2010 TAA Conference on Text and Academic Authoring

Ramada Mall of America Minneapolis, Minnesota

June 24-26, 2010

General Session:

Author & Publisher Open Discussion

Day/Time: Saturday, 10 - 11:00 a.m.

Panelists: Jan L. Kardys, Former Director of Contracts at several major publishers; Don Collins, Former Managing Editor of the nation's best-selling Pre-Algebra text and author and co-author of several mathematics textbooks; Brad Fregger, President, Groundbreaking Press; Fred Kleiner, former Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Archaeology; Michael Boezi, Editorial Director, Flat World Knowledge; David Brake, CEO and Founder of Content Connections (more panelists to be announced)

Bring your questions to this open discussion between authors and publishers. Find out (just about) everything you ever wanted to know about publishing a textbook, scholarly journal article or academic book.

About the Panelists:

Jan L. Kardys has over 20 years' diversified publishing experience for eight major publishing corporations. She was the Director of Contracts at Warner Books/Little Brown and Co., Director of Contracts at Macmillan Publishing Co. and Contracts Director at Prentice Hall/Simon and Schuster. Ms. Kardys has also worked at Harcourt Brace Javonovich, Doubleday, Scholastic, Lippincott & Crowell, Publishers and St. Martin's Press in editorial, subsidiary rights and production.

Don Collins graduated from West Texas State University with a BS in mathematics. He has taught middle school/junior high mathematics in Texas and Illinois. After earning an MA in mathematics from Boston College, the next several years were spent in the publishing industry. He was the editor of one of the nation's first Pre-Algebra texts. Later, as managing editor he put together the authorship team and guided the production of the nation's best selling Pre-Algebra text. As his children graduated from college, he left the publishing industry and went back to school earning his doctorate from the University of Houston. Dr. Collins has taught mathematics and mathematics methods courses at Ohio State University, Sam Houston State, and Texas Tech before settling at Western Kentucky University. He has served as a reviewer, consultant and co-author on several mathematics texts and is a frequent speaker at NCTM and other conferences. Collins is also TAA Vice President-President-Elect.

Brad Fregger has 45 years combined experience in retailing, corporate training, software development, international lecturing, and publishing. He is currently President/CEO of Groundbreaking Press, an author-services book publishing company with offices in Austin, Texas, and a member of the adjunct faculty at Texas State University-San Marcos, Texas, and Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio. Brad has produced more than 50 videos, 50 books, 12 audio books, and over 100 consumer and business enterprise software products, including the most successful computer game in the world (Shanghai). He is also recognized as the inventor of the most played computer game in the world (computer card solitaire). He's an international speaker providing programs throughout the Middle East, Europe, and Canada. He's also written six books; his book, Get Out of the Way! - You'll never manage your way to great leadership, was the text in a leadership course held at the University of Texas, Austin. Brad holds a Master's Degree in Futuristics (San Jose State University). His speech, "Earthward Implications of Cosmic Migration," was given at the American Astronautical Society's proceedings in honor of the tenth anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.

Fred Kleiner is Professor of Art History and Archaeology and Chair of the Art History Department at Boston University. The recipient of several prizes for undergraduate teaching and academic advising, Fred is also the author of several books, including two TAA Textbook Excellence Award-winning art history textbooks, and scores of articles and reviews that have appeared in the leading scholarly journals of art history, archaeology, and numismatics in the US and Canada as well as in several European countries and China. From 1985 to 1998, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Archaeology, the flagship scholarly journal of the Archaeological Institute of America. Kleiner is also a new TAA Council member. He will be happy to field questions about both academic journals and textbooks.

Michael Boezi has spent 13 years in higher education publishing, in various roles that have led him to join Flat World Knowledge to help develop one vision of Textbook 2.0. Most recently, Michael was an Executive Editor at Pearson Education, publishing textbooks for the U.S. history course, one of the largest enrolling college courses in the country. Before that, Michael served as an editor at John Wiley & Sons, and as a marketing manager at Addison-Wesley, both in mathematics and statistics.

Michael’s primary role as Editorial Director is to attract new author talent to join Flat World Knowledge in this endeavor to change the publishing industry. Textbook 2.0 will succeed on the strength and vision of the authors involved, first and foremost. Format and delivery will certainly change, but it all rests on a foundation of capable authorship.

David Brake is a 23-year veteran of the book publishing industry where he has held sales, marketing, and editorial positions with McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Time Warner and Times Mirror. As an editor and publisher, he has published several best-selling books in the areas of Science, Business, and Information Technology. Also an author, Brake recently coauthored The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, published in May by John Wiley & Sons. Brake is now CEO and Founder of Content Connections. Founded in 2002, Content Connections is an independent consumer research and consulting company for the book publishing industry. The company specializes in helping authors and publishers identify, augment, and involve a book’s ideal audience prior to publication.