convert thesis into book

How to... Convert your thesis into a book

This how to guide takes you through everything you need to know to convert your thesis into a book.

You can read all the information you need below, or watch this video from Books Commissioning Editor, Katy Mathers.

Consider the audience

Tips for converting your thesis

What happens next?

Your first consideration when thinking about book publishing options for your thesis should be the level of conversion. You could consider the following options.

A full conversion – from thesis to book

This is a good option should your thesis be on a topic that would have wide appeal to an academic audience. A key consideration here is that the structure of a thesis is massively different to a book. Rather than starting with a hypothesis, a book should showcase a considered argument and its narrative should communicate that argument to peers in the field – demonstrating how the research has evolved into this viewpoint, and what impact it can have.

Partial conversion – using parts of your thesis in a book

Using parts of your thesis in a book usually means that you are conducting further research that might be ongoing, and might involve colleagues that might be a co-author on the project.

Partial conversion – a chapter in an edited collection

Perhaps your thesis doesn’t quite have the broad appeal for a full book conversion. In this case you might consider a chapter in an edited collection under a broader theme – this means you’re broadening the scope of your PhD research to a wider audience by collaborating with a team of contributors on an edited book. Look out for calls for chapters on relevant themes.

What are publishers looking for?

Broad (global) scholarly appeal.

Remember your thesis is written for a handful of examiners and experts in your field and is partly there to demonstrate the expertise you have gained from your research. A book should have a much wider audience than that, and should be engaging and interesting enough to appeal to a broad section of researchers across your field (and potentially other disciplines as appropriate), and should particularly be accessible enough to engage any researcher interested in your topic of study.
Single-country case studies won’t always translate well into a book given their focused scope, however, they would work as part of an edited collection with a broader global scope.
A good book manuscript should focus on a coherent argument/narrative, rather than a step-by-step checklist of things you need to demonstrate in a thesis.
You don’t need to include big sections or whole chapters on literature review or methodology, these can be weaved into the book as and when appropriate.

Development potential

An original thesis should be regarded as the basis for an entirely new work, written with a new audience in mind.

Talking about your research and the process of working it into a book is one of the best ways to ensuring success.

Try reaching out to your immediate colleagues, and co-authors on published papers, your PhD supervisor, peers you might meet at conferences, with a publishing contact, or even online. Try asking for advice on twitter, or any professional network sites.

It is advisable to start a conversation with supervisors and other colleagues shortly after the completion of a PhD.

Once you’ve started to get a good idea of what you want to do, it’s also a great time to reach out to a commissioning editor at a publisher. They can advise on further considerations for turning your thesis into a book with a broad scholarly appeal, as well as how to fill in a book proposal form.

Following this, the next natural step is to submit a book proposal which will be considered by the publisher, often involving a peer review process.

The single most important thing to remember when converting your thesis is the audience. Your thesis is written for a select amount of examiners with specific expertise in your field and showcases your nuanced and rich expertise, which you have gleaned from your research in your particular area.

In contrast, a book should have a much wider audience and should be engaging and interesting enough to appeal to a broad section of researchers across your field, and potentially even other disciplines as appropriate.

As a book, your research should be accessible enough to engage any researcher interested in your topic of study.

Realise which parts of your thesis are useful only to examiners. Any sections such as literature review, or extended methodology discussion should be cut or heavily amended/digested. These sections can weave in and out of your overall narrative rather than be structured separately.
Writing style is less important for examiners, but essential for book readers. PhD examiners will read your thesis regardless of the writing style, but the writing style for book readers is essential for ensuring your research is accessible and engaging. You must be prepared to extensively re-write your thesis to retain and engage readers. This should be seen as essential rather than optional.
Keep the big picture in mind. It’s important to take a step back while putting together a proposal, or during the manuscript writing process. Set reminders at intervals to focus on the overall narrative of the book. Is there a logical development of an argument? Does it make sense to a reader’s point of view? If not , be prepared to rethink the structure – it can be freeing to step away from a traditional thesis structure.
Write concisely. It’s important to bear in mind the importance of the reader’s time. At all stages of the writing process you should focus on streamlining where possible and keep in mind the agreed length of the book. Books are often much shorter than theses, which by their nature contain much repetition. If you’re finding it hard to meet the agreed word limit, your writing style is likely not quite right yet for a book audience.
Emphasise context. If your research is specialist and nuanced, with a narrow scope, try boosting its contextual implications by adding an international or inter-disciplinary context. It’s particularly useful to do this within the introductory and concluding chapters. Rounding off your book with opening and closing contextual chapters can really emphasise the place of the research within the field and showcase how it’s adding to the literature or breaking fresh ground.
Get a third party proof-reader. Consider getting someone within your field, perhaps without the specialist knowledge relating to your PhD knowledge, and see what they think of your writing style. If they can follow your argument and find value in the work you’re presenting for the wider field, then the book has good potential. If they’re struggling, you might need to re-think the project.

Top tips for converting your thesis

The main title of the book should position it clearly without reference to other bibliographic information, and should be as short as possible.
Chapter titles are something people often forget, and chapter titles can sometimes be a real giveaway in a proposal that a book is based on a thesis and maybe hasn’t been revised appropriately. It’s often a comment reviewers make, and a clear sign to them that the proposal is a thesis conversion. Chapter titles can be way more dynamic in a book than in a thesis, and there’s no need to have chapters called 'methodology' or 'results'. Freeing yourself from these structured ways of thinking can be liberating, and is a good way of diverting yourself from writing in a thesis style.
Remember that readers of the book are most interested in what your findings/argument are. Think about leading your book with the 'end' of your thesis, i.e. the results/answer to the question you were researching, rather than starting by explaining how you got there.
You don’t need to include big sections or whole chapters on literature review or methodology, these can be weaved in to the book as and when appropriate (particularly if your research employed an innovative methodology, for example).
A book manuscript should typically be shorter than your thesis. If you’re struggling to bring the word count down, you might need to get help with your writing style, or evaluate if you’ve cut enough “thesis-heavy” content from your work.
Use introductory and concluding chapters to contextualise your research. This is super helpful for placing your work within the field.

To summarise

Be prepared to re-write: Having sketched out a new structure and focus, you now have to start writing all over again to create a completely new work. You should accept this as a must for success, and enjoy the creative process that comes with it.

Remove academic structuring: Ordinary readers want you to get straight to the point, Anything that sounds like "In this chapter I will argue . . ." or "In this chapter I have shown . . ." should be deleted immediately.

Audience is the most important consideration. Re-organise your writing around your new audience – remember that concise, narrative-led writing is essential.

Re-focus on the storytelling. Any background material (such as surveys of previous literature, historical background, discussions of earlier and current theories, arguments, methodology, etc.) if retained at all, should be moved from the beginning to the end of the book, or incorporated in a condensed form into the relevant sections of the main text. From start to finish, you should begin with an answer rather than a question, and your argument should be maintained throughout.

Once you’ve formed an idea for your book project, it’s a good time to talk to a commissioning editor at a publisher about submitting a proposal.

Get ready to publish a book

See a list of our book commissioning editors, along with their subject areas and contact information.

Submit your book proposal

Find out how submit a book or series proposal and what the next steps in the publishing process are.

The book peer review process

A helpful guide to our book peer review process.

Turning your PhD into a successful book

Requests regularly arrive in the Author Services inbox asking for advice about turning PhD research into journal articles or books. In this guide, first posted on the  LSE Impact Blog , Terry Clague, a Senior Publisher at Routledge gives his advice and insight into what publishers are looking for when they receive new book proposals.  

Research conducted as part of a PhD is valuable. It is valuable for the researcher, who has spent countless hours carrying out the work and it is valuable to those deciding whether the research should result in the award of a PhD qualification. But can the research be valuable to broader audiences? The simple answer is yes – at the heart of many successful academic books lies research conducted as part of a PhD.

What options to consider when turning your PhD into a book

In the majority of cases, PhD research is published in the form of journal articles. In some cases, the research is published in a book. Between either end of that publishing spectrum there is an array of options to consider when it comes to disseminating PhD research:

Converting the entire PhD thesis into a book  requires that your thesis covers a topic of interest to a large enough audience of scholars. Whereas a thesis starts with a question, a book begins with an answer and communicates its importance in the wider research landscape, tracing its evolution and impact.

Using parts of a PhD thesis in a book  requires that ongoing and/or collaborative research is being conducted. A book (perhaps co-authored) should be greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

Using an aspect of a PhD thesis in an edited book  on a broader topic ensures that the research fits with related research on a similar theme. A good edited book addresses the need to broaden the scope of PhD-based research via collaborating with a team of contributors.

