Keynote Presentations:

GeoPrimer: River and Gulf, Party Time on the N.O. Levees
Joy Hakim: Textbooks Should Be Great Books!

Workshops:

Thinking Well, Writing Well: How Smart Academics Write to Get Published
Textbook Authoring Basics, A Holistic Approach

Sessions:

Challenges of Copyright in the Internet Age Publishing On Your Own Differing Lenses on the Textbook Art Brainstorming Academic Publishing An eBook Update How Authors Can Help Students with Disabilities

Interactive Contract Improvement Session Five Key Strategies to Boost Academic Writing Productivity Find and Use Online Media for Your Projects Grant Proposal Writing: Do’s and Don’t’s Digital Pedagogy: Make the Most of Multimedia Tradebooks, Columns, and Blogs, Oh My!

Roundtable Discussions:

Textbooks and Modern Theories of Writing Publishing ESL Textbooks & Professional Books The Tax Implications of Authoring Successful Strategies for Graduate Student Writing Groups

The Joys of Frequently Updating an Author-Managed Website Advantages and Disadvantages of Textbook Collaboration

Robert Christopherson

Friday, June 8, 9:15 - 9:45 am

Using a mix of geographic science, the climatic setting, history, regional development, present conditions and cultural aspects, geography textbook author Robert Christopherson will provide a geographic backdrop to New Orleans’ rich history, mixed present, and troubled future.

Robert W. Christopherson is Professor Emeritus of Geography, American River College (1970-2000). He is the author of the leading physical geography texts in the US and Canada all published by Pearson Prentice Hall: He and his nature photographer wife Bobbe have completed twelve expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions since 2003 gathering information and photos for his books, Geosystems, 8/e, Elemental Geosystems, 7/e, Geosystems Canadian Edition, 3/e, and Applied Physical Geography, 8/e. He joined TAA in 1989.

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Saturday, June 9, 8:30 - 9:30 am

Joy Hakim began writing textbooks 25 years ago, at about the same time TAA was getting started. She thought she would write a one volume U.S. history in a year, or at most two, and get back to being a newspaper woman. Somehow the one-volume history turned into ten volumes and she found herself with a new career, as the author of textbooks that seem to break the rules for most textbook writing. Hakim is the author of the ten volume series, A History of US, which was featured in a 16-part PBS series, and the three volume series, The Story of Science, and is currently writing a third series on biology. Hakim will share some of her experiences (it hasn't been easy) and her thoughts on where the field may be heading.

Joy Hakim is the author of the ten volume K-12 textbook series, A History of US and the trade book, Freedom: A History of US, that accompanies a 16-part PBS series, all published by Oxford University Press. She is also the author of The Story of Science, a three volume series co-published by Smithsonian Books and the National Science Teachers Association. Hakim has a BA from Smith College and an MA and honorary doctorate from Goucher College.

Joy Hakim Video Interviews with C-Span:

The Story of Science Interview (May 2, 2008)
"In Depth with Joy Hakim" Interview (December 6, 2009)

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Robert Christopherson

Presented by Robert Christopherson

Friday, June 8, 10 - 12 pm

In this two-hour workshop, veteran textbook author Robert Christopherson will share the basics of textbook authoring, including:

• Manuscript preparation
• Writing strategies
• Editing and page proofs
• Conceptualizing illustrations and arts
• Making a specific style guide
• Setting up a writing studio
• Organizing your files
• Setting up the next edition

Christopherson will also describe how to treat your book as a business, and how to be proactive in the marketing of your textbook.

Robert W. Christopherson is Professor Emeritus of Geography, American River College (1970-2000). He is the author of the leading physical geography texts in the US and Canada all published by Pearson Prentice Hall: He and his nature photographer wife Bobbe have completed twelve expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions since 2003 gathering information and photos for his books, Geosystems, 8/e, Elemental Geosystems, 7/e, Geosystems Canadian Edition, 3/e, and Applied Physical Geography, 8/e. He joined TAA in 1989.

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Christopher Kenneally

Presented by Christopher Kenneally

1:45 - 2:45 pm

If you've ever been puzzled by copyright questions, don't miss this opportunity to learn about copyright and expand your understanding of your rights and responsibilities when it comes to intellectual property. Not only will you get answers to your copyright questions in the Internet age, but also you will learn how to minimize your risk of illegal content use.

