November 2008

• Pearson exec blogs on educational publishing
• Take grammar lessons from a news copywriter
• Online textbook delivers timely, real-world content
• Seton Hill seeks published novelist of popular fiction
• Seton Hill seeks applications for assistant professor of composition
• Check out the newest academic books
• Call for Papers: The Clearing House
• Major universities see promise in Google Book Search settlement
• Authors, publishers, and Google reach landmark settlement
• Professor replaces textbooks with Web tools
• TAA developing textbook authoring workshops
• Google Settlement Agreement less relevant to in-print textbook authors
• Atlantic Path Publishing sponsoring 2009 TAA Conference
• Lennie Literary & Author's Attorneys sponsoring 2009 TAA Conference
• Universal-Publishers sponsoring 2009 TAA Conference
• 2009 TAA Conference registration is now open
• Application deadline for Council of Fellows Nov. 30
• Listen to recording of TAA Teleconference on forming scholarly writing support group
• TAA thanks Sustaining Member
• Member finds TAA mentoring helpful

Pearson exec blogs on educational publishing

An educational publishing executive at Pearson Education, Alison M. Pendergast, blogs on education, technology, publishing, digital content and marketing at her blog, http://www.alisonpendergast.com. Recent posts have been on open source and e-textbooks.

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Take grammar lessons from a news copywriter

Read broadcast writing coach and author Mervin Block's latest article, "Are You Ready For the Big Time, Say '60 Minutes'?", which contains some great lessons on how to tighten your writing and improve your grammar: Visit Block's web site

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Online textbook delivers timely, real-world content
by Kim Seidel

Faced with the challenge of keeping up with the rapidly changing field of information systems (IS), author and teacher John Gallaugher opted to write an open source textbook with a new online company, Flat World Knowledge (FWK).

"The content in traditional IS textbooks is very weak," said Gallaugher, an associate professor in the Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass. "The cycle time is also quite long, so the content is often out-of-date. Consider how old content in Facebook or Google is with each traditional publication cycle. It's ludicrous to expect a student to spend $175 for this kind of product."

With those realities, he supplemented his courses with online sources for many years. "I then found it easy to wrap durable course concepts around contemporary cases," Gallaugher said. "I decided to move to the online venue when Flat World Knowledge approached me."

Gallaugher's open source textbook, Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology, has an expected publication date of summer 2009. Yet, he is publishing chapters and case drafts online as they're ready for release. About 40 percent of the book was online by September, and the material was already being used by faculty worldwide. The content is being added to the FWK platform as reviewers and other adopters provide feedback.

For teachers and students, open source textbooks provide fresh, current and engaging content, he said. The FWK format brings free, online content accessible from anywhere.

Gallaugher has found many benefits in FWK's model, including:

• Retention of the copyright of his material.
• Fast production cycles allow him to get content to consumers quickly.
• The ability to provide a free online version of the product.
• Low-cost print versions -- the print version of Gallaugher's online textbook starts at less than $30.

"There is also an opportunity to have my content become among the most widely adopted material used in my discipline," he said. "What a great way for faculty to have an impact."

In addition, the online version FWK is developing for Gallaugher's textbook includes a sophisticated interface. The online version will eventually include pop-ups for keywords and definitions. Plans for optional supplemental content include audio podcasts versions, along with ways for readers to easily engage the author to help make additions and improve subsequent versions.

FWK was founded in February 2007 by Jeff Shelstad and Eric Frank. Before starting their business, they had recently left a division of Prentice Hall/Pearson Education, where Shelstad was editorial director and Frank was director of marketing.

"We love the industry," Frank said. "We love signing great authors, developing books together, and putting together and executing sales and marketing campaigns that establish new market leaders. We have been as successful as any two people in doing that consistently throughout our careers."

But Shelstad and Frank realized the world was changing rapidly around them. "We couldn't get textbook publishers to change fast enough with it," Frank said. "We had this terrible feeling that we were spending our days rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. So it was time to move on and try it ourselves."

FWK pursues two types of author profiles in its acquisitions. The first are those who have already written a market leading textbook and who remain free agents to write their next book in a new course area with FWK.

"The second are those who display the characteristics of a highly successful textbook author, and who, therefore should write a textbook because together we can make it a market leader," Frank said. "John Gallaugher is this category."

FWK also looks at the prospective author's teaching accomplishments. "John is one of those 'top one percent teachers.' Students love him and are inspired by him, despite the fact that his course is consistently one of the most challenging," Frank said. "He has won numerous teaching awards, and his excellence in the classroom has been recognized in places like Business Week. His love for teaching comes through 30 seconds into a conversation with John. And no lecture or class is ever good enough for him. Despite the fact that student ratings of his course are consistently off the charts, he is always revising them, always looking for ways to improve them, always pouring his soul into ensuring that the next time he teaches a class it is the best time."

FWK also looks at a potential author's perspective in his or her discipline area. Gallaugher represents "the complete package" for the company, Frank said. "Besides being a phenomenal teacher, John is a highly respected and well published researcher. Additionally, he maintains a weekly technology blog with a wide readership, and he regularly consults with business clients on their IT (information technology) issues. These factors combine to form the kind of perspective on his discipline that we believe is the foundation of a future best-selling textbook."

In addition, authors with FWK need to have demonstrated the ability to execute their creative ideas and to be ambassadors to promote the book, Frank said. Authors also need to be "fun" to work with and have a shared mission with FWK, he added.

"We are signing new books at the rate of about 1.5 new books per month, or 18 to 20 per year," Frank said. "From signing to publication, the process takes about 18 months. The number of authors is growing at a nice rate, and as we become more public and more potential authors learn about our model, the rate of acquisition will grow."

The biggest question Gallaugher tackes in his book is how can IT creators compete when everyone can copy their technology and competition is so fierce. "We address this issue with real-world examples of what's happening in IS today delivered in a mix of chapters and cases," he said. "The book can be used across many levels, from first-year management studies to MBA's. We're using the content for both of these groups at Boston College."

Feedback from users helps him improve the book and increases its credibility among users. Everything he does in class is online. "This not only includes the text, but also PowerPoint slides, student questions to consider for reading, even podcasts," Gallaugher said. "I've also included marketing material to promote technology study among management students."

Gallaugher remains extremely passionate about his work, especially as the number of U.S. students studying IS and other technology disciplines are falling dramatically: "I see the book and online material as a special opportunity to share this content as a sort of 'great course in a box' with other faculty. I've been delighted to hear from others who've used the material. In fact, after just a single day, the Google Analytics tracking downloads lit up on all continents - save for Antarctica - no University of South Pole yet."

For Gallaugher, it has been a natural transition to write an open source textbook. He's created online content and blogged since 1997 - before the term "blog" was even coined. He's the author of the well-known blog Week in Geek (WiG) (http://www.gallaugher.com/); it's one of the oldest, continually published digests of its kind online. He said that authoring an online textbook has been an experience that he has found different from previous writing ventures, but tremendously rewarding.

"I'm writing material for students - future managers," Gallaugher said. "This gives me an opportunity to write in an engaging style, yet still wrap key managerial concepts around these 'fun' reads. My goal with the textbook was to make the content as easy to read as, say, an article from the mainstream trade press, such as BusinessWeek or Fortune."

The textbook also gives Gallaugher an excellent opportunity to share his experiences from his field work through Boston College. He spends several weeks a year with senior executives in tech firms in Silicon Valley, Seattle and throughout Asia. "While I can't take everyone with me on these experiences, the textbook project provides me with an accessible outlet to share this learning with the broader student and faculty community," he said.

As Frank noted, Gallaugher's, blog, WiG, attracted FWK. Gallaugher said his job is to keep track of interesting developments at the intersection of business and technology and to share these with his students and the broader community of scholars. WiG helps him to do just that. Many former students subscribe as well. "It's a great way to stay connected," he said. "Many WiG readers have helped us arrange site visits from Boston to Bangalore for our field study experiences, while others have come back to campus to speak, or have suggested other articles that have made other WiG additions."