Splitting a PhD thesis into several articles  for journals hedges a PhD’s bets by staking smaller amounts of the work in different locations. What is gained by this hedging may be lost in the overall narrative of the PhD research as it is unbundled.

What publishers look for when deciding whether to take you on

The role of the book publisher is to connect authors with readers. When it comes to disseminating research originating from a PhD, this relationship is essential. It is therefore useful to consider the perspective of the publisher when considering what publication route to take. In assessing a proposal for a research-level book, a good publisher will initially ask themselves three questions:

Is the  scope  of the research broad enough to be of interest to our readers (scholars globally)? Example

Is the  quality  sufficiently high?

Can the work be  developed  via feedback from experts as part of the book review process to address any weaknesses?

Post information

Submitting a book proposal

It is useful to start a conversation with an acquisitions/commissioning editor at an early stage toward the end or shortly after the completion of a PhD. Discussions with supervisors and other colleagues are also very useful at this stage. The next natural step is to submit a book proposal which will be considered by the publisher, often involving a peer review process. Research-level books are often published as part of an established series – an awareness of existing books in such series can be useful when it comes to framing and developing a book proposal.

Vector illustration of two characters either side of a laptop with their arms in the air. A lightbulb is rising from the laptop.

Preparing your final manuscript for book publication

Following a review process, the publisher’s editorial board would give final approval to proceed, following which a book contract would be issued. Armed with publisher and review feedback, the author can then proceed to produce a full manuscript based on their PhD research. Each book is different, but there are numerous key aspects to consider when preparing a final manuscript for book publication. Above all, never lose sight of the audience:

A thesis is written for examiners, a book for scholars in general . Anything that is useful only for examiners (e.g. literature review, methodology discussion) should be cut or heavily amended/digested.

Examiners will work through text regardless of the writing style, book readers will not . Therefore, it is likely that extensive re-writing will be required to retain and engage readers.

Take a step back . Think about the overall narrative of the book and be prepared to rethink the structure – this can be liberating!

Value the reader’s time . Streamline where possible – theses by their nature contain much repetition. Keep in mind the agreed length of the book.

Contextualize . If research is of a narrow scope, add international or inter-disciplinary context, particularly within the introductory and concluding chapters.

Sharing your research

Vector illustration showing a line of people handing each other discs with hearts, hashtags and speech bubbles, leading up to a smartphone with graphs showing on the display.

Finally, talking about your research and the process of working it into a book can be an essential ingredient to its success. This can be done with your immediate colleagues, at conferences and with a publisher. It can also be done online – with  social media a useful tool  to tap into wider networks as well as to test ideas out.

Where to next?

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How to Turn Your Dissertation Into a Book: A Step-By-Step Guide for New Authors

Whether you are just starting graduate school, writing your dissertation, or the proud recipient of a recent Ph.D., you may be thinking about turning your dissertation into a published book. There are many reasons why this might be a good idea. In some fields, a published scholarly book is a preferred method for presenting a comprehensive view of pivotal research. A book gives you the space to discuss details, complications, connections, and ramifications in a way that is not possible in a journal article. In these fields, a well-reviewed book gives you instant credibility when applying for faculty positions, tenure, and related positions. A published book also has a much longer shelf life than an unpublished dissertation, and will occupy a respected place on your CV or resume for years to come.

In other fields, good dissertations are expected to produce one or more published journal articles, and many tenured faculty at top research institutions never publish a book. In these fields, publishing a book may still be an asset for those pursuing a traditional academic career, and can be a great way to transition into other careers such as science communication, education, or public policy. So if turning your dissertation into a book is something you are considering, here are some steps to get started.

Step 1: Identify your audience

Publishers are businesses that make money by selling books. This is true of "trade" publishers that sell books for the general public, and "academic" publishers that sell books primarily for students and scholars. Therefore, in order for a publisher to consider publishing your book, there must be a sufficiently large audience to buy your book. This audience will strongly influence how you organize and write your book, and may cause your book to be massively different from your dissertation. After all, the purpose of a dissertation is to show that you are knowledgeable about your field of study, and have made a significant contribution to it. In contrast, the purpose of a book is to serve a need for the reader.

Some dissertation topics may work well as required reading for college and university courses. In that case, you need to identify the types of courses that would be appropriate (e.g. courses in sociology that cover gender identity), and develop an understanding of how many students take such courses. For example, you might find that almost all colleges in the California State system have a sociology department. At California State AnyTown, there are 20,000 undergraduate students, and 400 students a year take a sociology course that focuses on gender identity. Other dissertation topics might appeal to people in specific professions (e.g. people who work with children who suffer concussions), and you might look at the number of people in relevant professional organizations (e.g. associations for coaches or pediatric nurses). At the other end of the spectrum, you might imagine a book that appeals to a fairly wide audience (e.g. a book that addresses recent events linked to gender identity, or a broader discussion of concussion in youth sports). For these books, the intended audience may be harder to define, so you can estimate its size in the next step.

Step 2: Identify competing books

Once you have identified a potential audience, you need to familiarize yourself with the books they are reading. Your book will be competing with these books, so you need to determine how your book will fill a gap for this audience. Here you have the opportunity—and the obligation—to read widely in your intended niche. If this opportunity doesn't excite you, do not try to write a book for this niche. The process of writing a good book is laborious and time consuming, so if you are not interested in exploring similar books for what works and what doesn't, you will not enjoy writing your own book for this category.

As you identify and read competing books, you should pay attention to the topics that they cover, and how the author writes about these topics. Consider whether the text is instructive or narrative, what details are included, how the text is organized, and whether visual aids such as photographs, diagrams, or tables are included. Also find out when the book was published, how long it is, how much it sells for, and how many copies have been sold (or at least what its Amazon sales rank is).

You may find books that are very similar to your book, or that are different in significant ways (such as the specific topic) but that have characteristics you want to emulate (e.g. a good strategy for presenting technically challenging research to a broad audience). As you gain a good understanding of related books, you'll need to develop a list of 3-10 books that will compete with your book. You will use this list to support two points:

Books similar to your book have been successful with your intended audiences; and
Your book fills an unmet need for this audience, so they will buy it.

That unmet need might be a more recent book that incorporates new knowledge, or a book that takes a different approach to a question that has already been addressed.

This survey of related books will also help you plan your book. If you find that multiple books already exist for your intended topic, you may need to shift your emphasis so that your book offers something new. If you find that there are few successful competing books, it may be that your intended audience is too small, and that you need to shift your emphasis to fit into a more productive niche.

Step 3: Create an outline for your book

Once you have an intended audience, an excellent understanding of successful books in the same category, and an idea for how you can fill a need in that category, you can start planning your book in detail. Put together an outline, starting with the major topic for each chapter, and thinking about how the overall theme will progress through the entire book. Even for a purely academic book, there must be an overall arch to your story.

While it may be tempting to slip into the same mindset that you used for planning and writing your dissertation, remember that the purpose of your book is to serve a need for the reader. So rather than focusing on your specific research contributions (which is essential for a dissertation), focus on what the reader needs to know. To facilitate this mindset, it may be useful to put away your dissertation for a bit (assuming that it is already complete) and focus on other projects. Then revisit your dissertation topic when you have fresh eyes and a better understanding of what would be useful for your intended audience.

As you flesh out the details for each chapter, set a target word count and think about any images or tables that should be included. Keep in mind that book publishers must pay for every page, image, and footnote to be edited, prepared, and printed. Books that are only available electronically still have most of these per-page expenses. Therefore, use successful books in your category as a guide for how long your book should be, and how many images should be included. Color images also add significantly to the production costs .

As you are preparing your outline, you will likely reach a point where you are unsure if the details of your plan will work. Then it is time to write.

Step 4: Write a sample chapter

If you want a publisher or agent to consider your book, you will typically need to submit a sample chapter or two. You may be asked to submit your first chapter or your "best" chapter, so I recommend starting with your first chapter and making it excellent.

While there are many different approaches to successful writing, one common theme is that the first draft is usually terrible. So write the first draft of your first chapter and let it be terrible. Then read and revise, and repeat. As you are writing and revising, I recommend regularly taking time to read some of your competing titles. How do they deal with some of the challenges you are facing? Are their approaches successful or can you envision a better way?

As you write your first chapter or two, you may find that you need to revise your outline. Pay attention to what you can effectively cover for your audience in the space available.

Step 5: Identify appropriate publishers or agents

Once you have a strong plan and a sample chapter or two, you need to identify potential publishers. Start by looking at your list of competing titles, and learn about those publishers. Also talk to colleagues who have published books, and ask if they would be willing to put you in contact with their publisher or agent. The process can be quite complicated, and for a comprehensive guide I recommend The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. Many publishers also post guidelines for potential authors on their websites. For most publishers, you will need to show that you understand your audience and competing books, and provide a detailed book outline and convincing sample chapter.

