Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication

Since 2012, ATTW and Taylor & Francis/Routledge have collaborated on a new ATTW Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication. We publish two lines of books. Contact the series editor, Jo Mackiewicz, with your idea for a book at mackiewicz@auburn.edu.

The Two Lines of Books in the Series: Research and Practice

The Research Line:

This line focuses on scholarly monographs (e.g., those originating from scholars’ dissertation research) and edited collections. Books that exemplify the kind of monographs we develop include Sauer’s The Rhetoric of Risk, Grabill’s Writing Community Change, Spinuzzi’s Tracing Genre through Organizations, and Winsor’s Writing Power.

As an author of a monograph, you should discuss the practical implications of your research either throughout your text (interspersed among chapters) or, at least, in a chapter devoted to implications. In other words, you need to show how people working in industry or in academia can put your research to use.

Some collections that exemplify those that we are developing include Albers and Still’s Usability of Complex Information Systems: Evaluation of User Interaction, Scott and Longo’s Critical Power Tools: Technical Communication and Cultural Studies, and Spilka’s Digital Literacy for Technical Communication.

As an editor of a collection, you should help your chapter authors think about and develop the implications of their research. In addition, you should comment on the implications of the collected chapters in your introduction and conclusion chapters. 

The Practice Line:

This line focuses on texts for industry as well as classroom teaching and learning. Books that exemplify the kinds of guides to practice that we are developing include Barnum’s Usability Testing Essentials, Hackos’s Information Development, and Yunker’s Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies. We are also interested in developing useful guides such as Kohl’s The Global English Style Guide.

As an author of a practice-line text, you should ensure that you support with evidence the advice, guidelines, and instruction that you offer to your readers. In other words, we are interested in texts that help people learn how to master concepts and skills but that ground the instruction in research findings—particularly findings from empirical (qualitative or quantitative) research.

Potential Book Topics and Methods

We are interested in publishing interesting and useful work in a wide range of topics related to technical and professional communication (TPC), including but not limited to the following: assessment of TPC programs, content management systems, globalization of TPC, human-computer interaction, intercultural communication, health-care and medical communication, pedagogy of TPC, publication management, risk and crisis communication, service learning in TPC, technical and professional editing, translation of TPC, usability/user-experience and accessibility studies, visual communication, and web design and development. We are particularly interested in developing practice-line texts about accessibility and publication management.

We are interested in work that employs a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods, including but not limited to corpus linguistics, ethnography, experimental methods (e.g., eye tracking), genre analysis, linguistic (e.g., discourse and conversation) analysis, rhetorical analysis, and usability testing. And, particularly relevant to practice-line texts, we welcome a variety of pedagogical methods.

Contact the Series Editor

You do not need to have a complete proposal package ready before you talk to the editor about your proposal. In fact, talking about your idea early in the development process is the best thing to do. Contact Jo Mackiewicz, the series editor, at mackiewicz@auburn.edu to set up a day and time to talk on the phone or via Skype.

The Editorial Advisory Board

• Lee-Ann Breuch, University of Minnesota
• Bertha Du-Babcock, City University of Hong Kong
• Jeff Grabill, Michigan State University
• JoAnn Hackos, ComTech Services, Inc.
• Suguru Ishizaki, Carnegie Mellon University
• Avon Murphy, Murphy Editing and Writing Services
• Marie Paretti, Virginia Polytechnic and State University
• Whitney Quesenbery, WQ Usability
• Ginny Redish, Redish and Associates, Inc.
• Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin
• Thea van der Geest, University of Twente

The Template for Your Proposal Package

A proposal package of about 10,000 words (not including curriculum vitae) is the first step in developing a project for the ATTW Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication. In preparing your proposal package, please keep in mind that the series editor (Jo Mackiewicz) and the publisher (Taylor & Francis/Routledge) need to know as much as possible about your planned book, including its scope, its intended audience, organizational structure, and the ways in which the publisher can best promote the volume to the intended readers.

The proposal will serve to make the case that you can write with authority, accuracy, and clarity, and that you can present what you have to say in a way that will be of interest and of relevance to your intended readers, and that what you have to say is appropriate for the series. With this in mind, your proposal should include four items:

1. A prospectus describing your intentions (about 4,000 words)
2. A detailed table of contents (about 1,000 words)
3. A sample chapter (about 5,000 words)
4. An up-to-date curriculum vitae (CV)

Your proposal package should provide the series editor (Jo Mackiewicz), reviewers, and the publisher with sufficient evidence to make a publishing decision about the project. You can download the proposal template (a Word document) here.

Information for Authors

Once the series editor and Routledge accept your proposal package, you will want to prepare your manuscript efficiently. To help with that process, we have developed a style guide for the ATTW Book Series, as well as other documents, to help answer your questions about format, images, permissions, indexing, and other topics. Please locate these attachments (Word documents) at the bottom of this webpage.