Gallaugher highly recommends levering blogs to promote textbook content. "If other sites write about a topic, and you've got something important to say, you might mention a blurb and refer them to your online content," he said. "But do not use the blog as a flagrant self-promoting opportunity. Blog and article comments should add value; otherwise, you're seen as a spamming huckster. Online readers are fairly good at seeing through shill posts."

Gallaugher resides in Newton, Mass., and has two young children. For him, work and hobbies intersect; he loves what he does. "It's my motivation for teaching so much," says Gallaugher, a tenured research professor who voluntarily takes a three-course, teaching overload. "Being able to give back to our community via the book project and supplemental material is great. With FlatWorld's composition model, it will be wonderful to turn this into a lucrative move as well. That (monetary payback) will be key for authors because many authors will become disinterested if there's not a strong incentive for continued contributions.

"The winning textbook publishing model is one that empowers authors to make an impact and to make money. I think Flat World has cracked the nut, but we'll see."

Kim Seidel is a freelance writer based in Onalaska, Wis.

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Seton Hill seeks published novelist of popular fiction

Seton Hill University (Greensburg, PA) seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in English, MFA considered. Background in journalism, publishing, and/or editing a plus. Teaching experience/potential at undergraduate level desirable. The position is for a full-time assistant professor of English.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, a statement of philosophy of teaching, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, and three letters of reference. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Contact:. John Spurlock, Chair Humanities Division Seton Hill University Seton Hill Drive PO Box 507F Greensburg, PA 15601 Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu Website: http://fiction.setonhill.edu

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Seton Hill seeks applications for assistant professor of composition

Seton Hill University (Greensburg, PA) invites applications for an assistant professor position in Composition, beginning fall 2009. The faculty member will teach first-year composition courses, with a secondary teaching responsibility as a generalist in undergraduate English.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in Composition/Rhetoric with an M.A. in literature (or related area). Background in writing assessment and/or writing in the disciplines a plus. An outstanding candidate who has completed all but the dissertation may be considered.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, and a statement of philosophy of teaching composition, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, a developmental composition syllabus, a set of teaching evaluations from a composition course and three letters of reference to. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Contact: Dr. John Spurlock, Chair Humanities Division Seton Hill University Seton Hill Drive PO Box 507F Greensburg, PA 15601 Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu

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Check out the newest academic books

Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of Sovereignty and Identity in Native California, by Les W. Field and others (Duke University Press; 196 pages; $74.95 hardcover, $21.95 paperback). Explores the material and symbolic role of abalone shells for the Ohlone, Pomo, Karuk, Hupa, and Wiyot peoples.

Comanche Ethnography: Field Notes of E. Adamson Hoebel, Waldo R. Wedel, Gustav G. Carlson, and Robert H. Lowie, edited by Thomas W. Kavanagh (University of Nebraska Press; 571 pages; $55). First publication of field notes from an encounter in 1933 in which a team of anthropologists met in Lawton, Okla., with 18 Indian elders to record their memories of traditional Comanche culture.

Yaqui Homeland and Homeplace: The Everyday Production of Ethnic Identity, by Kirstin C. Erickson (University of Arizona Press; 186 pages; $50 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Focuses on women and women's spaces in an ethnographic study of a people of northern Mexico.

Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya, by David Stuart and George Stuart (Thames & Hudson, distributed by W.W. Norton & Company; 272 pages; $34.95). Examines the history and archaeological study of the ancient Mexican site.

The Seneca Restoration, 1715-1754: An Iroquois Local Political Economy, by Kurt A. Jordan (University Press of Florida/Society for Historical Archaeology; 425 pages; $69.95). Combines archaeological and historical perspectives in a study of the Seneca Iroquois' limited embrace of European material culture and other influences; draws on data from a site near Geneva, N.Y.

Architecture and Artifacts of the Pennsylvania Germans: Constructing Identity in Early America, by Cynthia G. Falk (Penn State University Press; 241 pages; $45). Explores the relationship between ethnicity and material culture among the Pennsylvania Germans of the 18th century and their descendants.

Baltimore's Alley Houses: Homes for Working People Since the 1780s, by Mary Ellen Hayward (Johns Hopkins University Press; 328 pages; $45). Discusses the row houses characteristic of the city's black and ethnic immigrant neighborhoods.

The Civil Contract of Photography, by Ariella Azoulay (Zone Books, distributed by MIT Press; 500 pages; $36.95). Focuses on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and women in Western societies in a study of how people can use photography for political agency and resistance.

Joseph Cornell and Astronomy: A Case for the Stars, by Kirsten Hoving (Princeton University Press; 336 pages; $49.50). A study of the American artist (1903-72) that considers how his fascination with astronomy shaped his boxed assemblages and other art.

Visualizing the Revolution: Politics and Pictorial Arts in Late Eighteenth-Century France, by Hubertus Kohle and Rolf Reichardt (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 294 pages; $45). A study of how the era's painting, sculpture, and architecture conveyed revolutionary sensibilities.

Willard Van Dyke: Changing the World Through Photography and Film, by James L. Enyeart (University of New Mexico Press; 316 pages; $39.95). A biography of the American photographer and documentarian (1906-86), who was known for his socially engaged work.

Latin Elegy and Narratology: Fragments of Story, edited by Genevieve Liveley and Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (Ohio State University Press; 285 pages; $69.95). Essays on works by Ovid, Propertius, and other writers.

Selected Poems: Odes and Fragments, by Sophocles, translated by Reginald Gibbons (Princeton University Press; 127 pages; $18.95). Translation of work that demonstrates the Greek writer's ability as poet as well as dramatist.

Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics, edited by Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart (Duke University Press; 362 pages; $89.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Writings by scholars and activists on how indigenous peoples around the world have used radio, video, and other technologies in their political and cultural struggles.

Playing With Videogames, by James Newman (Routledge; 207 pages; $130 hardcover, $35.95 paperback). Documents the creativity in video-game fan culture, including a "shadow economy" of fan-produced offshoots.

Foucault in an Age of Terror: Essays on Biopolitics and the Defence of Society, edited by Stephen Morton and Stephen Bygrave (Palgrave Macmillan; 234 pages; $75). Essays that discuss the French philosopher's lecture series "Society Must Be Defended" in relation to debates on war and terrorism in cultural and literary studies.

Male Armor: The Soldier-Hero in Contemporary American Culture, by Jon Robert Adams (University of Virginia Press; 176 pages; $49.50 hardcover, $17.50 paperback). Considers how changing perceptions of masculinity are reflected in novels, plays, and films about American soldiers, with a focus on the late 20th century.

Liberty Hyde Bailey: Essential Agrarian and Environmental Writings, edited by Zachary Michael Jack (Cornell University Press; 288 pages; $29.95). Scholarly edition of writings by the American botanist and conservationist (1858-1954).

Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-Garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century, by R. Bruce Elder (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 480 pages; US$85). Considers how avant-garde ideas of the cinema were shaped by a "pneumatic epistemology" that emerged in reaction to modernity.

A History of Film Music, by Mervyn Cooke (Cambridge University Press; 562 pages; $120 hardcover, $24.99 paperback). Case studies include music from the film industries of Britain, France, India, Italy, Japan, the United States, and the early Soviet Union.

Picturing American Modernity: Traffic, Technology, and the Silent Cinema, by Kristen Whissel (Duke University Press; 272 pages; $79.95 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Considers how silent-era films helped audiences make sense of technological modernity.

Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance, and Belonging, by Gonul Donmez-Colin (Reaktion Books, distributed by University of Chicago Press; 268 pages; $35). Topics include the quest for national identity as reflected in Turkish filmmaking, and Turkish films' tackling of such taboo subjects as homosexuality, incest, and honor killing.

"Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact": Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow, by Jennifer Jensen Wallach (University of Georgia Press; 176 pages; $34.95). Explores historians' use of autobiography through a study of memoirs about life in the segregationist South.

The American Far West in the 20th Century, by Earl Pomeroy, edited by Richard W. Etulain (Yale University Press; 570 pages; $35). Documents the distinctive economic, social, and other historical paths taken by the West since 1900.

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader, by Troy Jackson (University Press of Kentucky; 248 pages; $35). A study of King as a young preacher and his relationship with the people of Montgomery, Ala.

Bright Epoch: Women and Coeducation in the American West, by Andrea G. Radke-Moss (University of Nebraska Press; 352 pages; $45). Examines female students' experiences at Iowa Agricultural College, the University of Nebraska, Oregon Agricultural College, and Utah State Agricultural College in the late 19th century.

Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851, edited by Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenberg (Ashgate Publishing Company; 219 pages; $99.95). Essays on the significance of the Crystal Palace exhibition for its British hosts and for participants from around the world.

Broken Brotherhood: The Rise and Fall of the National Afro-American Council, by Benjamin R. Justesen (Southern Illinois University Press; 257 pages; $35). Traces the brief history (1898-1908) of what is described as the first nationwide civil-rights organization.

Bull Moose on the Stump: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Lewis L. Gould (University Press of Kansas; 232 pages; $34.95). Scholarly edition of speeches from TR's campaign as the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party.

Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799-1914, by Robert Gildea (Harvard University Press; 540 pages; $35). A study of five generations, from those who participated in the 1789 revolution to those whose struggles fell under its legacy.

Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859, by Elizabeth R. Varon (University of North Carolina Press; 455 pages; $30). Combines cultural, intellectual, and political history in a study of the symbolism of disunion in debates that preceded the secession crisis.

Free Expression and Democracy in America: A History, by Stephen M. Feldman (University of Chicago Press; 585 pages; $55). A history of shifts in the understanding and bounds of free expression that goes beyond constitutional doctrine to examine cultural, economic, and social forces.

Gabriel Garcia Moreno and Conservative State Formation in the Andes, by Peter V.N. Henderson (University of Texas Press; 310 pages; $70). A study of the Ecuadorian statesman who served two terms as president and was assassinated in 1875; disputes the notion that he created a theocracy.

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, by John Stauffer (Twelve; 432 pages; $30). A dual biography that draws parallels between the two as self-made men and examines their complex friendship.

Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography, by Ari Hoogenboom (Johns Hopkins University Press; 408 pages; $40). Argues that Fox (1821-83) was the officer most responsible for the Union Navy's success in the Civil War.

Islam in Inter-War Europe, edited by Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (Columbia University Press; 409 pages; $90). Topics include the emergence of a distinctly European Islam between the world wars, and the networks that connected Muslims across the continent.

Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924-1951, by Henry Felix Srebrnik (McGill-Queen's University Press; 338 pages; US$75). Draws on Yiddish media and other sources in a study of Canadian Jewish campaigns on behalf of Birobidzhan, site of a promised but never realized autonomous Jewish socialist republic in the Soviet Union.

Lincoln and His Admirals, by Craig L. Symonds (Oxford University Press; 430 pages; $27.95). Examines the president's relationship with Navy commanders and his hands-on role in strategy.

Lines Drawn Upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands, edited by Karl S. Hele (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 351 pages; US$85). Essays on how the U.S.-Canadian border has affected Indian peoples of the Great Lakes region.

The Lost Politburo Transcripts: From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship, edited by Paul R. Gregory and Norman Naimark (Yale University Press; 271 pages; $50). Essays on the content and significance of Politburo meeting transcripts from the 1920s to 1938 that were discovered in Soviet archives in the late 1990s.

Normandy to Victory: The War Diary of General Courtney H. Hodges and the First U.S. Army, by William C. Sylvan and Francis G. Smith Jr., edited by John T. Greenwood (University Press of Kentucky; 575 pages; $50). Scholarly edition of a diary maintained for the U.S. World War II commander by his aides, Major Sylvan and Captain Smith.

The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library, by Marcus Tanner (Yale University Press; 265 pages; $35). A study of a 15th-century Hungarian monarch and a sumptuous collection of illuminated manuscripts that after his death, and an Ottoman invasion, was dispersed across Europe.

Recovering American Catholic Inculturation: John England's Jacksonian Populism and Romanticist Adaptation, by Lou F. McNeil (Lexington Books; 260 pages; $65). A study of the Irish-born prelate who served as the bishop of Charleston, S.C., from 1822 to 1842.

A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine, 1650-1800, by Susan Pinkard (Cambridge University Press; 317 pages; $32). Explores the origins of a major shift in cuisine, beginning in the 17th century.

Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department's Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent, by William H. Thomas Jr. (University of Wisconsin Press; 251 pages; $34.95). Traces government efforts to uncover and suppress dissenting speech about America's entry into the war.

Ways of Writing: The Practices and Politics of Text-Making in Seventeenth-Century New England, by David D. Hall (University of Pennsylvania Press; 233 pages; $49.95). Examines the production and circulation of both printed and handwritten texts, including "scribal" publication in the Antinomian controversy of 1636-38.

Muslim Medical Ethics: From Theory to Practice, edited by Jonathan E. Brockopp and Thomas Eich (University of South Carolina Press; 280 pages; $24.95). Interdisciplinary essays on medical ethics in Muslim societies and on care of Muslim patients elsewhere; topics include fertilized embryos in Saudi Arabia.

The Business of Speed: The Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915-1990, by David N. Lucsko (Johns Hopkins University Press; 368 pages; $50). Traces the industry that emerged to provide car enthusiasts with "aftermarket parts" and other means to rebuild and enhance their vehicles.

Black Robes, White Coats: The Puzzle of Judicial Policymaking and Scientific Evidence, by Rebecca C. Harris (Rutgers University Press; 200 pages; $65 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Considers how judges in different states view the admissibility of DNA, polygraph, and psychological-syndrome evidence.

Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, by John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond (Cambridge University Press; 269 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.99 paperback). Documents the genocidal and racial nature of the violence in Darfur and argues for involving the discipline of criminology in prosecutions of genocide.

The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr, by Peter Charles Hoffer (University Press of Kansas; 212 pages; $35 hardcover, $16.95 paperback). A study of the American politician's trials and accompanying public debates over the meaning of treason.

The Agent in the Margin: Nayantara Sahgal's Gandhian Fiction, by Clara A.B. Joseph (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 205 pages; US$85). Draws on non-structuralist aspects of Louis Althusser's theory of ideology in a study of how marginalized characters gain agency in the work of the Indian novelist.

Austin Harrison and the "English Review", by Martha S. Vogeler (University of Missouri Press; 344 pages; $44.95). A study of the literary and political journalist's transformation of the magazine during his editorship from 1910 to 1923.

The Brontes in the World of the Arts, edited by Sandra Hagan and Juliette Wells (Ashgate Publishing Company; 256 pages; $99.95). Essays on the influence of music, theater, and material culture on the siblings' lives and work.

The Cartographic Imagination in Early Modern England: Re-Writing the World in Marlowe, Spenser, Raleigh, and Marvell, by D.K. Smith (Ashgate Publishing Company; 204 pages; $99.95). Explores new understandings of cartographic manipulation as reflected in literature.

Dickens and the Unreal City: Searching for Spiritual Significance in Nineteenth-Century London, by Karl Ashley Smith (Palgrave Macmillan; 244 pages; $75). Considers how Dickens's depictions of London symbolically engage his own religious concerns.

A Dream of Glory/Fanhua Meng: A Chinese Play by Wang Yun, translated by Qingyun Wu (Chinese University Press, distributed by Columbia University Press; 279 pages; $39). Edition and annotated translation of a rare full-length play by a Chinese woman of the 18th century.

Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest From Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf, by Mary Jean Corbett (Cornell University Press; 280 pages; $39.95). Considers how works of literature both reflected and at times influenced British notions of family and whom one can or cannot marry.

Faulkner's Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth, by Taylor Hagood (Louisiana State University Press; 264 pages; $45). Offers an intertextual perspective on the narratives of imperialism and anti-imperialism in Faulkner's writings.

The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature, by Perry Nodelman (Johns Hopkins University Press; 432 pages; $70 hardcover, $35 paperback). Explores the shared characteristics of children's literature through an analysis of six works: "The Purple Jar," Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Doolittle, Henry Huggins, The Snowy Day, and Plain City.

Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative, by Paul John Eakin (Cornell University Press; 208 pages; $55 hardcover, $17.95 paperback). Explores links between identity and the stories we tell about ourselves; analyzes writings by such authors as Andre Aciman, Jonathan Franzen, and Mary Karr.

Memory, Print, and Gender in England, 1653-1759, by Harold Weber (Palgrave Macmillan; 262 pages; $89.95). Discusses Margaret Cavendish, John Milton, Alexander Pope, and Samuel Richardson in a study of writers' concerns over how commercial print culture was changing ideas of literary authority and immortality.

Tilting Cervantes: Baroque Reflections on Postmodern Culture, by Bruce R. Burningham (Vanderbilt University Press; 227 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Juxtaposes Don Quixote against Fight Club, The Matrix, The Moor's Last Sigh, and other contemporary films and novels.

Is There a Doctor in the House? Market Signals and Tomorrow's Supply of Doctors, by Richard M. Scheffler (Stanford University Press; 242 pages; $27.95). Applies economic principles in a study of the "supply cycle" for physicians in the United States.

Cajun and Zydeco Dance Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World, by Mark F. DeWitt (University Press of Mississippi; 282 pages; $50). An ethnomusicological study of the musicians and dancers who have created a flourishing live Louisiana music scene in the Bay Area.

Fielding Derrida: Philosophy, Literary Criticism, History, and the Work of Deconstruction, by Joshua Kates (Fordham University Press, distributed by New York University Press; 279 pages; $75 hardcover, $26 paperback). New and previously published writings that, among other things, link the French philosopher to Husserlian phenomenology.

French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception, edited by David Pettigrew and Francois Raffoul (State University of New York Press; 300 pages; $80). Essays on how Sartre, Derrida, and other French thinkers have engaged the German philosopher's work.

Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring Boundaries, by Glen A. Mazis (State University of New York Press; 274 pages; $83.50 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Focuses on an expanded notion of embodiment in a study of overlapping relationships among humans, nonhuman animals, and machines.

Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays, edited by Paul K. Moser (Cambridge University Press; 236 pages; $80 hardcover, $26.99 paperback). Essays on Jesus' relationship to the intellectual currents of his time, his influence on Augustine and Aquinas, and his significance for contemporary debates in such areas as epistemology.

Big Picture Realities: Canada and Mexico at the Crossroads, edited by Daniel Drache (Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 300 pages; US$34.95). Essays by Canadian and Mexican scholars on the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question, edited by Andrew Lakoff and Stephen J. Collier (Columbia University Press; 307 pages; $27.50). Writings on how pandemics and other biosecurity problems are defined and approached.

The Case for Big Government, by Jeff Madrick (Princeton University Press; 205 pages; $22.95). Argues for increasing the role of government in American society and draws lessons from the "Great Society" era and other "big governments" of the past.

Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation, by Sharon R. Krause (Princeton University Press; 262 pages; $29.95). Defends the value of affective but impartial judgment in political deliberation.

Consumption and the Globalization Project: International Hegemony and the Annihilation of Time, by Edward A. Comor (Palgrave Macmillan; 211 pages; $74.95). Draws on neo-Gramscian theory in a study of the role of capitalist consumption in the international political economy.

Democratic Brazil Revisited, edited by Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power (University of Pittsburgh Press; 342 pages; $65 hardcover, $26.95 paperback). Essays that evaluate the "performance" of Brazilian democracy, with a focus on the Workers' Party government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

God's Democracy: American Religion After September 11, by Emilio Gentile (Praeger Publishers; 187 pages; $49.95). Argues that after the terrorist attacks, the Bush administration used religion to divide Americans along partisan lines.

Guns and Governance in the Rift Valley: Pastoralist Conflict and Small Arms, by Kennedy Agade Mkutu (Indiana University Press; 178 pages; $60 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). Examines the problem of small-arms proliferation in an area of the Kenya-Uganda border.

Norms Over Force: The Enigma of European Power, by Zaki Laidi (Palgrave Macmillan; 179 pages; $74.95). Topics include whether the European Union is a superpower in gestation.

Politics at the Airport, edited by Mark B. Salter (University of Minnesota Press; 224 pages; $60 hardcover, $20 paperback). Writings on political, social, and economic factors that shape surveillance and related technologies at airports.

Politics in the Pews: The Political Mobilization of Black Churches, by Eric L. McDaniel (University of Michigan Press; 224 pages; $70 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Considers how the relationship between pastor and congregation affects political mobilization in black churches.

Race and Human Rights, edited by Curtis Stokes (Michigan State University Press; 271 pages; $29.95). Essays on such topics as the racial implications of the "war on terrorism."

Religion After Postmodernism: Retheorizing Myth and Literature, by Victor E. Taylor (University of Virginia Press; 256 pages; $55 hardcover, $19.50 paperback). Focuses on fable-type narratives as a genre for exploring religious and philosophical concerns.

The Social Sciences and Biblical Translation, edited by Dietmar Neufeld (Society of Biblical Literature/Brill Academic Publishers; 188 pages; $129 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Essays that consider how perspectives from cultural anthropology and other social sciences can aid in biblical translation and avoid ethnocentric and other biases.

Becoming Brazuca: Brazilian Immigration to the United States, edited by Clemence Jouet-Pastre and Leticia J. Braga (David Rockefeller Center Series on Latin American Studies, distributed by Harvard University Press; 382 pages; $24.95). Writings by American and Brazilian sociologists and other scholars; focuses on Brazilians in the Boston area.

New Choices, New Families: How Lesbians Decide About Motherhood, by Nancy J. Mezey (Johns Hopkins University Press; 208 pages; $55 hardcover, $25 paperback). Draws on interview and other data in a study of how lesbians decide whether or not to become mothers.

Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond, by Charles C. Ragin (University of Chicago Press; 225 pages; $45 hardcover, $18 paperback). Discusses the use of set-theoretic methods as a way of developing a middle path between qualitative and quantitative approaches in the social sciences.

Woman and the Fairytale Prince, by Jean-Claude Kaufmann, translated by David Macey (Polity Press, distributed by John Wiley & Sons; 223 pages; $69.95 hardcover, $35.95 paperback). Translation of a French study that drew on an analysis of letters about the single life sent by women to the magazine Marie Claire.

Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, by Phil Zuckerman (New York University Press; 227 pages; $35). Combines scholarly and personal perspectives in a sociological study of happiness and social well-being in relatively nonreligious societies; draws on interviews with 149 Danes and Swedes.

Weaving Self-Evidence: A Sociology of Logic, by Claude Rosental, translated by Catherine Porter (Princeton University Press; 296 pages; $85 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). Uses the history of a theorem on fuzzy logic to examine the social nature of the process through which theorems are created, disseminated, and established as truths.

When Boys Become Parents: Adolescent Fatherhood in America, by Mark S. Kiselica (Rutgers University Press; 261 pages; $32.95). Challenges stereotypes about teenage fathers and suggests way of helping them remain involved in the lives of their children and children's mothers.

The Postwar Yankees: Baseball's Golden Age Revisited, by David G. Surdam (University of Nebraska Press; 448 pages; $45). A study of Major League Baseball from 1949 to 1964, a period in which the Yankees dominated but problems of declining revenue and attendance were beginning to emerge.