Here is an infographic that breaks down all of these major points:

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9 Effective Tips for Publishing Thesis As a Book

While they may look alike, a thesis is not a book! The process of publishing thesis as a book is different right from its conception to completion. Created with an intent to target a specific audience, a thesis differs from a book in multiple aspects. Although your thesis topic would surely be relevant to your field of study, it perhaps, can be of interest to a wider audience. In such a case, your thesis can be turned into a book .

In this article, we will shed some light on the possible ways of publishing your thesis as a book .

Table of Contents

What is the Difference Between a Thesis and a Book?

Researchers spend years working on their thesis. A thesis focuses on the research conducted, and is thus published as journal articles . However, in some cases, it may also be published as a book for a wider readership. While both thesis and book writing require effort, time, and are equally longer versions of documents, they are different in several ways.

A thesis always begins with a question or hypothesis. On the other hand, a book begins with a series of reflections to grab the reader’s attention. To a certain extent, it could be said that while the thesis starts with a question, the book starts with an answer.
Another major difference between the two is their audience. The content of a thesis, as well as its format and language is aimed at the academic community. However, since the book is written with an intent to reach out to wider audience, the language and format is simpler for easy comprehension by non-academic readers as well.
Furthermore, thesis is about documenting or reporting your research activities during doctorate; whereas, a book can be considered as a narrative medium to capture the reader’s attention toward your research and its impact on the society.

How to Turn a Thesis into a Book?

The structure of your thesis will not necessarily be similar to the structure of your book. This is primarily because the readership is different and the approach depends on both the audience as well as the purpose of your book. If the book is intended as a primary reference for a course, take the course syllabus into account to establish the topics to be covered. Perhaps your thesis already covers most of the topics, but you will have to fill in the gaps with existing literature.

Additionally, it may be so that you want your book to be a complementary reference not only for one course, but for several courses with different focuses; in this case, you must consider different interests of your audience.

The layout of most thesis involve cross-references, footnotes, and an extensive final bibliography. While publishing your thesis as a book , eliminate excessive academic jargon and reduce the bibliography to reference books for an ordinary reader.

Key Factors to Consider While Publishing Your Thesis as a Book

Purpose of the book and the problems it intends to solve
A proposed title
The need for your proposed book
Existing and potential competition
Index of contents
Overview of the book
Summary of each book chapter
Timeline for completing the book
Brief description of the audience and the courses it would cover

With all of this in mind, here are 9 steps to successfully turn your thesis into a book .

9 Steps to Successfully Publish Your Thesis as a Book!

1. Establish Your Target Audience

Based on the topic of your thesis, determine the areas that may potentially rise interest in your book’s audience. Once you establish your target audience, figure out the nature of book they would like to read.

2. Determine the Objective of Your Book

Reflect on the scope of your book and the impact it would have on your target audience. Perhaps it can be used as a textbook or supplementary for one or more courses. Visualize what the reach of your book may be; if it is a book with an identified local market, an interest that arose in your educational institution, which can be traced to other similar institutions, or if it can have a national or even international reach.

3. Identify Your Competition

Find out which books are already on the market, what topics they cover, what problems do they solve, etc. Furthermore, ask yourself what would be the advantage of your book over those that already exist.

4. Define the Structure of Your Book

If the book is written as part of a curriculum, use that program to define its structure. If it covers several programs, make a list of topics to focus on individually and sequence them in an order based on educational criteria or interest for the potential reader.

5. Identify Potential Publishers

Search for publishers in your country or on the web and the kind of books they publish to see if there is a growing interest in the book you are planning to develop. Furthermore, you can also look at self-publishing or publishing-on-demand options if you already have a captive audience interested in your work.

6. Plan a Schedule

Based on the structure of your book, schedule your progress and create a work plan. Consider that many topics are already written in your thesis, you will only have to rewrite them and not have to do the research from scratch. Plan your day in such a way that you get enough time to fill in technical or generic gaps if they exist.

7. Follow a Writing Style

The writing style depends on the type of book and your target audience. While academic writing style is preferred in thesis writing, books can be written in simpler ways for easy comprehension. If you have already spoken to an interested publisher, they can help in determining the writing style to follow. If you’re self-publishing, refer to some competitor books to determine the most popular style of writing and follow it.

8. Incorporate Visual Aids

Depending on the subject of your book, there may be various types of visual and graphic aids to accentuate your writing, which may prove lucrative. Give due credit to images, diagrams, graphical representations, etc. to avoid copyright infringement. Furthermore, ensure that the presentation style of visual aids is same throughout the book.

9. Review Your Draft

Your supervisor and the advisory council review and refine you thesis draft. However, a book must be proofread , preferably by someone with a constructive view. You can also use professional editing services or just go ahead with an excellent grammar checking tool to avoid the hassle.

Do you plan on publishing your thesis as a book ? Have you published one before? Share your experience in the comments!

good article

Hello. Nice to read your paper. However, I fell on your article while browsing the net for the exact opposite reason and I think you can equally give me some insights. I am interested, as I earlier said, on how to transform my book into a thesis instead, and how I can defend it at an academic level. I am writing a research work on financial digital options trading and have done a lot of back testing with technical analysis that I explain, to rake thousands of dollars from the financial markets. I find the technical analysis very peculiar and would like to defend this piece of work as a thesis instead. Is it possible? Please you can reply me through e:mail thanks

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How to Turn your Dissertation into a Book

You finished your dissertation and want to turn it into a book? Then don’t let the revision process scare you – we've got you covered with helpful tips and tricks on the way.

This post is part of a series, which serves to provide hands-on information and resources for authors and editors.

After years of hard work on their dissertation, more than a few Early Career Researchers consider turning their PhD research into a monograph. While this is great to reach a whole new audience, the process of getting there can seem complex and daunting at first.

But we’re here to help!

The first and most essential step is to decide whether your dissertation should become a book at all. For many scholars this is a no-brainer, especially in the humanities and the social sciences, where the publication of books is crucial for getting professional recognition, climbing up the career ladder, and eventually gaining tenure.

Your dissertation could also be published in the form of one or several journal articles. Or something you just want to upload on a university server and be done with.

However, let’s say that you do want to convert your thesis into a publishable book, here are the general steps of this exciting undertaking:

Find your match
Build your confidence
Get down to the nitty gritty
Pitch your work
Respond and revise

1. Find Your Match

The process of revising a dissertation goes hand-in-hand with the search for the right publishing house. The question what kind of book you want or need will influence your choice. Vice versa, the publisher shapes what kind of book you will be rewarded with.

Publishing with an established publisher is still considered as a sign of quality. They take care of things like quality control and peer review, and they select their titles carefully, so they fit their lists. This also means the books will sell better. Moreover, and most importantly: a publisher makes your work visible, be it online, in catalogues, on conferences, book fairs, or by distributing your book among libraries and universities.

Are you looking for the right press to publish your academic work? Find out here whether De Gruyter might be the right partner for your project!

Ask yourself this: Where do you want to see your book? Where have your favorite publications been published? Browse bookshelves, and visit book exhibitions at conferences . Talk to editors, approach them, ask for their conditions; check websites.

But whilst you do all of that: Please never submit to more than one publisher at the same time. Wasting editors’ time is frowned upon and doesn’t bode well for future publication with the house.

2. Build your Confidence

Once you decided on which press would be a good choice (from university presses, independent academic publishers, trade publishers etc.), there are a couple of things you need to take into consideration.

First and maybe most importantly: Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge what you have already accomplished. This has been a huge effort, and you have earned every right to be proud of yourself! Then, get to work.

Be prepared to invest time and nerves into reworking your dissertation. Focus on what you have already done, and build from there.

Remember, a book is not a dissertation. You do not need to convince anyone anymore that you are the expert and that you have done your reading. The reader of your book trusts that you are, and that is why they bought it.

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3. Get Down to the Nitty Gritty

Envision your audience. This will help you give your dissertation a makeover.
Your viva was probably a while ago, so lots of new and interesting research has been published since then that could potentially influence your work. Do the reading.
Go over your literature review and see what is not needed anymore for your argument. Do not quote other people as much – the reader wants to know what you think. The reader of your book is also not hugely interested in all of the methodologies out there. Tell them what you used and why, but cut everything else.
Tell the reader in the introduction what the book’s central argument is. What is your contribution to the field? What’s new? In the conclusion, tell them what the consequences are. What difference do your findings make? How do they help the field?
Try to stay close to the 100,000 word threshold (=300 pages), including notes. Keep the manuscript sleek, limit the apparatus. Try to have chapters of equal lengths.
Sure enough, images are nice and often help the reader get a sense for the text, but do not forget that you have to clear rights for most of them, and get all the technicalities for print sorted.
Use simple wording. Be on point. Always remember your audience needs to understand you, and not all of them are experts.
Go easy on the footnotes: Resist making them a container for all of the brilliant thoughts that don’t quite fit in the flow or argument of your book. If a remark doesn’t belong in your text, it might not belong in your book altogether.