Christopher Kenneally is Director of Author Relations for the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). He is responsible for organizing and hosting programs that address the business needs of authors of all backgrounds, from academics to freelancers. Among other activities, he is host and moderator for an ongoing series of writing conferences called, "Beyond the Book"; the programs are frequently broadcast nationally on C-SPAN’s Book-TV and in Canada on the BookTelevision network. An award-winning journalist and author of Massachusetts 101, Kenneally has reported for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Independent of London, and WGBH-TV (Boston).

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Presented by Patrice Morin-Spatz and Mark Lerner

1:45 - 2:45 pm

Learn how to find an editor and desktop publisher and how to get your self-published book printed and distributed. Patrice Morin-Spatz, coauthor of the 2011 TAA McGuffey Award-winning textbook, cpTeach Expert Coding Made Easy!, will describe the process that has allowed her to avoid typical publishers, their royalties, and their rules. Her desktop publisher, Mark Lerner, will explain the desktop publishing process, how to get your books printed, and how to work with outside vendors for sales distribution.

Patrice Morin-Spatz started MedBooks in 1986 with a little under $1,000 in her pocket. Today she has self-published seven titles on the subject of medical coding and billing (and allied health profession). Morin-Spatz received her undergraduate degree in chemistry & art and went on to study basic medical sciences in her postgraduate work.

Mark Lerner has a varied background in collections, human resources and IT. He has worked with MedBooks for many years and desktop published all of its titles as well collaborated with outside vendors who could produce in both small and large quantities the books he has produced.

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Presented by Janet Belsky, Catherine Woods, and Elaine Epstein

3:00 - 4:00 pm

The art of producing high quality textbooks involves a team effort, in which skilled partners have different missions, but are working towards a common goal. In this session, a textbook author, her publisher and her editor team up share their unique perspectives on producing high quality textbooks. Learn what a major publisher looks for when acquiring authors, how a developmental editor views her mission, and what a successful author does.

Catherine Woods is the Senior Vice President, Editorial and Production for MacMillan Higher Education (Bedford, Freeman, and Worth Publishers). She has been working in the publishing industry for 28 years and spent much of that time acquiring and publishing psychology books for Worth Publishers.

Dr. Janet Belsky has been writing textbooks in developmental psychology for over 30 years. In addition to her two textbooks on Adulthood and Aging published by Cengage, Belsky is the author of Experiencing the Lifespan, which is now entering its third edition.

Elaine Epstein has served as developmental editor for the second and third editions of Janet's Belsky's Experiencing the Lifespan. As a consulting editor, she has worked on various textbooks, media, and supplements in psychology and geography for Worth Publishers and W.H. Freeman.

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Presented by Dannelle Stevens, Rachel Toor, and Richard Hull

3:00 - 4:00 pm

Join three veteran academic authors in this interactive brainstorming session about issues facing the academic author, including selecting journals, working with editors, responding to referees, and deciding whether to revise and resubmit or submit elsewhere.

Richard Hull is TAA's Executive Director. He was Professor of Philosophy at SUNY at Buffalo from 1967 to 1997; he then took early retirement to explore a second career in nonprofit management. He has continued his academic writing and editing in addition to his duties at TAA, where he has served academic and textbook writers for over six years.

Rachel Toor is a former acquisitions editor at Oxford and Duke University Presses and now teaches creative writing in Eastern Washington University’s MFA program. She is the author of three books and writes a monthly column on issues in writing and publishing for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dannelle D. Stevens is a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Portland State. Her research and writing interests lie in studying and writing about ways for all educators to be more effective and productive. She has written numerous articles and co-authored four books, including Journal Keeping: How to Use Reflective Writing for Learning, Teaching, Professional Insight and Positive Change.

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Presented by Stephen E. Gillen

4:15 - 5:15 pm

Learn what’s happening in the eBook market, what’s on the horizon, and what are the implications for your publishing contract, including typical deal terms.

Stephen E. Gillen, teaches Electronic Media Law at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Steve worked for nearly 20 years in publishing prior to entering private practice in the middle 1990’s. He is presently a partner at Wood, Herron & Evans (a 140-year-old Cincinnati law firm focused on intellectual property) where he concentrates his practice on publishing, media, and copyright matters.