Stone Tower: The Political Theater of Arthur Miller, by Jeffrey D. Mason (University of Michigan Press; 328 pages; $49.50). Explores the political concerns and impact of the American dramatist, including his theatrical response to the Holocaust in Incident at Vichy, Broken Glass, Playing for Time, and After the Fall.

The Limits of Boundaries: Why City-Regions Cannot Be Self-Governing, by Andrew Sancton (McGill-Queen's University Press; 178 pages; US$75 hardcover, US$22.95 paperback). Argues that the expanding and multiple boundaries of city-regions in Western democracies limit their potential for self-governance.

Democracy and the Rise of Women's Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Kathleen M. Fallon (Johns Hopkins University Press; 184 pages; $50). Focuses on Ghana in a study of the role of women in the democratization of formerly autocratic states.

Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances, by Aimee Carrillo Rowe (Duke University Press; 252 pages; $79.95 hardcover, $22.95 paperback). A study of the successes and failures of transracial feminist alliances in academia.

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Call for Papers: The Clearing House

The Clearing House, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes material of interest to middle level and high school teachers and administrators, as well as postsecondary education faculty members and their students, is seeking submissions.

The journal contains articles reporting on useful practices, research findings, and experiments. It also publishes a limited number of first-person accounts and opinion pieces on controversial issues. Consideration is given to articles dealing with educational trends and philosophy; preservice and inservice education; effective schools; curriculum; learning styles; discipline; guidance and counseling; community involvement; education of students with disabilities; teaching and learning climate; gifted and talented programs; international education; instructional leadership; instructional techniques; teaching with computers; testing and measurement; and school law.

Manuscripts should not exceed 3,500 words. They also accept short pieces of roughly 600 words.

Contributors should visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/heldref/tch for submission information and guidelines. The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., University of Chicago Press 2003, should be used as a style reference in preparing contributions that require documentation. (For example, a book reference would be in this format: Slavin, R. E. 1990. Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. A journal article would be listed this way: Kapland, J. L., and E. D. Luck .1977. The dropout phenomenon as a social problem. Educational Forum 47 (5): 41–56.)

Avoid explanatory notes whenever possible by incorporating their content in the text. For essential notes, identify them with consecutive superscripts and list them in a separate section titled NOTES at the end of the text. References should be listed alphabetically according to the author’s last name at the end of the manuscript. In the text, reference citations should be in parentheses: (author, date) or (date). Accepted contributions normally are published within six months of acceptance. Authors receive complimentary Metapress access to the issue in which their article appears. Reprints are available through the journal.

Submit manuscripts to: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/heldref/tch
Phone (202) 296-6267 • Fax (202) 296-5149
http://www.heldref.org

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Major universities see promise in Google Book Search settlement

The University of California, University of Michigan, and Stanford University announce today their joint support for the outstanding public benefits made possible through the proposed settlement agreement (info on settlement: see below news item) submitted to the United States District Court, Southern District of New York by Google Inc. and plaintiffs the Authors Guild, Inc. et al.

The proposed settlement will expand access to books in the Google Book Search project. Google Book Search is an ambitious project to digitize the print collections of the world’s greatest libraries and make them searchable via the Internet. The project will make it possible for libraries to preserve millions of books and assure numerous other public and academic benefits.

"It will now be possible, even easy, for anyone to access these great collections from anywhere in the United States," said University of Michigan’s Paul N. Courant, University Librarian and Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy. “This is an extraordinary accomplishment.”

While the three libraries were not parties in the lawsuit, Google requested extensive input from them on issues of importance to library and university communities.

"With other libraries, those of the University of California and the University of Michigan, we have been negotiating for almost two years with Google and the plaintiffs to shape this agreement for the public good,” said Michael A. Keller , Stanford’s University Librarian, Director of Academic Information Resources, Founder/Publisher of HighWire Press, and Publisher of the Stanford University Press. “We believe that the proposed settlement offers significant benefits for readers everywhere and therefore society as a whole, providing easy access to texts via Google to libraries throughout the country, and expanding dramatically the amount of material that can be freely read (not just searched) by the public."

"Millions of books are held in our libraries as a public trust," said Daniel Greenstein, Vice Provost at the University of California. "This settlement will help provide broad access to them as well as other public benefits, and it also promises to promote innovation in scholarship. For these reasons, UC is pleased to have given input along with Universities of Michigan and Stanford in support of the public good, and we look forward to playing a continuing role by contributing UC library volumes to the development of this rich online resource."

While the settlement is not ideal from the point of view of the three universities, they believe it is favorable overall to the principles and intentions that led them to join the program as early as 2004.

“The settlement promises to change profoundly the level of access that may be afforded to the printed cultural record, so much of which is presently available to those who are able to visit one of the world’s great libraries, Michael Keller continued. “The democratic impulses – the access to knowledge – are simply too compelling to ignore. They at once appeal to and reflect the respective missions of our three institutions.”

“The settlement agreement provides an unprecedented and extraordinarily valuable service to the American public, the opportunity to search and preview millions of books online. This is a service that libraries, because of copyright restrictions, could not offer on their own and goes well beyond what would have been possible, even if Google had prevailed in defending the lawsuits,” said Courant.

Among the important benefits to higher education are:

• Free full text access at public libraries around the country
• Free preview and ability to either find the book at a local library or through a consumer purchase.
• A first-ever database of both in-copyright and out-of-copyright (public domain) works on which scholars can conduct advanced research (known as the “the research corpus”). For example, a corpus of this sort will allow scholars in the field of comparative linguistics to conduct specialized large scale analysis of language, looking for trends over time and expanding our understanding of language and culture.
• Enabling the sharing of public domain works among scholars, students and institutions. Not only will scholars and students at other universities be able to read these online, but this will make it possible to provide large numbers of texts to individuals wishing to perform research;
• Institutional subscriptions providing access to in-copyright, out-of-print books;
• Working copies of partner libraries' contributed works for searching and web services complementary to Google's.
• Accommodated services for persons with print disabilities – making it possible for persons with print disabilities to view or have text read with the use of reader technology;
• Digital copies of works digitized by Google provided to the partner libraries for long term preservation purposes. This is important because, as university libraries, we are tasked by the public to be repositories of human knowledge and information.

It is important to note that neither the proposed settlement nor the universities’ support of it effectuate their full participation in the new arrangement. Each of the universities has a cooperative agreement in place with Google that remains in effect. Each now must negotiate and execute amendments to those agreements that reflect the terms and conditions described in the settlement. Any final decision to continue contributing to Google Book Search will be made after negotiation and finalization of such an amended agreement. Each university is working toward that end and expects to participate in the project under the proposed settlement.

See news item below for more information on landmark Google/Authors Guild settlement.

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Authors, publishers, and Google reach landmark settlement

The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today (October 28, 2008) announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of incopyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search. The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the AAP’s membership. The class action is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form, by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the Web. The agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.

If approved by the court, the agreement would provide:

• More access to out-of-print books. Generating greater exposure for millions of incopyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online;
• Additional ways to purchase copyrighted books. Building off publishers’ and authors’ current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books;
• Institutional subscriptions to millions of books online. Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world’s most renowned libraries;
• Free access from U.S. libraries. Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and
• Compensation to authors and publishers and control over access to their works. Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The settlement agreement resolves Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action suit filed on September 20, 2005 by the Authors Guild and certain authors, and a suit filed on October 19, 2005 by five major publisher-members of the Association of American Publishers: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MHP); Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson (LSE: PSON; NYSE: PSO); John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (NYSE: JWa and JWb); and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS). These lawsuits challenged Google’s plan to digitize, search and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.