Bear in mind: With a dissertation, you have something to prove. With a book, you have something to say.

4. Pitch Your Work

After revising, you need to prepare a pitch: Sell your book! Let the publisher know why your research is important and how it changes the field. What’s the unique selling point of your book, what sets it apart from others?

To get started, check the publisher’s website. Usually there is a proposal form hidden away somewhere. Try to find information on the submission process and/or a personal contact. Follow the guidelines, and write an e-mail to the responsible Acquisitions Editor.

Indicate that you are familiar with the scope of the publisher’s list. Maybe you know of a book series of theirs, where your work might fit in. Let them know you did your homework, and that you are invested. Describe how your book complements other titles in the series and why it would be a great fit.

Learn more about book proposals in our blog post “How to Write an Academic Book Proposal: 6 Questions for Laura Portwood-Stacer” .

Be concise. Your proposal should demonstrate not only that you are an expert on the topic, but that you can condense and synthesize what you know, that you can share it concisely, and that you can present your research in a way that is stimulating and thought-provoking.

Usually, the more material you send, the better. Being able to read a sample chapter of the dissertation, in addition to the proposal, makes it much easier for the publisher to get a sense about the writing style of an author, who is still unknown to them.

5. Almost There! Respond and Revise

After you submitted, and heard back from the editor of the press, you can relax a little. Your manuscript is now either under consideration with the editor or already sent out for external peer review. This might take a while.

Chances are, when you hear back from the editor the next time, the reviewers will have criticized parts of your manuscript and are asking for improvements. Hence, you will need to get back into the text once again. This can be a hard moment, but remember: you are so close now! Revise one last time and at the end of the road, you might already see the light of your shiny new author contract.

Good luck – you got this!

If you are interested, check out this related blog post

[Title image by hanna grace via Unsplash]

Rabea Rittgerodt

Rabea works as Acquisitions Editor at De Gruyter. She is specialized on 19th & 20th century social, cultural, and global history. You can follow her on Twitter via @RabeaRi .

Sophie Wagenhofer

Sophie Wagenhofer works as Senior Acquisitions Editor Islamic & Jewish Studies at De Gruyter.

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Turning Your Thesis into a Book

“A dissertation is a report, a book tells a story”

Turning a thesis into a book means more than simply printing and binding your thesis as is. Neither will it be a quick touch up or superficial revision. Your book manuscript will likely mean a substantial rewrite of your thesis. Consider the following aspects that will need to change:

Your audience

The audience for the thesis is mainly your committee whereas for a book it may be fellow researchers, professionals working in the field, policy makers, educators, or the general audience. The majority of your readers will be less familiar with your topic than was your supervisor and will be more interested in the bigger picture than in the methodological details.

A book has a different purpose from a thesis. A thesis is meant to demonstrate your mastery of the subject and research process. A book is an opportunity to discuss the implications of your research to the larger community. The way you define an audience for your book will directly affect its goal and vice versa.

The structure of your thesis

A book’s structure will be different from that of a thesis. You will need to thoroughly re-order your work into chapters. In particular, the Literature Review and Methodology sections would be shortened drastically or incorporated into the introduction. Copious footnotes typical for a thesis could be transformed into stories.

The voice you use for a book is different from the academic voice in your thesis. You will want to edit out the academic jargon, complex sentences, lengthy paragraphs and passive voice. Be ready to show your own voice and clearly say what you think.

When looking to publish a book you would normally follow these steps:

Select a press

Start by selecting a press that would be a good fit for your topic and audience:

Look at your own bookshelf - where have authors published on similar topics?
Check presses’ lists in your subject area
Consider academic vs commercial publishers
Get in touch with acquisition editors at the presses you are looking at to check if your idea will be of interest

Prepare your book proposal

Think of your proposal as a pitch that communicates the book’s value in terms of content and your value as the subject matter expert
Problems or pain points that the book addresses
How the book addresses these pain points and what value it provides to the reader
A proposed title
Market research evidence that there is a need and niche for the book
Contents page
A proposal can be submitted to more than one press. Once you get a book deal, commit to that press and discontinue negotiations with other presses.

Negotiate and sign the contract

The Understanding and Negotiating Book Publication Contracts from the Authors Alliance is a great resource for all questions related to book contracts.

Other tips from book publishers

Having an article published from your thesis may be a good starting point to get a book deal. However having too many chapters published may be a turn off for a press that looks for original content.
Consider the timing of publication for your academic career. It takes a while for a book to be written, published, distributed and read. If you would like to proceed with an academic career upon graduation and have reviews of your published book ready for inclusion in your tenure portfolio, you will want to start looking into publishing as soon as possible.

Additional resources on converting your thesis into a book:

Harman, E. (2003). The thesis and the book: A guide for first-time academic authors. Toronto: University of Toronto Press ( Print | Electronic )
"Working on a book project? What I wish I knew…" - recording of the April 2021 webinar and presenters' book proposals
Writers’ How To Series by the Writers’ Union of Canada
See writing guides for creative non-fiction
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Thesis Publication

Thesis publication is often considered essential if you wish to expand your career in academia or a related profession. Publishing your thesis/dissertation as a book monograph can be used as a building block to an academic career, to influence your discipline and expand your knowledge of the field. As a thesis, your work had a very small readership, but when you get published online it should attract a much larger readership.

We publish academic thesis/dissertation as a thesis monograph with ISBN and DOI through our AIJR Thesis series which will get deposited in the CrossRef thesis database. All submitted manuscripts will be internally reviewed and the author should expect a number of modifications as per the editor’s instruction.

How to Submit?

Who can submit.

All students whose thesis has already been approved from their institution and a degree has already been awarded based on that thesis can submit their thesis to publish in book form as a thesis monograph. The supervisor can also submit their student’s thesis on behalf of the student by providing the required document and student’s contact information.

Can the supervisor act as a co-author?

No, we publish the academic thesis as a standard ‘Thesis Monograph’, where only a single student can be the author. Supervisors can be included and acknowledged in the inner pages as per thesis standard but can not be a co-author of the thesis monograph.

Thesis Publication Fee

If approved by the editor, the author will require to pay a non-refundable publishing fee of $100 (or Rs. 5000/+GST for Indian students).

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Turning Your Dissertation into a Book

Interested in publishing your dissertation as a book? You will likely need to revise it extensively so it will appeal to a wider audience and compete in the literary marketplace. Here are some guidelines to help you in this process.

Allow plenty of time!
The review process can easily take up to a year, as it entails a peer review of your manuscript, potential revisions, further peer review and then approval.
The editing process can easily take a year to a year and a half as it entails copyediting, design, typesetting and proofreading, preparation of the index, printing and binding.

Dissertations differ from books in several ways

Dissertations are highly specialized, while books are geared to general readers.
Dissertation audiences are usually fewer than 100 readers — books are about 500 or more, in general.
In a dissertation, the author’s authority must be proven; in books, it is assumed.
Dissertations contain extensive documentation (to prove authority), while books document to credit sources and help the reader.
Dissertations can run long; books are often far shorter.

Elements that make a good book

A concise, memorable and intriguing title that includes essential key words
Clear and effective organization
A succinct introduction
Illustrations that enhance the text
Sections that are meaningful either alone or as part of the total book
Navigational aids, such as chapter titles, running heads, subheads, notes, bibliography, index
A voice (relationship of author to reader) that functions like an invisible tour guide or creative storyteller, and avoids sounding like a lecturer at a podium

The revision process

Forget your dissertation. Forget your committee.
Clarify your modified topic and audience.
Determine how to present it in a dynamic way.
Remove unnecessary references to yourself.
Delete conspicuous chapter intros and summaries.
Make style parallel in chapter titles, captions, chapter openings and closings, subheads.
Revisit the introduction and conclusion.
Remove unnecessary notes; condense or combine others.
Eliminate most cross-references.
Cut unnecessary examples and data.
Make chapter openings strong, clear, and inviting.
Add definitions of jargon, foreign terms, biographical and historical dates.
Brainstorm several possible titles and subtitles.
Tighten prose.
Use active verbs.
Begin and end sentences with words you want to emphasize.

