An example of a PhD dissertation to book metamorphosis that became a New York Times bestseller is Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. Thanks to the traveler who left a copy of this book in a hotel in Corvara, Italy, because it inspired me to write this article on PhD-based books.
Why get your PhD published as a book? For many reasons. You may want to make the most of the effort you’ve put in during your doctorate. Or your breakthrough discovery must reach a wider audience. No matter your motivation, write it down. It will serve you as a reminder later, when revising your manuscript gets tough.
Let’s discover what it takes to turn a PhD thesis into a book so that you know what to expect if you choose to go down this road.
PhD dissertation to book: Steps to follow before you start writing
Before you set out on your PhD dissertation to book journey, follow these steps:
Get feedback
If you feel that your dissertation, or a chapter, is worth publishing as a book, discuss it with your advisors and colleagues. Talk to other authors who have done this so you know what to expect.
Clarify your aim
Why did you choose the PhD dissertation to book challenge? Unless it will be incredibly successful, it’s very unlikely that the royalties from your PhD-based book will make you rich. And if you’re hoping the book will help you climb the career ladder in academia, you’d probably be better off if you turned your thesis into several journal articles.
Set time aside for turning your PhD dissertation into book material
Your PhD-based book won’t jump out of a magician hat. Writing a book based on a PhD will take a few months at best, most likely around a year (says Palgrave Macmillan), but it can take much longer. If you’re lucky, you may be able to write the book as part of a postdoc. If you’re less lucky, expect to work weekends on your PhD dissertation to book project.
Find a publisher
First, decide between self-publishing and traditional publishing. If you choose the latter, get in touch with a publisher’s acquisitions editor to discuss your options. These include monographs, scholarly books that are part of a research series, popular science books, and other nonfiction books.
Submit a book proposal to your publisher
The next step on your PhD dissertation to book journey is to write, revise, and proofread your book proposal. Follow your publisher’s guidelines for writing a proposal for a PhD-based book. For example, here is what Springer Nature tells authors about writing a book proposal. And Palgrave Macmillan has some useful advice in its book proposal guidelines.
Once you have a book contract, follow the guidelines
Once you have a book contract, you will receive instructions from your publisher on how to prepare the manuscript. Then, all you have to do is get to work and follow those instructions.
The PhD dissertation to book metamorphosis: What it takes
Turning a PhD into a book requires more than using the “Search and Replace” tool to change the word “dissertation” to “book” and coming up with a catchy title. Unless you’ve written your thesis as a book from the start, it is not a book manuscript. It’s only the raw material for a book. You’ll have a manuscript only after winning the fight with the process of revision.
Here are the main steps of a PhD dissertation to book project:
Define your audience
Your book should communicate your research to another kind of audience than your doctoral committee: the general public if it’s a popular science book, or the academic community if it’s a monograph.
Keep the audience in mind during the revision process. This will guide your manuscript editing decisions.
Turn the PhD dissertation to book material
Your PhD will need a complete overhaul to become a decent book manuscript. Some brave writers put away their dissertation and choose to start from scratch. But if you can’t do that, arm yourself with a red pencil and prepare for some drastic changes to your dissertation.
- First, your manuscript will need a new structure: get rid of the literature review, distill the methodology chapter to its essence, and remove the repetitions so common in dissertations.
- Remove all unnecessary quotations, delete the references you don’t need, and change citations into footnotes or endnotes.
- As well as deleting the superfluous material, you may need to do more research to give more context to your findings.
- You may also need to write new chapters or sections.
- Revise the manuscript.
- Write a new introduction and a new conclusion.
- Finally, pick a catchy yet descriptive title (the title of the book I mentioned in the introduction is a great example).
If you’re aware of the differences between a PhD and a book and revise your manuscript well, it will be in its best shape when you submit it for publication.
Edit the manuscript
To convince people to pay to read your PhD-based book, it has to be well written. This means you may need to polish your writing style. What worked for your dissertation might not work for a book. First, you need to find your genuine author voice.
In grad school, many students don’t have the freedom to develop their own author voice. They have to follow strict academic writing guidelines, sometimes absurd ones, such as never use “I” in academic writing, stick with the passive voice, or use an elaborate vocabulary and a thesaurus.
“It’s hard to pick up a dissertation and hear its author’s voice”, says William Germano in From Dissertation to Book.
If you borrowed other scholars’ writing style when you were a PhD student, now you can finally be yourself. So, find your author voice and develop a writing style that reflects your personality.
Write for your audience
The next thing to do is to adapt your vocabulary to your audience. As Senior Editor of Harvard University Press Elizabeth Knoll said during an event on book publishing, “Insider language may mean – almost certainly will mean – a smaller market for your book. And that may limit the eventual publisher’s enthusiasm, or at least the degree of enthusiasm for the book.”
Get better at storytelling
Also, work on improving your storytelling skills. Edit your prose so it’s more engaging and fluid, and create a coherent narrative. If you don’t know how, hire a freelance editor for your PhD dissertation to book project.
Be aware of copyright issues
Get permission for any copyrighted material you want to use in your book. Even if you have a contract with a publisher, you’re likely to be responsible for requesting permissions to use copyrighted material.
Should you mention that your book was developed from your PhD dissertation?
Many authors have written books developed from their PhD theses. But publishers don’t like to mention that some of their titles originated as dissertations, as it can harm their sales.
For example, “We advise authors not to mention the book’s origins as a PhD thesis in the preface or acknowledgments, as this information is often repeated in catalogue listings for the book and it can, unfortunately, be detrimental to sales”, said YaleBooks on its website (web link no longer valid as of January 2023).
Oh, the places you’ll go: Think beyond “PhD dissertation to book”
Turning a dissertation into a book is a long process of revision. Sometimes it’s best to start from scratch than to revise and adapt. And sometimes you can use the dissertation material as the foundation for a new book project that takes you in a new direction. That’s probably more exciting than revising your dissertation (again!).
Take, for instance, the author of A House at the End of the Track, Michelle Lawson. She used her dissertation as “a stepping stone to writing travel literature for a wider audience”, she commented on The Creative Penn.
You’re now free from your PhD constraints, so think beyond the limits of your dissertation. Who knows where that will take you?
Ready to turn your PhD dissertation into a book? If you need manuscript editing services, send me a message at editor@languageediting.com.
Related posts:
- On writing: Interview with scientist-author Katharina Vestre
- Publishing economics papers: Advice from the experts
- The art of writing PhD thesis acknowledgments: A guide for economics students
Last revised on 14 August 2022