Holders worldwide of U.S. copyrights can register their works with the Book Rights Registry and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized. Libraries at the Universities of California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Stanford have provided input into the settlement and expect to participate in the project, including by making their collections available. Along with a number of other U.S. libraries that currently work with Google, their significant efforts to preserve, maintain and provide access to books have played a critical role in achieving this agreement and, through their anticipated participation, they are furthering such efforts while making books even more accessible to students, researchers and readers in the U.S. It is expected that additional libraries in the U.S. will participate in this project in the future.

Google Book Search users in the United States will be able to enjoy and purchase the products and services offered under the project. Outside the United States, the users’ experience with Google Book Search will be unchanged, unless the offering of such products and services is authorized by the rightsholder of a book.

“It’s hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it,” said Roy Blount Jr., President of the Authors Guild. “As a reader and researcher, I’ll be delighted to stop by my local library to browse the stacks of some of the world’s great libraries. As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work. This deal makes good sense.”

“This historic settlement is a win for everyone,” said Richard Sarnoff, Chairman of the Association of American Publishers. “From our perspective, the agreement creates an innovative framework for the use of copyrighted material in a rapidly digitizing world, serves readers by enabling broader access to a huge trove of hard-to-find books, and benefits the publishing community by establishing an attractive commercial model that offers both control and choice to the rightsholder.”

“Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today, together with the authors, publishers, and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavor,” said Sergey Brin, co-founder & president of technology at Google. “While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips.”

For more information about this agreement, including information about whether you may be a class member, please visit http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders. Class members include authors (the Author Sub-Class) and publishers (the Publisher Sub-Class), and their heirs and successors, of books and other written works protected by U.S. copyright law.

Google, AAP, Authors Guild: Joint Public FAQ: Download PDF

See news item above for universities' reactions to landmark Google/Authors Guild settlement.

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Professor replaces textbooks with Web tools
by Kim Seidel

Gerald Kane, an assistant professor of information systems at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, has created an entire suite of "Web 2.0 tools" that he uses in place of textbooks in his technology-driven course, Computers in Management. His Web 2.0 tools, which include blogs, wikis, social networks, and RSS feeds, are all tied together with a wiki.

“I fear that most people hear ‘wiki’ and think ‘Wikipedia’," said Kane. "Our use of the tools is very different than that."

Kane said that he didn’t purposely set out to replace his textbooks with technology. “I found that the more I used Web tools for managing my class, the less relevant and important the textbook became to what we were actually doing," he said. "Eventually, the traditional textbook just sort of dropped off because it became less relevant to the real learning in the class, but (the textbook) was still very expensive.”

The cost of using Web tools is essentially “zero,” said Kane, since wikis, blogs, social networks and RSS readers are available for free. While he writes some of the Web 2.0 content he uses, he largely takes advantage of free content from the web, and then creates a PowerPoint presentation to tie together the themes and issues he finds. "Web tools can be used to leverage the vast amount of content already available on the Internet," he said. "Of course, certain content, such as the Harvard Business School Case Studies and other copyrighted content, have to be paid for, and I have used some of these on occasion. For the most part, though, it’s a fair use of existing content on the web.”

Kane’s students contribute content to his wiki by posting articles, blog posts or even YouTube videos that are relevant to discussions. When contributing content, they are required to include a reason why they consider that particular content important. They are also required to research and build a part of the wiki as one of their class assignments. "Their creations more closely resemble Wikipedia than other tools used in the course," he said. "Much of the student’s content is good enough to retain for future classes."

Other educational content for his Computers in Management course comes from an open source textbook, Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology, written by Kane’s colleague, John Gallaugher, which will be published in 2009 by Flat World Knowledge (www.flatworldknowledge.com), that Kane has been given early access to.

An open source textbook gives readers the ability to contribute to and edit the content, said Kane: “One benefit to this approach is that textbook authors can get feedback from their readers, including faculty and students, to improve the content."

As an instructor, Kane finds many benefits to using Web tools rather than textbooks, including:

• More dynamic content. “I can replace readings as new topics become available," he said. "Students can also identify articles from the popular press, post them to the wiki (or at least links to them) and comment on why they think the stories are important."
  
  
• Its ability to customize and update more quickly. “I can modularize the content and borrow the best from multiple public sources,” he said. “I also use RSS feeds combined with Google Reader to automatically identify and route relevant articles to the wiki, so information is often available to students on my wiki before it ever appears in print.”

Students benefit from using Web tools as well. “They engage the information in different ways,” Kane said. “They read the content, but then they’re forced to think about how it might be improved or connected with other content in the outside world.”

When students are required to contribute new information, they are forced to think about how to apply the knowledge they learn in class to the outside world, said Kane: “It shifts their relationship to a passive consumer of information and knowledge to someone who is expected to be able to critically evaluate that knowledge – an increasingly important skill in the information age. Learning and collaboration happens as much outside the classroom as it does inside. The days of one-way information provision are over. People don’t just read the paper or a book and take the words as truth – with a capital ‘T.’ They read multiple accounts from multiple sources, sometimes professional and sometimes amateur, and are forced to compare, contrast and draw conclusions. They have the opportunity to respond to what they read either on interactive web pages or by developing a blog of their own.”

These interactive skills have been practiced for many years by academics and other professionals, including doctors and lawyers, he said. Now in the new Information Age, this is going to be one of the necessary skills of literacy. “Using these platforms in class enables me to teach the students how to use these tools appropriately for learning outside the classroom,” Kane said.

There are some challenges to using Web tools rather than a textbook, admits Kane. As an instructor, he surrenders a certain amount of control. “Students may and do contribute information that is not accurate or helpful,” he said. “Of course, other students are encouraged to correct it."

Monitoring the dynamics and contributions of students takes extra effort and energy, he said: "Ultimately, I believe it results in higher quality and lower work for me, but you can’t just sit back and be uninvolved.

At other times, the information for his course is so up-to-date that he needs to change his lectures “on the fly” because new information has been contributed that directly relates to the current subject.

In spite of any setbacks, Kane predicts that Web tools will replace textbooks in the future. “I think the textbook industry is in for a major change," he said. "Students simply will not stand for paying hundreds of dollars for a textbook for much longer. The current economic downturn may be a trigger, because I expect that universities will need to find ways to make the overall cost of education more affordable.”

After learning of Kane’s innovations, other departments at Boston College have also adopted wikis. Wikis aren’t only appropriate for technology classes, he said -- one of the most successful adopters teaches a geosciences class.

Ultimately, Kane said he believes that evolving Web. 2.0 tools will mean more faculty members will become publishers of their own content. Future textbook companies will be a content platform similar to Netflix or iTunes. “Faculty will create their own teaching modules, complete with reading, PPT, and perhaps even audio or video files of the lecture,” he said.

Kane offers this advice for professors who want to try out Web tools in place of textbooks:

• Recognize that if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. “You can’t just throw a wiki out there and expect students to know how to use it," he said. "Wikis and other Web 2.0 tools are more about the new ways to connect people than it is about technology.”
  
  
• Be sure you know why you’re using the wiki and other Web tools, and what you hope to gain from them.
  
  
• Provide appropriate incentives to students for using the tools. “For all wiki assignments, I provide both ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks'," he said. "The ‘sticks’ are that they have to contribute to get a particular grade. This increases the amount of contributions. The ‘carrots’ are the rewards for the best contributions. This usually increases the quality.”

Kim Seidel is a freelance writer based in Onalaska, Wis.

TAA developing textbook authoring workshops

TAA is in the process of developing a series of textbook authoring workshops to complement its Academic Authoring Workshop series. Workshops now being offered include "Textbook Writing 101", a one-day workshop presented by Michael Spiegler, and "Developing a Textbook Proposal", a one-day workshop presented by Mary Ellen Lepionka, a higher education developmental editor and founder of Atlantic Path Publishing.

