February
11, 2004
Publishers File
Copyright Infringement Suit
Five major publishers
have filed a copyright infringement suit in the U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of California against KB books, a San Diego,
California college bookstore chain. Harvard Business School Publishing,
The New York Times, Elsevier, Inc., Pearson Eduction and John Wiley
& Sons, Inc. allege that KB Books has routinely produced and sold coursepacks
to college students in the San Diego area without obtaining permission
to use the content from the publisher or Copyright Clearance Center,
the publishers' licensing agent.
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What Makes An
Agent Notice a Manuscript
Alana Lennie, Lennie
Literary Agency's office manager, and the first person to see author
submissions, shares some manuscript submission tips: Do a thorough edit
before sending your manuscript, reading and rereading it for clarity
and grammatical perfection; and make sure your manuscript has a hook
that won't let the reader go.
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Dell to Launch
E-Text Pilot Project
Dell, Inc. hopes
to take the burden of heavy textbooks off the shoulders of students
with its Book Locker Pilot Project, which will test an alternative to
print textbooks: a Universal Serial Bus (USB) storage device about the
size of a pack of gum that can hold up to 20 textbooks' worth of content.
The USB device can be plugged into any computer.
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Report Uncovers
Market Practices That Drive Up Text Costs
According to a report
conducted by the California Student Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG),
the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG) and the OSPIRG
Foundation, college students pay an average of $900 per year for textbooks
and publishers engage in market practices that drive up the price. Other
findings: Half of all textbooks now come "bundled" or shrink-wrapped
with additional instructional materials; more than 65 percent of the
faculty surveyed for the report say they "rarely" or "never" use the
bundled materials in their courses; and textbook publishers put new
editions on the market frequently — often with very few content
changes — making less expensive used textbooks obsolete and unavailable.
For the complete report, visit http://www.pirg.org/highered
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TAA Past President
Frank Silverman Dies
TAA Past President
Frank Silverman died December 10, 2003 after a year-long battle with
terminal brain cancer. He was 70. Until recently, Silverman worked as
a professor of speech pathology at Marquette University, and as a clinical
professor of rehabilitation medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
He is the author of 22 speech pathology textbooks, six of which were
pioneers in the field. He influenced the training of speech pathologists
all over the world by developing training programs in developing countries.
Silverman had been
a member of TAA since shortly after it was founded. His book, Authoring
Textbooks and Other Academic and Professional Books and Materials, the
first of its kind, formed the basis for TAA's authoring workshops, offered
through universities and professional organizations and at annual TAA
conventions. He served as TAA president in 1997. In 1999, Silverman
was one of the first six members to be inducted into TAA's Council of
Fellows, formed to honor members who have made important contributions
to authoring. In an e-mail to his friends at TAA shortly before his
death, Silverman wrote: "I have had an extraordinary life." All of us
at TAA who knew him personally are happy to have been a part of that
extraordinary life.
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Register by March
1 for the TAA Convention
The 2004 TAA Convention
will be held April 2-3, 2004 in St. Petersburg, Florida at the Heritage
Holiday Inn Hotel. Registration for members is $175 before March 1,
$225 after. Registration for non-members is $225 before March 1, $275
after. Non-member registration includes a one-year membership to TAA.
To qualify for Heritage Holiday Inn's TAA group rate of $93.95, you
must make your reservations by March 2. For more information or to register
for the convention, contact TAA headquarters at (727) 563-0020, e-mail:
TEXT@tampabay.rr.com or click
here. To reserve your room at the Holiday Inn The Heritage, call
1-800-283-7829 or (727) 822-4814, e-mail: htlstpete@aol.com
or visit: www.theheritagehi.com
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