Webinar Series

TAA webinars are one-hour live, interactive sessions that connect you to experts discussing a variety of topics designed especially for textbook and academic authors. Members can also access 250+ presentations on demand.

How to register for an upcoming webinar:

Members: You can participate in as many sessions as you'd like for free. To sign up, click the Register button below. Read Frequently Asked Questions About TAA Webinars

Non-Members: Join TAA today and receive access to all of TAA's live webinars and 250+ presentations on demand for one full year.

2020 Spring Webinars

A Crash Course in Creative Commons Licensing

Date: Monday, April 6, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. ET

Non-members: Join TAA

Presenter: Danielle S. Apfelbaum, Senior Assistant Librarian, Farmingdale State College, and Derek Stadler, Assistant Professor, LaGuardia Community College

Did you know that over 1 billion works -- including scholarly articles and a growing number of academic textbooks -- have been licensed with a Creative Commons (CC) license?  Though widely adopted, these continually-updated, legally-enforceable tools remain a mystery to academic writers. Many authors are unaware of the permissions afforded to them through the CC licenses, and many are unaware of permissions afforded to users when a specific CC license is applied to their work by an open-access publisher. By the end of this session, attendees will be able to understand how copyright and the CC licenses work in concert to protect author rights while communicating additional permissions to users, identify and interpret each of the six CC licenses, determine how CC-licensed materials may or may not be used without permission in traditional and open publications, and select a license should attendees wish to openly license their work. Learn more

2020 Spring Webinars - Watch On Demand

Revising Scholarly Manuscripts—Quickly and Well

Organization is the skeleton of a manuscript, its very structure. Get it right and the manuscript works. Get it wrong and it doesn’t. In this one-hour webinar, presented by Tara Gray, author of Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar, you will learn how to organize paragraphs around key or topic sentences and how to organize manuscripts around an “after-the-fact” or “reverse” outline. You will also learn how to solicit and use informal feedback effectively by asking just the right readers for feedback and by asking specific questions, such as, “What one place in the manuscript is least clear? Least organized? Least persuasive? Watch

Drafting Scholarly Manuscripts—Quickly and Well

Presenter: Tara Gray, author of Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar

Writing daily in short bursts of time (at least 15-30 minutes) helps get ideas on paper. A hundred scholars were studied who succeeded in writing 30 minutes a day, four days a week. They tripled their productivity from finishing two manuscripts per year to nearly six. But how to get started and stick with it? This webinar shows you how.

You can also greatly enhance your productivity by free writing or writing rapidly without self-censorship and without revising as you write. Free writing is casual, conversational, spontaneous, disorganized and clear only to you (if that). It is also fun to write! Nonetheless, important ideas emerge that can be easily shaped into a full paper. In this one-hour webinar, presented by Tara Gray, author of Publish & Flourish: Become a Prolific Scholar, you will learn how to use these two writing strategies to increase your writing productivity. Watch

An Editor’s View From Journal Article Submission to Publication

Presenter: Micki M. Caskey, Professor, Portland State University

Publishing peer-reviewed journal articles is often considered the gold standard in academia. Yet, what really happens when you submit your article to an academic journal? In this session, Micki Caskey, Former Editor of Research in Middle Level Education Online, an international peer-reviewed research journal, demystifies the journey your article takes during the publication process--from the moment you click on “submit” to the journal’s publication decision. What will improve the likelihood of an “accept” decision? What can you do to avoid the “reject” decision? How do authors celebrate a “revise and resubmit” decision? Micki shares what journal editors want authors to know and do before submitting a journal article that will lead to a successful publication. Watch

Clear Academic Writing Across the Disciplines

Presenter: Caroline Eisner, Certified Professional Coach, Eisner Consulting LLC

We know that for academics and researchers, writing well means being able to write academically in the discursive styles of a specific discipline. Furthermore, when Writing in the Discipline programs are firmly in place, faculty across the disciplines work with students in their courses through assignments and assessments, in-class instruction, and course readings to understand and articulate the disciplinary discourse conventions of that discipline. In this one-hour webinar, Eisner discusses the components of clear academic writing and how these components apply to the discourse conventions across the disciplines. She also reviews what clear academic writing is across disciplines and how to think about, practice, and teach the discourse conventions of specific disciplines. Watch

2019 Fall Webinars - Watch On Demand

Practical Strategies for Collaborating With Peers

Presenter: Janet Salmons, Author of Learning to Collaborate, Collaborating to Learn

Sometimes collaboration comes naturally. We can communicate honestly to determine shared goals and complete a project. It can be exhilarating to see what can be accomplished when we pool ideas and expertise. Other times, collaboration seems time-consuming and frankly aggravating. Perhaps we thought we were on the same page with our partner(s), only to discover that their sense of time, criteria for quality, or willingness to address problems are not as we expected.

Author and coach Janet Salmons shares how the approaches described in Learning to Collaborate, Collaborating to Learn apply to peer collaboration for writing, editing, or other projects. Learn practical strategies you can use when planning and participating in complex collaborations, including creating workable agreements, selecting technology tools, and dealing with setbacks. Watch

Responding to Reviewers’ Comments

Presenter: Mark Pedretti, Assistant Professor of English, Providence College

Whether submitting journal articles or book manuscripts, academic authors can expect their work to be anonymously reviewed by expert peers. Sometimes helpful, sometimes infuriating, reviewers’ comments can make or break a publication; a negative review can bring your piece to a screeching halt. This webinar discusses strategies for engaging with reviewer’s comments — both positive and negative. It also explores ways to figure out the importance placed upon comments in a given publishing context, the relationship between editor and reviewer, and whether comments are in fact “make or break.” Pedretti shares strategies for documenting responses to suggestions, and how to politely decline to make changes that are off base. Gain a set of tools for navigating the unspoken rules of the review process. Watch

Writing Your First Book: Developing Your Dissertation Into a Manuscript

Presenter: Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz, MargaretEdits

Publishing your first book is imperative for many early-career scholars, but turning your dissertation into a book can be a confusing and difficult process. Margaret Puskar-Pasewicz of MargaretEdits shares practical strategies and tips for bridging the gap between completing your dissertation and writing a compelling book manuscript. Along the way, she shares some of the most common mistakes that she’s encountered in her years as an academic editor and writing coach.

She also focuses on the importance of staking a claim that you can defend consistently throughout your book as well as developing your scholarly voice. This is a wide-ranging and honest discussion about the challenges of academic writing for early-career researchers and how to overcome them. Watch

A Second Bite at the Apple: Getting Rights in Your Book Back

Presenter: Brenda Ulrich, Partner, Archstone Law Group PC

Most publishing contracts are for the life of the copyright, so how could an author ever get their rights back? Brenda shares the role of reversion clauses in a publishing contracts, which allow rights in a book to revert to their authors under certain circumstances. Questions covered:

• What is a rights reversion?
• In what circumstances could/should an author seek a reversion of rights?
• The reversion of rights clause - what is it, how to see if you have any rights per your contract
• What are the benefits to seeking a reversion of rights? What can you do once you have your rights back?
• How do you go about seeking a reversion of rights

Watch