"Textbook Writing 101" is designed for both those who want to learn how to write their first textbook and those who have written a textbook and want to learn how to write their next textbook or revision more efficiently and effectively. It will provide participants with the nuts-and-bolts of how to write a prospectus and sample chapters, how to contact publishers, and how to negotiate a favorable contract. They'll learn the basics of the writing, revising, and production phases and get advice on how to deal with publishers, alternatives to traditional publishing, and survival skills for authors. This workshop is a based on a three-day Chautauqua Short-Course for college faculty and graduate students that Spiegler teaches in a different location each year.

Spiegler is a professor of psychology at Providence College. He has been a successful textbook and academic author for 40 years with several leading psychology textbooks, including Contemporary Behavior Therapy (5th ed.) and Personality: Strategies and Issues (8th ed.). He has presented numerous workshops on textbook writing at universities, professional conventions, and at the annual TAA conference. Spiegler regularly reviews manuscripts for textbook publishers and serves as a consultant/mentor to college textbook authors in diverse disciplines. He is currently writing a comprehensive Handbook for College Textbook Writing. To schedule this workshop, contact Michael Spiegler, (401) 865-2618 or spiegler@providence.edu

"Developing a Textbook Proposal" incorporates lecture, discussion, application, and tutorial. It begins with an appreciation of the prerequisites: what is involved in stating your textbook idea, discovering the market for your textbook idea, and finding the right publishers for the kind of textbook you want to do? What kind of a track record and author profile do you need? Hands-on activities include completing a market analysis and competition grid. The workshop goes on to explore in greater depth what should be in a textbook proposal. Working on a prospectus template, participants will have opportunities to develop descriptions of their content, organization, apparatus, pedagogy, and presentation. Hands-on activities include completing a pedagogy plan and supplements plan. Participants also will have opportunities to develop plans for supporting materials, including the table of contents, sample chapters, and cover letter. The workshop concludes with advice on making contact with editors, observing publishing calendars and submission guidelines, and interpreting outcomes. Participants receive a free copy of Writing and Developing Your College Textbook, Second Edition.

Lepionka is a developmental editor in higher education and has worked with many major textbook publishers, such as Allyn & Bacon, Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill, Wiley, Houghton Mifflin, Sage, and others. She is also the founder of Atlantic Path Publishing in Gloucester, MA, and author of Writing and Developing Your College Textbook, second edition (2008) and Writing and Developing College Textbook Supplements (2005). To schedule this workshop, contact Mary Ellen Lepionka at (978) 283-1531 or me.lepionka@verizon.net

These Textbook Authoring Workshops are sponsored by TAA. TAA covers the cost of the presenters' domestic travel expenses (including air, ground transportation, lodging, food, etc.), and the host institution pays the speaker's fee. Learn more about TAA's Textbook Authoring Workshops: Click here

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Google Settlement Agreement less relevant to in-print textbook authors
By Kim Pawlak

The Google Settlement Agreement is an important settlement for book authors generally and may have some advantages for academic book authors, but for the most part, authors of in-print textbooks will most likely not choose to participate in Google Book Search under the terms of the settlement, said Richard Hull, TAA’s executive director.

“The new business models made possible by this settlement agreement may prove to be largely irrelevant to authors of in-print textbooks,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Licensing textbooks through a massive database of various kinds of books is probably a poor way to make money on those textbooks.” The license fee from subscriptions to educational institutions is unlikely to offset the loss of revenue from displaced textbook sales, he said.

“The Google Book Search database is probably best suited for books that are individually used rather infrequently but which, in aggregate, would be used a lot,” said Aiken. “Publishers would seem unlikely to market many textbooks through this channel.”

In-print books, by default, will be excluded from all display uses, including display of snippets, previews and institutional and other licensing. If one edition of a book is in-print, than all prior editions, whether in print or not, will by default be excluded from display uses.

“Many textbooks are works for hire, or the author has otherwise assigned the copyright to the publisher,” said Aiken. “This settlement does not change the copyright status of books, so textbook authors who haven’t retained rights won’t gain them under this agreement.”

Aiken nevertheless encourages textbook authors and all authors with copyright interests in books to register, regardless of whether those books are in print or not. “The settlement gives copyright holders substantial rights, including the right to exclude their works from databases and share in revenue. The best way to protect your rights is to register a claim.”

Authors and publishers cannot exclude a title from the institutional subscription program portion of the settlement, which gives institutions and their students and faculty full access to the entire database for a set fee, without also excluding that title from the consumer program portion. (Authors of both in-print and out-of print books can opt-out from the entire settlement, and retain their rights to sue Google for infringement. Authors of in-print books will have their books included only if they opt-in, and authors of out-of print books will have their books excluded only if they opt-out. They can also ask Google to remove any previously scanned books.)

Institutional subscribers will have access to the full-text of books. “This means that if authors and publishers of in-print textbooks opt into the program, students whose institutions have an institutional subscription will be able to view and print pages from those textbooks,” said Hull.

If a publisher does decide to make an in-print textbook available for licensing to institutions through the Google Book Search program, the author would be entitled to the contractually agreed to royalties due the author for these uses, said Aiken. “While the royalty amounts are arbitrable for trade books under the agreement, they are not for educational books,” he said. “Authors do retain all rights against textbook publishers, that is, they could sue publishers for paying improper amounts under their contracts – but they can’t use the arbitration mechanism in the settlement.”

The Google Settlement Agreement may, however, be a good deal for authors of out-of-print textbooks whose rights have reverted back to them, said Hull.

“This agreement may give rights holders of out-of-print books the opportunity to derive income from an otherwise unproductive work,” he said. “Participating in Google Book Search may be a way to keep otherwise unavailable books in front of an audience and earn the authors some income. However, authors would only want to opt-in if they have no plans to re-publish the work.”

Authors can change their minds, said Aiken: “They can opt-in and then, say, a month later, opt out. The best course for an author may be to be in the program until a book is about to come out. One caveat: if a book is available for institutional licensing, then it will stay in the institutional license so as the institutional contract is in effect – so it may take a full year for the book to be pulled.”

The settlement agreement has not been approved by the court. If and when it is, TAA will be cooperating with those in charge of notifying authors of the steps they will need to take to opt-in or out of the program and register with the Book Rights Registry, said Hull: “We want our members to be able to make an informed decision about how they want to be treated under this settlement.”

If the settlement is approved, all rights holders whose books have already been scanned and digitized will receive at least $60 per book, said Aiken: “That amount could be as much as $300 if relatively few rightsholders submit claims. If an especially large number of rightsholders submit claims, Google could wind up paying more.”

For out-of-print books in which the rights have reverted to authors, the author will get 100 percent of the claim. For out-of-print books in which the copyright is owned by the publisher, the author and the publisher will split the claim 50-50. All payments will come directly from the Book Rights Registry.

“There is one exception,” said Aiken. “For books published before 1987, the Registry will pay 65 percent to the author and 35 percent to the publisher. We did this because under old contracts frequently the electronic rights were not granted to the publisher. (The year 1987 has no special significance. It was simply the negotiated year.)”

For in-print books, all of the money goes to the publisher to be distributed under the terms of the author-publisher contract.

Author and publisher payments from Institutional Subscriptions will be based on usage amounts as reported by Google to the Book Rights Registry. For example, if a book gets 1,000 hits out of 20 million possible hits, the author and/or publisher will get a one thousand two-millionth share of that institution’s licensing fee.

“There is a lot of good in this agreement for authors,” said Aiken. “This was definitely an author-driven agreement.”

He outlines several author-friendly features of the agreement:

Inclusion fee. The settlement includes an inclusion fee that says that a book is valuable in the program even if it is not being hit. “We felt that for a researcher to know she’s searching though 25,000 books on the Civil War, even if she’s not using them all, is valuable,” he said. “The more inclusive the database, the more an institution will be willing to pay for it. The inclusion fee will be a one-time fee of $200 per book. “Before any inclusion fees can be paid, however, there has to be money flowing into institutional subscriptions,” he said. “It will most likely be five years before the first payment is available. By just signing up within the first one to five years, and allowing a book to be available for institutional subscriptions, an author would be eligible for this inclusion payment.”

