never wrote a book are always giving me their infernal advice about how to write."
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INDUSTRY NEWS:
Transformative new publishing model gaining traction with faculty, students, authors
Flat World Knowledge,
the leading publisher of commercial, openly-licensed college textbooks,
reports that this fall semester, more than 800 colleges will utilize
Flat World textbooks, up from 400 in the fall 2009 and up from 30
colleges in the spring 2009.
Flat World estimates their textbooks save the average student $80 per
class, and projects its textbooks will save 150,000 students $12 million
or more in textbook expenses for the 2010/2011 academic year.
Read more
Virginia State University, Flat World Knowledge sign textbook licensing agreement
Virginia State University's Reginald F. Lewis
School of Business today announced a groundbreaking textbook licensing
agreement with Flat World Knowledge, a leading publisher of commercial,
openly-licensed college textbooks. As part of a broad initiative to
deliver an integrated core business curriculum to all its students, the
business school has purchased a digital site license for Flat World
textbooks that's cost-effective, environmentally sustainable and attuned
to the demands of an increasingly mobile generation.
Read more
College e-textbook market to grow 50% in 2010, new Simba Report finds
E-textbooks are finding their legs in the college
market, growing at an estimated compound annual growth rate of nearly
49% through 2013, when they will account for more than 11% of textbook
sales, according to the newly released "E-Textbooks in Higher Education" report from media industry forecast and analysis firm Simba Information.
"The digital transformation has infused new dynamism in the college
publishing industry in the past year," said Kathy Mickey, senior
analyst/managing editor of Simba's Education Group. "In the throes of a
struggling economy, new devices and new formats have roiled the pot.
Students, instructors and publishers are experimenting with the way
textbooks and other instructional materials are created, marketed,
distributed and used."
Read more
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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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