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Presented by Sandra Ho and Kevin Chao

4:15 - 5:15 pm

The Student E-rent Pilot Project (STEPP) is a grant-supported national program that gives students with print disabilities such as blindness and dyslexia an equal opportunity benefit from textbook rental programs. This presentation will familiarize you with STEPP and show you how textbook authors can become more involved with the process of making their books equally accessible to all students.

Sandra Ho is the Manager of the Student E-rent Pilot Project (STEPP), an initiative led by the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC), in partnership with the AccessText Network and CourseSmart. She haspreviously worked in AMAC’s Production and IT departments. Her background also includes graphic design, web development, and marketing.

Kevin Chao is a student, Student E-rent Pilot Project Quality Assurance Specialist, and an accessibility advocate. Kevin experienced academic and textbook content from a variety of perspectives: sighted, low vision, and blind student. The environment and information was exactly the same, but there were a lot of challenges in acquiring accessible academic and textbook content. STEPP offers universally accessible information!

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Presented by Michael Lennie

9:45 - 10:45 am

Over the years, when it comes to the author/publisher contract, it often seems the publisher holds most of the cards. Bring your laptops for an interactive session and learn how to make the changes you need to the publisher’s contract so you can insist on being treated fairly and avoid contract traps that could tie you to a bad contract for years.

An attorney for 40 years with CA and NY licenses, Michael Lennie's body of work over the last 25 years includes some of the biggest settlements ever awarded to textbook authors, hundreds of successful negotiations, and dozens of settlements of author/publisher disputes. A charter member of TAA, he holds a Juris Doctorate Degree.

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Presented by Dannelle Stevens and Joanne Cooper

9:45 - 10:45 am

Writing every day keeps ideas afloat and alive. Over time, through practice, a writing habit develops. Recent work points to several useful and pivotal strategies, including focused freewriting, dialogue, and post-it idea generation that boost and sustain writing habits. We will practice using these strategies designed to ensure insight, motivation and commitment. Bring recent work and three articles from a journal in which you want to publish.

Dannelle D. Stevens is a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Portland State. Her research and writing interests lie in studying and writing about ways for all educators to be more effective and productive. She has written numerous articles and co-authored four books, including Journal Keeping: How to Use Reflective Writing for Learning, Teaching, Professional Insight and Positive Change.

Joanne Cooper is Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has authored numerous articles and five books on refection and leadership in higher education, including, Journal Keeping: How to Use Reflective Writing for Learning, Teaching, Professional Insight and Positive Change.

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Presented by Barbara Waxer

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

The Internet is full of compelling images, video, and sound, but how do you gain confidence using them properly in your books, presentations, or in the classroom? Join in an entertaining and interactive overview of copyright law and fair use and explore websites that offer public domain, Creative Commons, and other openaccess media.

Barbara Waxer loves exploring media and technology as it relates to information literacy. She is a freelance author and developmental editor in intellectual property andAdobe and Microsoft products for Cengage Learning. She also teaches copyright, writing, and web media in the Media Arts and Film Dept. at Santa Fe Community College.

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Presented by Claudia Sanchez

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Novice grant writers will learn key strategies for the development of strong grant proposals. Claudia Sanchez will draw on her experience as a grant writer and reviewer to provide a road map to successful grant applications via a checklist that encourages grant applicants’ self-assessment of their projects. She will also share the most common errors to avoid in the design of proposals.

Dr. Claudia Sanchez is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Texas Woman’s University and President of the Text and Academic Authors Foundation. She has written and directed three federal grants totaling over 4 million dollars, which focus on teacher preparation.

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Presented by June Jamrich Parsons

3:15 - 4:15 pm

Interactive multimedia publishing platforms open up pedagogical doorways that textbook authors can employ to enhance student learning. This session is designed to give authors an overview of the possibilities for adding multimedia and interactive elements as their textbooks evolve into digital formats beyond basic eBooks. Learn the pedagogy of digital authoring and the best digital authoring practices, and view live examples demonstrating best practices for using videos, software tours, animated diagrams, sound clips, interactive assessment, polling, chirps, and hot links.

June Jamrich Parsons is an author, educator, and a digital book pioneer. She co-developed the first commercially successful multimedia, interactive digital textbook; one that set the bar for platforms now being developed by educational publishers. Several of her digital textbooks are currently in print, including the best selling New Perspectives. Her career includes extensive classroom teaching at Northern Michigan University and the University of the Virgin Islands, product design for eCourseware, textbook authoring for Course Technology and Cengage, and Creative Strategist for MediaTechnics Corporation. She holds a doctorate in instructional technology, a CDP (Certified Data Processing), and is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery.