The Chicago Manual of Style . 15th ed. (2003). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

German, William. (2005). From dissertation to book . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Harmon, Eleanor, et al., ed. (2003). The thesis and the book: A guide for first-time academic authors. 2nd ed . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Lucy, Beth, ed. (2004). Revising your dissertation: Advice from leading editors . Berkeley: University of California Press.

by Lorri Hagman, executive editor, University of Washington Press

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May 17, 2023
United Nations Institute for Training and Research
Experiences , Motivational , Publishing , Thesis and Dissertation

Two years and two months. That’s how long it took to turn my PhD thesis into a book. Let me talk about the two – year journey it took to turn the dissertation into a book, including the rejections and edits to get to this stage.

I was awarded my PhD on the Arab Spring in 2020. I used some time to visit Saudi Arabia and published an article drawing on my thesis. By the time I returned, COVID-19 had started in the UK and Boris Johnson announced lockdown. The priority thus became mental health for me and for many of my friends, family and colleagues. I thus focused on my new job as lecturer at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) before approaching university presses.

I had made a list of certain presses and while most replied with praise of my manuscript, I was also told that the market on the Arab Spring was saturated. I then turned to another press where I’d had more contact. This press was positive to adding my manuscript on the Arab Spring to their series. The editor seemed very enthusiastic. After sending in the proposal I waited for some months. After contacting the editor and receiving no response I decided to move on. COVID-19 has affected workload for so many editors and I do not blame the editor for lack of contact but a decision had to be made. I approached another academic publisher. What happened next would be of huge help to the final book.

The new publisher decided not to go ahead with publication. However, the manuscript still went through peer review. Under advice from a colleague, I requested the comments. The next month was spent rewriting and restructuring the manuscript in response to very useful feedback. It was also such feedback that encouraged me to keep trying and to insert personal growth stories from Jordan and Saudi Arabia (including being arrested).

After sharing my proposal with a colleague, I contacted Palgrave Macmillan . This time, it was a strong yes and I was rewarded with a book contract.

The process of turning the thesis into the book from Palgrave.

Because I had received extensive feedback from other publishers’ peer review, there was little editing required to meet Palgrave’s requests. The peer reviewer from Palgrave had mentioned changes that by then I had already made, including removing the theory and method chapter and merging them with other chapters and removing a suggested addendum. Originally, I had considered including the article on my time in Saudi Arabia during COVID as an extra item but the reviewer felt that it may affect the overall holistic feel of the book and its coherence.

These above changes were the main edits needed that had already been done. Once I submitted the changed manuscript to Palgrave, I received a contract to sign electronically and was assigned a wonderful editor, Supraja Ganesh. From there, I was tasked with creating an index for the book, which would contain all significant elements the book covered so that researchers could easily find required information for their own research. The creation of an index is often an author’s responsibility and can take time, but once major edits are made there is less of a rush to complete it. With the final manuscript delivered, I then provided a 300-word blurb and began to secure endorsements for the book. Often, reviewers who have enjoyed the book may be willing to write a short sentence of critical praise that will appear on the front page of the book but also be used for marketing on the book webpage, Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble and anywhere else the book is sold. I quickly secured endorsements from various established scholars across the US and the UK as I had repeated contact with them through previous publications and activities during my time in the Middle East or during my PhD.

Finally, from signing the contract to the release of the book it took four months, with a launch date of September 2022. I was thrilled to hold a physical copy of the book sent to me by October 2022. Publishing what was actually my second book (the first was based on my MA thesis regarding private military companies) was certainly an accomplishment and allowed me to revisit my PhD at a time when I was lecturing on the same theoretical concepts for my work with the United Nations. It also helps as a media commentator to keep publishing on events in my field. Not only is my work mentioned during my TV appearances but each book becomes its own platform for promotion of what I love: research and political analysis.

To summarise: • Time to do the PhD and write the thesis: 3 years. • Time to start a PhD and be awarded: 4 years. • Time from being awarded a PhD, being told by contacts that the thesis should be a book and getting a book contract: 2 years and 2 months. • Time from signing the contract to the book’s release: 4 months.

Build your network while doing your research so you can market your book. The point is this, to all PhD students: you can do it.

Nicolai Due-Gundersen

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The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

My Top Five Tips for Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book–A Special Request Post

By Karen Kelsky | February 26, 2016

This is a repost from 2011.

Today is another Special Request Post. This one is from Maria, who asks, do I have a template (like my Foolproof Grant Template ) for turning a dissertation into a book?

No, Maria, I do not. The process of turning the dissertation into a book will be different for every writer, and doesn’t lend itself to a template. But there are some tips that I can offer for easing the process and making it more efficient. This post is my Top Five Tips for Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book.

Why should you turn your dissertation into a book, you ask?

If you are in a book field, the fact is, your dissertation must be transformed into a book to be of full value to you. The dissertation alone counts for little in the academic career. The dissertation serves you only insofar as you can quickly transform it into the commodities that bring value on the market—peer reviewed articles (preferably published before you defend and start the job search), high profile grants that funded the research, high profile conferences in which you present the research publicly, and finally, the advance contract for the book from a major (NOT minor) academic press. These are the tangible accomplishments that you must have to be competitive for a tenure track position at this point in time.

So here are The Professor’s Top Five Tips for Turning your Dissertation into a Book.

1) Write the dissertation as a book to begin with.

Write from day one with a wide market of undergraduates in mind. You want the book to be assigned as a text in undergraduate courses in your field. Write it so those undergraduates can read it. Don’t spend endless pages on tiresome, tedious obscurities of interest to 10 people in your sub- sub- sub-field. Remember that the methodology section will be entirely removed from the book mss. And the literature review will be almost entirely removed, with a small section folded into the Introduction or other chapters. Conceptualize and write the entire thing remembering that these sections, while critical to your committee, are short-lived. Don’t obsess about them; do the minimum, and move on. In the meantime, put extra effort into a catchy, appealing Introduction and Conclusion. These speak to readers, and to the editors and reviewers who will judge your mss. for publication.

2) Make it short.

Academic publishing is in the same epic financial crisis as the rest of the academic world. Publishers are going out of business right and left, and those that remain are under pressure to publish books that actually sell and make a profit (unlike the old days when it was understood that scholarly monographs rarely broke even). Publishers must keep their production costs low, and this means they want shorter books. I can promise you that if you present them with a 500 page monograph on the significance of the turtle as a symbol in 12th century religious iconography in Spain, for example, they are going to send it back with a polite email telling you they won’t be considering it until it is cut in half.

3) Know your market.

The dissertation may be treated like the intellectual achievement par excellence in your doctoral program, but in the real world of jobs with benefits, it is a commodity that has value only when it can be traded for gain on the market. Ask yourself what sort of class your diss/book is suited for. Do a google search of such classes and find out what kinds of books are assigned. Take a look at those books and see what their main selling points seem to be. Then ask yourself how you can adjust and mold your dissertation to be the kind of book that serves that market (without losing sight of your actual project and findings, of course!). When you send the mss. to presses, you will be able to feature this “market research” prominently in your cover letter.

4) Don’t be boring.

Write with style and flair. Just because you *can* write clunky, graceless prose in academia, and get away with it, doesn’t mean you *should.* Be provocative. Be original. Be incendiary. If your committee shies away from such showmanship, write a shadow chapter that you include once you’ve defended and are ready to send the mss. out to presses. Presses are not interested in “solid scholarship.” They are interested in products that sell. Products that sell have to be differentiated from the competition–ie, they have to be exciting, new, and different.

5) Remember that your committee is not the world.

You have to please your committee to get a Ph.D., but you have to impress the presses to get a career. Your committee controls you for a few years, but your book establishes your career trajectory for decades. Set your eye on the prize, and don’t lose sight of it. Do what you have to to satisfy your committee, but don’t ever forget who is in charge: you. You have an agenda, and that is publishing an influential, high-profile book with a top press. Do not be derailed by committee politics and wrangles over whether you included XX citation in chapter 3 or properly acknowledged ZZ’s work in chapter 4. Follow your own star, defend your positions, compromise when you must, and move on as efficiently as you can. The best dissertation is a finished dissertation that is already a press-ready mss.

Here is my dissertation story:

I wrote a doctoral dissertation on why some young, single Japanese women in the early 1990s were demonstrating a striking enthusiasm for studying abroad, living abroad, working abroad, and finding white Western men to be their lovers and husbands. My peers and professors in my graduate program severely disapproved of this project, and I was told by countless people that it wasn’t “legitimate” anthropology. However, when I sent the mss. out to presses, not only did I get two competing advance contracts, I ended up getting an actual ADVANCE from the press. This is practically unheard of for young academic writers peddling scholarly monographs. The reason? My book was provocative. It was original. It had some naughty pictures. I ignored the negative comments in my department. And while I was absolutely committed to the project as a scholarly project – based on the highest standards I could muster of ethnographic fieldwork, theoretical engagement, and disciplinary contribution — I also wrote it to sell. And, while it was published in 2001, in 2015, I am still getting a (microscopically small) royalty check!