Reversion of rights. The agreement includes a means for expedited quasi-reversion of rights to the author. “Because it is often difficult to get publishers to respond to a reversion of rights demand, under the agreement, rights can be reverted back to the author if the publisher doesn’t respond,” he said. “If the publisher doesn’t respond, the author gets 100 percent of the funds under the agreement.”

Arbitration. Arbitration will be available for many disputes to this agreement by authors. “We built in an arbitration component to ensure authors are being paid properly,” he says. The Book Rights Registry will arbitrate disagreements for a fee of $300. If the author wins, they will get half of that fee back.

There is a limitation on arbitration, however. Royalty splits between authors and publishers of educational books are not arbitrable under the agreement. “Although you can’t arbitrate it, you can go to the author representatives on the Book Rights Registry board and say that you’re not being paid the correct amount,” he says. “Author representatives on the board are there to help assure that proper reporting is being made.”

New markets. This agreement has created several new markets. The most important market is the Institutional Market. Others:

Consumer purchases. Consumers can look at out-of-print books in their entirety and print out pages while logged in (no downloads). Consumer pricing will be between $1.99 and $29.99 depending on all sorts of factors, including initial price, age, and type of book. If the author controls the book, the author can change the price. The publisher can change the price if the rights aren’t reverted. If both change the price, the higher price prevails. Authors can take their out-of-print book out of the consumer purchase program. They can say they don’t want it available for consumer purchase, but can make it available for preview online. “The consumer purchase program gives an enormous amount of control at the granular level to authors of out-of-print books,” he says. “Under the agreement, authors can opt-out of the consumer program, and stay in the institutional program, but they cannot opt-in to the consumer program and opt-out of the institutional program.”

Advertising. When a book appears online in preview mode, ads may be displayed by Google on those pages. Revenue from those ads will be split the same way as other revenues (Google receives 37 percent, and the Registry gets 63 percent for the Rightsholder. Of the 63 percent the Registry holds, they anticipate that the administrative fee will be 10 to 20 percent (which works out be be 6.3 to 12.6 percent of the original. The author and publisher are then paid according to whether it’s in-print or not, and according to whether the rights have reverted or not.).

Public Access Terminals. Any public library building can provide a free online portal to the entire database – the same database that institutional subscribers can see. Users of the public access terminals can print out pages only if they pay a fee to the rights holder. Payments are processed through the Rights Registry. Libraries can charge an additional fee beyond the fee set by the Rights Registry.

Other important provisions that the Authors Guild thought it was important for authors to have, said Aiken, include:

• The Registry has a right to audit the security of all digital copies of the in-copyright books that Google has scanned. “Some libraries get copies of the tapes and we wanted to make sure those were secure too,” he said. “The Settlement provides financial penalties for Google and libraries if they leak substantial amounts of data.”
  
  
• Previews of out-of-print books will be available by default to those on the Internet, except for anthologies, poetry, solutions manuals, and collections of short stories.
  
  
• Previews of certain reference books, by default, will display only a fixed number of pages from the beginning of the book. These “fixed preview” books include dictionaries, encyclopedias, books of quotations, guides and thesauruses.

Preview settings for a book can be changed by authors who control the rights to their books. Authors may change the default settings so that no preview is allowed, or only a fixed portion from the beginning of a book is viewable.

Read the full settlement agreement: Click here

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Atlantic Path Publishing sponsoring 2009 TAA Conference

Atlantic Path Publishing is sponsoring the 2009 TAA Conference with an in-kind donation of 64 copies of Self-Publishing Textbooks and Instructional Materials by Franklin H. Silverman. Silverman is a past-president of TAA. Atlantic Path Publishing publishes professional reference books for authors, editors, educators, and publishers on writing, editing, and publishing. Visit the Atlantic Path Publishing website and thank them for supporting authors.

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Lennie Literary & Author's Attorneys sponsoring 2009 TAA Conference

Lennie Literary & Author's Attorneys is sponsoring the 2009 TAA Conference at the $200 level. Attorney and literary agent Michael Lennie's expertise with regard to publishing practices, contract negotiations, licensing, and author/publisher relations provides a unique advantage representing authors as both a literary agent and an attorney. His literary agency and law offices represent fiction, nonfiction and textbook authors in a variety of genres. Visit Lennie Literary & Author's Attorneys website and thank them for supporting authors.

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Universal-Publishers sponsoring 2009 TAA Conference

Universal-Publishers is sponsoring the 2009 TAA Conference at the $200 level. Universal-Publishers publishes how-to, scientific, technical, academic, and other specialized non-fiction titles. Visit Universal-Publishers' website and thank them for supporting authors.

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2009 TAA Conference registration is now open

Registration is now open for the 2009 TAA Conference on Text and Academic Authoring, which will be held in San Antonio, Texas, June 25-27 at the El Tropicano Hotel: Register Now

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Application deadline for Council of Fellows Nov. 30

The deadline for applying for  membership in TAA's Council of Fellows is November 30. TAA's Council of Fellows members are distinguished authors who have a long record of successful and diverse publication as a textbook author, an academic author, or both. Candidates should be authors whose textbooks or academic articles or books have established their presence in their field. Council of Fellows members are chosen by a TAA Selection Committee based on a set of criteria which includes their level of participation in TAA activities; teaching excellence; quality and quantity of textbooks (if textbook authors); and quality and quantity of professional journal articles, monographs and edited books (if academic authors). New Council of Fellows members are inducted at the association's annual conference, at which time they receive a special engraved medallion and lifetime membership in TAA. Applications must include documentation in support of the Council of Fellows criteria (Click to download PDF). Send your application and documentation to TAA, P.O. Box 56359, St. Petersburg, FL 33732-6359.

Questions? Contact TAA headquarters at TextandAcademicAuthors@taaonline.net

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Listen to recording of TAA Teleconference on forming scholarly writing support group

TAA members can now listen to a recording of the November 13 TAA Teleconference "Scholarly Publishing: Finding Support Through Peer Mentoring" presented by Dr. Linda Searby, Assistant Professor of Education in the School of Education at the University of Alabama Birmingham.

Listen to this teleconference

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TAA thanks Sustaining Member

TAA thanks Sustaining Member Kevin T. Patton.

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Member finds TAA mentoring helpful

TAA member Gail Baura, a professor at the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences and author of three textbooks, recently contacted TAA mentor Michael Sullivan for assistance as she negotiates a contract for her fourth textbook. 

"Even though I have three textbooks, I don't know much about the book contract process," she said. "It seemed like a good idea to get advice for my fourth textbook."

Baura said she chose Sullivan from TAA's list of mentors because his area of math was closest to her area of biomedical engineering. She sent him an email and when Sullivan responded, they set up a time to talk by phone. "So far I have spoken to him once, but now that I have draft contracts with two publishers, I will call him again," she said. "He was very knowledgeable and helpful. I'm not through the contract process yet, but so far I have been able to negotiate having the publisher obtain my permissions, write my index, and pay someone else to write my solutions manual. Until Michael mentioned these topics, I did not know they were negotiable. I also now know that an attorney should read my close-to-final contract."

TAA's Mentor-A-Member online mentoring directory is free for members. TAA mentors provide advice, suggestions, or direction on a variety of career or authoring issues; feedback on an article, book proposal, manuscript, or other type of writing; or just answer questions or provide guidance. View TAA's mentoring directory: click here

If you would like to serve as a TAA mentor, please contact Kim Pawlak, TAA's Associate Executive Director at kim.pawlak@taaonline.net or (608) 687-3106.

Have a TAA mentoring experience to share? Contact Kim Pawlak at kim.pawlak@taaonline.net or (608) 687-3106.

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