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Presented by Karen Morris, Barbara Sillery and Whitney Stewart

3:15 - 4:15 pm

Opportunities to repackage our writings abound. They include blogs, podcasts, enhanced ebooks, newspaper or magazine columns, tradebooks, treatises, and more. Learn how to engage these options and use them to market yourself, your textbooks, and your writing talents.

Karen Morris is a textbook author in law, winner of a TAA McGuffey Award, blogger for Cengage Publishing, magazine columnist, author of a treatise for lawyers, and writer of a self-published book entited, Law Made Fun through Harry Potter's Adventures. She is also a Distinguished Professor at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York.

Barbara Sillery is a television producer/writer and author of The Haunting of Mississippi and The Haunting of Louisiana. She has worked as a field producer for syndicated television shows and has produced several cultural documentaries that have aired on PBS affiliates nationwide, including Hidden Nation, The Prize, Faded Ladies, and From the Wake of the Bow. She is currently writing a mystery novel entitled, Ghosts Within. www.barbarasillery.com

Whitney Stewart began writing children’s biographies after she interviewed the Dalai Lama. She has trekked with Sir Edmund Hillary, interviewed Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and biked in China to write about Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong. She published Mr. Lincoln’s Gift, based on correspondence between Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet members and her ancestor, painter Francis Bicknell Carpenter. Stewart’s Marshall, The Sea Dog won a 2012 Teachers' Choice Award.

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Presented by Marsha Huber

Join Marsha Huber, associate professor of accounting at Youngstown State University, and a CPA, to discuss the tax implications of being an author. Learn about the best entity choice (sole proprietor, LLC, or corporation) for tax purposes, how to minimize tax liability by using retirement vehicles (SIMPLE IRA), and IRS rules regarding deductibility of expenses. Discuss "red flag" areas regarding deductions, such as having a home office and travel expenses. Participants will receive worksheets to help with the decision-making process.

Marsha Huber is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Youngstown State University. She is also a CPA specializing in small business and restaurants, and has authored two books on restaurant accounting for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. She is currently in the process of writing her first book on "academic well being" in higher education.

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Presented by Maria S. Plakhotnik

Join Maria S. Plakhotnik from the Office of Academic Writing and Publication Support at Florida International University as she shares her experience with designing and implementing a Writing Support Circle (WSC) for graduate students on her campus. You will also learn how to implement a WSC on your campus; how to fulfill the terms of the WSC contract; receive feedback; and understand the connection between academic writing, professional writing, and publication.

Maria S. Plakhotnik, Office of Academic Writing and Publication Support at Florida International University, is a contributor to The Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing and has served as co-editor of the Proceedings of the Annual FIU College of Education and Graduate Student Network Research Conference for eight years.

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Presented by Paul Siegel

Join Paul Siegel, professor of communication at the University of Hartford, and author of Communication Law in America, to discuss maintaining an author-managed website to keep adopters as up to date as possible in between formal text revisions. Siegel will use his own site—which boasts 60+ videos related to the topic of his book, as well as over 150 still images—to illustrate, and invites participants to give a tour of their sites as well.

Paul Siegel, first joined TAA in 2001, about the time the first edition of his communication law book was reaching stores. Since then he has served most years as a member of the governing council, including stints as secretary, vice-president and president. Be careful—if you ask too many questions at these conferences, TAA tends to elect you to something or other.

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Presented by Kevin Patton and Michael Lennie

Join Kevin Patton, co-author of several anatomy and physiology textbooks, and Michael Lennie, an attorney specializing in textbook contracts, to discuss how collaborating with a co-author on your textbook can have both advantages and disadvantages as well as how both you and your co-authors can be protected when signing a publishing contract.

Kevin Patton is Professor of Life Science at St. Charles Community College. He is the author or coauthor of several textbooks, including Anatomy & Physiology (due for release in its 8th edition), Structure and Function of the Body (6 editions), The Human Body in Health and Disease (5 editions), Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology, and Mosby’s Handbook of Anatomy & Physiology.

Michael Lennie has been an attorney for 40 years with CA and NY licenses. His body of work over the last 25 years includes some of the biggest settlements ever awarded to textbook authors, hundreds of successful negotiations, and dozens of settlements of author/publisher disputes. A charter member of TAA, he holds a Juris Doctorate Degree.

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