Reader Interactions

July 28, 2011 at 12:00 am

while I absolutely agree with your advice–and I realize the process is idiosyncratic–it is pitched to a graduate student rather than an assistant professor in the throes of the manuscript revision. any more nuts and bolts advice?

July 28, 2011 at 2:33 am

Dear Junior TT, thanks for asking. If you have a specific obstacle that’s afflicting you, please tell me what it is, and I’ll respond.

For now, I do have one piece of nuts and bolts advice for the TT folks, that trumps all other advice, in fact all other advice put together, which is: you must get leave from teaching to write the book. You cannot do it while maintaining a full teaching schedule. It is, actually, impossible. So, if you’re not actually staring down the barrel of year 5, then take a break, and apply for grants. Even one-term or one-semester internal grants can put you over the top. I myself ended up with 2 full years of leave, which is how I both wrote a book and had two children (!) but in any case, schedule in preliminary time to ensure that you are released from teaching to write the book. If you do not succeed in gaining funding, then ask your Head/Chair for a special dispensation. A good department and Head will release junior faculty from teaching to get their publishing done.

July 29, 2011 at 7:48 pm

While I find most of your advice useful, I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about “knowing your market” (#3 and #1, to some extent). I work on literature, and based on my experience (both as an undergraduate and as a teacher of undergraduates), we rarely, if at all, read secondary criticism in our courses. So I am having trouble trying to imagine how to pitch my book for an undergraduate audience/class. I understand your point about obscurity and also the need to make my research, however specialized, accessible to a broader audience, but I’d appreciate if you could write about this point more.

July 29, 2011 at 10:04 pm

Maria, OK. I would approach this a couple of ways. I’d find out what other books have recently come out from major univ. presses that are similar to yours. I’d study them to get clues about their length and density and jargon level. Id’ study their match with the press that published them–what are the clear emphases of different presses, and which matches your project best? Figure out the most likely “best match” press for your mss. and look at their most recent spring and fall lists. Figure out what their current orientations are, and speak DIRECTLY to those in your mss. Don’t bury them in chapter 4. Find a way to refer to them in the Intro, and to cast your project in that light as you think about the cover letter you’ll submit to the press.

Second, You HAVE to include a discussion of “market research” in any cover letter that accompanies your mss. to a press. So, here, if your market is not undergrad classes, then what is it? I’d move up to graduate seminars, and finally of course to the scholarly fields your project speaks to. You are far, far, better off if your book intervenes in several fields rather than just one. You want to be able to say, “this book will have an impact on, and be adopted for courses in, fields as varied as women’s studies, comparative literature, media studies, and global studies.” You also have to say what other book(s) your book is “similar to.” So figure that out, and figure out how that book was marketed by its press.

There is a LOT of detective work that you can do to figure out how to situate your work within markets, and also how to subtly adapt your book mss. to meet the emergent needs of the market.

August 1, 2011 at 4:27 pm

Thankfully, I am only entering year four and I have a fellowship year up ahead that I won in a national competition. Otherwise I would be (much more) terrified.

My problem is finding quality mentorship about book writing beyond: you need to get your book done (from my third year review) and “you just need to sit and write it” (which is all ever anyone tells me when I ask them about their process, like it was magic or something). Again, although I realize the diss to book process is different for everyone, it could use a little more demystification.

Everyone told me over and over again not to worry when I was writing my diss that it was “not a book,” to hurry up and “get it done” because “you got job, so you don’t have to worry about it.” Well, believe me it is definitely “not a book” and I am unfortunately facing that music right now the hard way. You do, eventually, have to “worry about it.” However, even a few years in, I feel as ill prepared to write a book as I once did starting the diss. I am a hard worker and I write every day, but I am frustrated to be dealing with similar issues as I did during the diss–the fumbling, the confusion, the dead ends, rough prose–but without a committee whom I can talk to about my progress or whether or not I am on target in terms of quality, my timeline, or to help me with questions like–is my project too ambitious? do I need to add that historical chapter? etc.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on getting the most out of a fellowship on that critical 4th year–as well as what a *realistic* revision timeline looks like for a diss that needs a lot of TLC. It is so easy to get bogged down and get discouraged because things aren’t progressing fast enough–and the unrealistic goals I set for myself don’t help. Thanks!

January 29, 2012 at 1:24 pm

I finished my dissertation last April, and I very quickly received requests from two European publishers to turn my dissertation into a book. I was thrilled about this, knowing I had VERY FEW publications. My advisor and another committee member were not so keen on this “dissertation-turned-book” idea, saying it would be better to publish several articles from the dissn. They also had reservations about the publishing houses. In fact, when I did not reply quickly enough, one publisher became a bit pushy about sending my manuscript. I politely declined the offers of both publishing houses, only to get yet another offer from a third publisher (who had bought one of the other publishers).

After reading your blog, I wonder if I made a mistake? Should I have converted my dissn to a book? Thanks!

January 29, 2012 at 5:10 pm

this is an excellent question. And like all excellent questions, it doesn’t have a single easy answer. The main issues here are to me, that you mentioned that the publishers are European publishers. You do’nt mention your field or where you are based and hope to work. If your field is some form of European studies, and/or you are based in Europe or hope to work in Europe, then those publishers might be a reasonable choice. But if you are based in the U.S. and want to work in the U.S., then you most likely made an excellent choice in not accepting their offers.

Don’t accept the first offer of publication that comes your way!!!! Especially for your book! Play hard to get! And yes, go the hard route–the route of actually publishing a few articles as peer reviewed pubs, and then writing up a proposal for the book and submitting it to the very top presses in your field, most likely based in the United States. This is all time-consuming and difficult and carries more risk of rejection at various points. But the rewards are the REAL rewards, the big rewards, the tenure track jobs and the major fellowships and promotions. A book published by some little-known press does not carry a lot of weight as a tenure-book in the U.S., and it can’t give you the street-cred and the exposure/credibility that articles from the top journals and a book from the top press can.

Many, many students of my acquaintance have fallen prey to the siren song of the eager publisher anxious to publish their book, and thrown away their primary claim to fame on a publisher that nobody’s heard of, and that doesn’t have the wherewithall to actually promote and advertise the book. And then they are crushed and wonder why even with a book they aren’t getting shortlisted for jobs. That is why. The status of the publisher matters. Go for the very, very best that you can.

January 31, 2012 at 7:20 pm

Thanks so much! I’m glad I did the right thing by turning them down.

January 29, 2012 at 8:56 pm

Can you publish parts of your dissertation as articles and still publish it later as a united book? Or is it an either/or question?

January 29, 2012 at 9:03 pm

Typically you can get 2 articles out of the book, and in fact you *should* get two articles out of the book (ie, two of its chapters) because putting those out early in high profile journals gives you name recognition and clout when you shop the book to presses. More than two, and you start getting in trouble because presses don’t want to publish a (first) book that isn’t substantially new material. So in the case of a typical 5 chapter book, two chapters out as articles is the baseline to aim for. Of course everyone’s case will be slightly different, and if you have related material that is on the topic but not used in the book, definitely put that out to journals as well.

January 30, 2012 at 6:42 pm

Thanks! I appreciate that!

March 17, 2014 at 6:53 pm

Have you heard about publishing more chapters in other language, that is, two in English and one or two more in other language? I’d assume editors won’t care, since the non-English article won’t be considered duplicate by librarians, but I’m not sure. Thanks!

May 24, 2014 at 6:56 pm

I know you are speaking of dissertations but can this also apply to theses? Thank you

March 6, 2012 at 12:45 pm

Are there any benefits to self-publishing in the absence of a traditional publisher? Competition for publication in Peer-reviewed sites can be a factor. What about publishing on Scribd and others? What are the benefits and downsides? If nothing else, it gets me found on the web besides in Rate-my-professor.

March 6, 2012 at 12:56 pm

My gut says it doesn’t help, but I’m actually going to put this Q out on FB and Twitter. Stay tuned.

March 7, 2012 at 8:14 am

Responses coming in on Twitter and FB: innovative online publishing/blogging is increasingly valuable for exposure, etc., but self-published books will play no real role in establishing an academic reputation. The issue comes down to peer-review.

