- Saylor Foundation offering $20,000 to college textbook authors
- Celebrating faculty authors
- Targeted marketing key to successful self-publishing
- Five tips for successful textbook revisions
- Barbara Veltri receives Most Significant Scholarly Work Award
- Announcing new pilot program for academic authors
- Nominate your book for a 2012 TAA Texty or McGuffey Award
Saylor Foundation offering $20,000 to college textbook authors
The Saylor Foundation is offering $20,000 to college textbook authors willing to openly license their textbooks under a Creative Commons license as part of its Open Textbook Challenge.
The Foundation is also offering a $250 referral bonus for those who refer a textbook author to submit their work. The deadline for submitting a textbook for consideration is January 31, 2012.
Accepted textbooks will be used to reinforce and expand upon 12 areas of study correlating to 200+ free online college-level courses available at Saylor.org. The texts will also be openly available to anyone in the world and freely distributed via various web platforms.
“This is a great way for textbook authors to increase their visibility and to add their work to the academic discourse, outside of traditional publishing,” said Jeff Davidson, the Foundation’s strategic initiatives manager.
The Foundation is also seeking peer reviewers. For more information, visit the Saylor Foundation website.
Celebrating faculty authors
By Dionne Soares Palmer
Other universities that regularly honor faculty authors include:
If your university has a unique way of honoring faculty authors on your campus, we would like to highlight it. Email Kim.Pawlak@taaonline.net |
Many universities across the country pay tribute to their faculty authors by holding annual awards receptions to highlight recent faculty accomplishments.
One such university is California State University Fullerton (CSUF). For the past eleven years, CSUF has celebrated its faculty authors at its annual Authors Awards; an awards luncheon held on campus and attended by the authors as well as college deans and department chairs. This year’s ceremony honored 31 authors.
“We feel that it’s very important to recognize our faculty in a variety of ways,” said Chris Renne, director of the Faculty Development Center. “Writing is an important part of the academic life and our faculty members deserve the recognition for accomplishing a major project such as writing a book.”
During the ceremony, each author was recognized by his or her dean or associate dean, and three faculty authors were chosen to read selections of their books.
Andi Stein, a professor in the Communications Department, read a selection from her book, Why We Love Disney: The Power of the Disney Brand. “I was honored to be able to read a passage,” she said. “My book had just come out a week before the event so I was very pleased that they asked me to read from the book. It was fun to get up there and share this brand new book with everybody.”
Amy Cox-Petersen, a professor in the Elementary and Bilingual Education Department, read a passage from her book, Educational Partnerships: Connecting Schools, Families and the Community.
“I believe that the Annual Author Awards are not just a place for you to showcase your work but also a place where you can learn more about what your colleagues are doing,” she said. “I think our colleagues have interesting projects that they’ve been working on for years and I don’t think that we would be aware of these projects if we didn’t have the Author Awards.”
Dionne Soares Palmer is a freelance writer based in northern California.
Targeted marketing key to successful self-publishing
By Dionne Soares Palmer
Self-published authors need to be more marketing savvy and more willing to dedicate time to the task of marketing, said Jeremy Robinson, author of POD People: Beating the Print-on-Demand Stigma.
“Marketing is really the only way a self-published author can get those first books sold and kick off the word-of-mouth machine,” he said.
Robinson learned this lesson the hard way when his first print-on-demand novel, The Didymus Contingency, initially failed to sell to readers outside his circle of friends and family. However, just one month after Robinson began proactively marketing the book, it became a Barnes&Noble.com bestseller and the #1 bestselling fiction title at print-on-demand publishing company Lulu.com. He also credits his marketing efforts to ultimately landing a book deal with Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press.
After what Robinson describes as “long years of trial and error” experimenting with a wide range of marketing techniques, he found that locating his audience and specifically targeting them with his marketing efforts was the most successful strategy.
“Spending time marketing to a general audience is a waste of time, and possibly money, because only a percentage of them are going to be interested in your book,” he said.
Robinson shares the following ideas for targeting your marketing:
- Visit online discussion forums related to your discipline and take part in conversations.
- Create YouTube videos demonstrating physics experiments, for example, and include your book information at the end.
- Find out where teachers hang out online and join the conversation.
- Offer free copies of your book to teachers. Getting added to a curriculum means yearly sales you can count on.
“Whatever you do, don’t be afraid to experiment,” he said. “The worst thing you can do for your book is not try.”
Dionne Soares Palmer is a freelance writer based in northern California.
Five tips for successful textbook revisions
By Dionne Soares Palmer
Lisa Ede, a professor of English at Oregon State University, and author of Work in Progress: A Guide to Academic Writing and Revising, shares the following five tips for successfully revising your textbook:
- Start off strong. If you have a clear revision plan for a portion of your manuscript, do those tasks first. Starting with the revisions you are most confident about means that “you’ll start with a positive experience and build up energy and synergy,” said Ede.
- Focus on global issues before local ones. Doing the global changes in your manuscript first means you won’t waste time revising paragraphs or sections that you later decide to delete.
- Analyze your manuscript. “If you’re having trouble deciding if a section of your text is working,” said Ede, “analyze each paragraph by identifying what the paragraph says at the level of content and determining what it does for readers.” This kind of analysis will help you gain perspective on your writing and what needs to be done to improve it.
- Listen to your sales reps. They are in direct contact with the developmental editors who work on your book and the students and teachers who are using it.
- Learn from your students. If you use your book in your classroom, show your students your working versions of chapter revisions and ask them for their feedback on any new examples, etc.
Dionne Soares Palmer is a freelance writer based in northern California.
Barbara Veltri receives Most Significant Scholarly Work Award
Barbara Veltri, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Northern Arizona University, received the 2011 Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Most Significant Scholarly Work Award for her book, Learning on Other People's Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher.
In a letter to Veltri, NAU's Vice President for Research Laura Foster Huenneke wrote: "This timely publication stands out for its compelling examination of Teach for America and for the important questions that it raises about the value of a program that serves our nation’s neediest children. Your work demonstrates keen and insightful scholarship and represents an important perspective on America’s current educational landscape."
The award will be presented at a reception on the NAU campus on Monday, September 12.
Announcing new pilot program for academic authors
TAA is embarking on a pilot program to offer 25 TAA members an annual membership in the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity’s (NCFDD) professional development, training and mentoring community at a special rate starting January 1, 2012.
TAA members will be given the opportunity to join NCFDD—A $240 value—for $50 and receive weekly productivity tips, 10 live tele-workshops, and access to a private moderated discussion forum and monthly writing challenges.
To reserve your spot in the TAA-NCFDD Pilot Program, please e-mail TextandAcademicAuthors@taaonline.net by November 20, 2011.
Participants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. If you are accepted into the program, you will receive an invoice for payment due by December 7. If payment is not received by December 7, your reservation will be cancelled.
Nominate your book for a 2012 TAA Texty or McGuffey Award
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TAA is now accepting nominations for 2012 Textbook Excellence Awards and McGuffey Longevity Awards. The deadline for nominations isNovember 1, 2011.
The Textbook Excellence Award recognizes textbooks and learning materials published in the current or previous year. The McGuffey Longevity Award recognizes textbooks and learning materials that have been selling for 15 years or longer.
The nomination fee is $300. The deadline to receive books for judging is December 1, 2011. The competition is open to members and non-members.
For more information, or to complete a nomination form, visit www.taaonline.net/awards
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