August 7, 2012 at 9:54 am

I wrote my dissertation on seven working class girls in a deindustrialized urban neighborhood as they made the transition from 8th grade to high school. A university press said they are VERY interested in it, so I am busy this summer rewriting it as a book. What do I do with the literature review? What do you mean by folding it into the introduction or sections?

August 8, 2012 at 9:21 pm

You want to remove the lit review for the most part, as that is one of the hallmarks of a dissertation that must be removed from the book. However, it is certainly valuable to refer briefly to work on the subject that plays a role in your analysis, so you’d break off chunks of it, and put some in the intro as appropriate, and/or some in the various chapters where they are relevant. But you don’t want a big fat tacky “lit review” chapter, or even whole section of a chapter, as that is a thing to leave behind in graduate school.

November 5, 2012 at 10:09 am

I’m in my last year at university and I chose to write a dissertation. There aren’t many books in the area I’m researching. Once I finish my dissertation, do you reckon it would be possible to publish – considering I’ll only have done an undergraduate degree and no masters/PhDs?

January 15, 2013 at 1:06 am

I wrote my dissertation back in May of 2009. My mother passed away quite suddenly during fairly routine heart surgery a few months later. It was devastating; she was my best friend. My father starting dating a neighbor three weeks later and this woman hates my sister and me. She stole many of my mother’s things, and convinced my father to sell the rest along with my family home, all without telling us. They moved to another town, and now I barely speak to my father. I tell you all this to explain why I was derailed when I should have been publishing chapters from my dissertation. I presented a couple of chapters at conferences, and received a positive response. I exchanged information with a fairly reputable publisher, but by the time she tried to get in touch with me, I was in a black fog. That was three years ago. Can I recover from this? Is it over for me?

January 15, 2013 at 10:37 am

I believe you can recover from this if you want to; you just have to start building up the record now that would have happened then, without the trauma. That’s difficult but doable.

February 6, 2013 at 7:46 am

Dear Karen, If you have a four-chapter dissertation that you are turning into a book manuscript, is it still advisable to publish two out of four of the chapters as peer reviewed articles? Many thanks

July 8, 2013 at 1:21 pm

This is all excellent advice, thanks. I was wondering if you could also provide some more details on the actual structure of the all-important book prospectus? I’m working on one now.

July 9, 2013 at 4:14 pm

See my post, How to Write a Book Proposal.

August 25, 2013 at 8:20 am

Thank your for advising about publishing a dissertation as book. In my case, my dissertation was an exploratory study about the effect of ethics education on undergraduate accounting students in an African country, where ethics is not taught in accounting-related programs in public colleges. There a lot of studies published on this subject matter; but, none of those was conducted and/or published in such a country. Now, I am wondering whether to publish my entire dissertation in academic journals or, just publish parts of it as articles. Nevertheless, I am also wondering if it is a good idea to have my dissertation published as a book. Honestly, I am a little bit confused. Would you please advise?

Thank you and best regards,

September 30, 2013 at 10:37 pm

Hi! First, I’d like to thank you for having a blog like this because it’s so incredibly helpful for people like me. I just finished writing a dissertation of my own, and I’m looking to turn this into a book. The whole process seems so daunting that I’m actually wondering if it’s at all possible. Certainly my supervisor and faculty committee have all recommended that I get it published, but I do realise that a dissertation is very different from a book manuscript. My dissertation is based on US-China relations in East Asia. I’m not currently affiliated to any institution, though I have work experience in the field. My problem is that I don’t know quite how to go about adding anything of value to this, besides updating it and re-writing it to sound peppier rather than pedantic. Can you help with this?

April 19, 2014 at 11:35 am

I have a more practical question. So I am considering turning my dissertation into a book, but this is not something that I considered at the time that I started my dissertation. Although my participants were annonymous and used pseudonyms to protect their confidentiality, do I have to go back and track them down to get their permission…I am specifically thinking if I want to use a direct quote as in example. The participants signed the informed consent for the dissertation and were aware that it would be published as a scholarly journal, but not as a book that could be purchased. Please give me your perspective.

November 7, 2014 at 10:16 pm

Thank you for this wonderful website. I always find such good advice here. I am finishing my dissertation and applying for some jobs and postdocs at the moment. My issue is that I don’t think it makes sense to revise my dissertation into a book. I think that two of my chapters would be great as journal articles, and I have what I think is a good plan for a closely-related second project that would make a good book. Do you think I have a case for postdocs if I’m proposing to start work on this second project during the postdoc, rather than to revise the diss? My advisor says this is a good plan, but he’s not particularly savvy about the current market. Thank you for your insight!

December 21, 2014 at 8:14 am

I’m an MFL teacher in a secondary school in Uk and I got a PhD in E-learning and Applied Linguistics two years ago by now. After the awarding, I went into teaching because I needed a job and now I’d like to (re)start with researching. Unfortunately I’ve got just an article published so far and I need to publish more in order to start looking for jobs in (US) University field. When I got my Phd, the Viva external supervisor suggested me to publish one chapter of my dissertation, and now I’d like to start from there. I’m doing some research, in order to update my potential article, but I’m a little bit “rusty” and I’d need some general advice on how to publish and how to start to go into teaching at University with a postdoc, visiting assistant professor, no tenure-track position, etc. . I would like to write the article in English (the dissertation is in a foreign language) to make it internationally interesting. First, do you think is it possible to me start presenting my proposals as independent researcher? Unfortunately not being affiliated with any University, I don’ t have a mentor/advisor. Second, how can I know which are the major academic press in my field? (I know, it is a silly question, but that’s is). Would it be indicated starting with a peer-reviewed journal? Thank you in advance, Karen. Any further advice/suggestion it will be more than appreciated. (And I know, first think I should improve my English, of course 😉

May 21, 2015 at 3:28 pm

Dear Karen,

I wanted to ask you about the practice of publishing journal articles out of your dissertation before sending a book proposal. In what way do the already published ‘chapters’ support or compromise your case for a book proposal? In a sense, publishing articles helps you have a wider dialogue and improve the quality of the dissertation by taking it beyond the advisor/committee, but in another sense, it puts part of your book already out there. Can we say that as long as these articles are published in reputed journals, you are reinforcing your case for book publication? Any thoughts on this subject would be extremely helpful.

October 27, 2015 at 7:20 am

Could you tell us how to send the book out to presses? When I see a “provocative” book that I think my book has the potential to be, and then i look at the publisher, and then I go to the publisher website, it always says that they accept the books only through an agent. How did you approach publishers? I assume you did not use a book agent. I’m a bit confused about this process of approaching publishers with the proposal.

December 20, 2015 at 4:03 pm

Thanks for offering so much insight through your blog. I have completed my book proposal for my phd thesis that i have been working on for some time. I need to include a sample chapter. I was thinking to include one of my empirical chapters that are the core of the discussion. I have removed some sections that will not appear in that book chapter. However i was wondering do i need to fully present the chapter as it will appear in the book? Changing the language to a less academic one and relating the discussion to wider issues will take quite a bit of time. I look forward to your res ponce. Thank you so much. Stratis

February 26, 2016 at 9:44 am

Part of this seems like good advice, but part seems just awful. The goal of having your first book be aimed at undergraduates seems terrible, and I can’t imagine wanting to hire or tenure someone who seems to be doing that. Is “The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job” aimed at undergraduates? It’s bad to write something only 10-15 people want to read, but fine to write something that 500-2000 will read, as long as you’re not depending on royalties for your income.

It’s as though you were giving advice about how to write scripts for films, and you said “try to dumb it down so you can sell it as a made for TV movie.”

February 27, 2016 at 1:52 am

I think you are missing her point – she isn’t saying ‘dumb it down’. She makes it clear her own manuscript was written to the highest standards of the discipline and field. She is saying writers should increase the readability of their texts. Write the manuscript to high standards of scholarship, but if you are writing in a way so jargon-filled and obscure that an undergraduate can’t read it, you should have cause for pause. Even University Presses can no longer afford to lose money on books written for only 15 scholars in a feild, no matter how fine the work. All authors submitting manuscripts to scholarly presses now have to think about reaching the widest possible audience – it is far better for a press if the book at least breaks even on the sales of a book

February 28, 2016 at 12:01 pm

May 9, 2016 at 1:28 pm

Greetings, I wrote a dissertation in late 2013. Thinking about submitting in academic arena but not sure how to do so. Appreciate any suggestions.

September 20, 2016 at 11:21 am

I defended my PhD thesis in 2014 and received the top grade. It was recommended by my opponent / examiner that I turn the thesis into a book. The dissertation was in a way already a book (both in some print versions and as a permanent link to an electronic database, but it would be legitimate to write a book for another publisher, so that is not the problem). The problem is that I was so sick of the PhD work and (over?)eager to start on my postdoc that I procrastinated with the book revision (i.e. making the the thesis more about the theory and less about individual novelistic analyses) that I wonder whether it is too late. At the moment what little time I have left from a university lectureship ( a VERY teaching-intensive job description) goes to my postdoc monograph and I cannot focus on two research projects at once. Which should I prioritize? The PhD thesis can be located by other researchers quite easily, but it is still a dissertation, not a “real” book -even though it is well written per se.

November 18, 2016 at 5:38 pm

I wonder if you can reassure or advise me. I started researching and writing a book nearly 20 years ago. I found myself unable to access academic literature and so embarked upon a PhD. My intention, when undertaking the PhD was always to write the book. My supervisors were supportive of this and the thesis passed without correction last year at a Russell group university in the UK last year. Since then I have been writing a book proposal for my ideal publisher (with whom I have already published) and adapting the thesis. I have cut out the methodology chapter, integrated relevant parts of my (discursive) literature review into the body of the text, and am in the midst of writing a new introduction. My substantive chapters have fallen quite easily into shorter chapters that I think more appropriate to the practitioner readership I want to reach. Apart from these changes, the thesis and proposed book are pretty much identical. I was very worried, when discovering, during the thesis submission process, that my thesis would be made available online. I embargoed the online version for a year, and was (verbally) assured that the university library would seek my consent before making it available. I was really, really upset to discover this evening that not only have they not honoured this assurance, but that I didn’t even have to go through an academic website to access my thesis in its entirety. As you so rightly point out, publishers are interested only in commercial viability. Despite reassurances from my supervisor, I fail to understand why a publisher would be at all interested in publishing a book so closely based on a document that any Tom, Dick or Harry can access in seconds. I’m not interested in an academic career and only undertook the PhD in order to support my book. I’m really worried that in doing so I made a really big mistake.

November 19, 2016 at 12:51 pm

My advice is to proceed with the proposal and the revised manuscript and just see what happens. Most people really don’t know how to, or want to, access “published dissertations” and they aren’t nec. competition with your published book. I would not disclose to the press anything about this. It’s their job to do due diligence. Just proceed with your publishing plans.

June 10, 2017 at 4:37 pm

I’ve stumbled upon your website by sure luck as I’ve been having some trouble finding specific information to my predicament. I’m a freelance newspaper journalist and have been writing for quite some time, I’ve sort of created a signature style for myself in my local newspaper and I’m quite fond of it. I’ve been approached by a professor to turn her dissertation into a book, it’s a historical recount on the style of clothing in a specific geographical area. I somehow as able to turn the paper into an actual book, a readable book instead of a research paper, but I seem to have one problem. What do I do with footnotes? I’ve excluded the names of authors within the text itself and just added a subscript number, but where should I place the footnotes in the book? Do I have them all added up at the end of the book? Do I add them at the end of every page as footnotes?

It’s my first time turning a dissertation into a book and I’m still figuring out the ins and outs, I’ve edited it a number of times to perfect the written word, to make it easier to understand and I hope I was able to achieve it. The footnotes are a problem that I can’t seem to figure out. Do you have any advice I can use please?

June 16, 2017 at 2:11 pm

This is something you shouod discuss with the author, but basically you’re deciding between footnotes or ENDnotes (where they are all at the end) and given that you’re aiming for a very readable book, endnotes are probably the way to go. But again, this will also hinge on the publisher’s requirements as well. If you don’t want to ask the author but want to present her with a finished doc, then do endnotes. Also, please be aware that WordPress and any other word processing programs, have an endnote/footnote function that will put in the subscript number and automaticlaly open the endnote/footnote space to type in.

September 4, 2017 at 9:20 am

Dear Karen, I just stumbled over your website while searching for information and advice on publishing. Few weeks ago I successfully earned my PhD from one of the top UK universities. My examiners were very happy with the quality of work and recommended that it would be good if I publish it as a book since my career interest is not in the academia at the moment. When I started my research that was not part of my idea but with the interest it generated from my supervisors and examiners, it is something worth considering. My work is a qualitative research. I will be keeping tab with you for more professional guide on how to kick start getting it turned into a marketable book. Thanking you in advance for your wonderful assistance.

September 8, 2017 at 10:20 pm

I’m so happy to have stumbled on this page. I have a real practical question about transforming the dissertation into a book manuscript. Some of the advice here suggests that it’s fine to include 1-2 peer-reviewed journal articles from the dissertation as book chapters (with the journal’s permission, of course). But what about a journal article from your dissertation that may be a co-authored piece?

For example, one dissertation chapter I was fortunately able to transform into a published article with much help from my advisor and so the piece became a co-authored article. If I receive permission from the journal to use it for a book chapter though then do the personal pronouns in the article remain intact in the book manuscript (e.g., “we” rather than “I”)? Do I state that this one chapter is a co-authored chapter and keep all the language the same in that chapter as t appears on the article (copy and pasting the journal article, word-for word)? I don’t think I’ve seen that before in a monograph but this is new terrain for me. Or is there typically wiggle room to change the language of that particular chapter to better fit with the book as a sole authored piece while still referencing the co-authored published article?

I think it would be odd if the book shifted from one chapter where “I” might be suggesting X to then mention that “we” are suggesting X. Yet at the same time my co-author for the article helped me further articulate such ideas for the dissertation chapter to actually be published as an article and I want to give credit where credit’s due. Thank you!

December 4, 2017 at 10:47 pm

Would these tips still apply for independent scholars who have a master’s degree but no PhD (and aren’t interested in obtaining one)? Or should people in that category look to scholarly trade?

December 21, 2017 at 6:54 pm

Hi Karen, I have an issue that has not been addressed anywhere on your blog yet. I am 7 months out from finishing my Ph.D. and finishing my book proposal while still on the market. The press asks for a competing texts section. I’ve discovered that a tenured professor included the original argument that I made previously in a peer-reviewed article in her book several times while claiming that she was the first to make it. An entire chapter is almost verbatim.This book was published by a highly esteemed academic press. My question relates to the competing texts section of the proposal that the press asks for given that there are only a handful of books that compete with my (heavily) revised and expanded dissertation. Do I critique her book or point out that she was not the first to come up with the idea in the proposal when comparing how her book differs from mine OR do I leave her book out altogether? How do I handle this in my competing books section? Based on my research, there is no point in publicly calling the scholar out as professors in her position are untouchable and it would only serve to hurt my career. Since there are only a handful of competing books, I don’t want ignoring her book from such a major press to seem like an oversight to the press. I found this, but it does not help me with the nuts and bolts of navigating my proposal: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Price-of-Plagiarism/237250 Thoughts?

August 5, 2018 at 1:29 pm

To figure out how to work in some of my lit-review-y type things, I picked first books from people I’d known as grad students (who got good contracts), and then compared them to the dissertations – which I could download or consult in the school’s library. Very useful!

August 6, 2018 at 8:54 am

November 4, 2018 at 6:30 pm

Hi Karen:) I feel somewhat overwhelmed as I am unsure of what to do with my dissertation manuscript book. Would it serve best broken down and published as articles? Is it best to pitch it to publishing companies? Please advise.

November 5, 2018 at 8:27 am

This is advising I can do, but not in a blog comment! Please email me at [email protected] to see how we can work together.

March 24, 2019 at 10:39 am

I have written my dissertation 7 years ago:

1) Can I still publish it as a book ?

2) Can write articles of it ?

April 26, 2019 at 5:33 pm

wow good for you! I had a quick question–i am interested in turning my dissertation into a commercial paperback book, like something you would pick up in the airport, as my field site is a popular vacation destination…I want to impact average Americans and not necessarily scholars…any advice on what steps to take?

October 3, 2019 at 7:37 am

Hi Karen, I have a more specific question about writing the introduction to a book. A lot of the books I read as a medical anthropologist have extensive and theoretically thorough introductions that draw on large bodies of existing theory, laying out for you how this particular book builds on existing work on , for example, subjectivity, the state, personhood, liberalism , or whatever. These intros can be helpful for giving student readers a sense of the field (which maybe publishers will like, thinking about the student market?), but they can also be long and boring. Other books have tiny introductions that just get straight to the author’s point, and don’t worry so much about engaging other people’s work. I tend to like this second approach, not because it’s less work, but because you can jump right in and develop your own ideas. it feels liberating. But my hunch is that you’re only allowed to do the second strategy if you’re already a famous scholar. I’m writing my first book, based on my dissertation. What would you advise?

October 4, 2019 at 1:03 pm

this is advising beynond the scope of a blog comment response. I suggest you consider working with a developmental editor about this, and if you want names, email me.

November 5, 2019 at 1:12 pm

Hi!, am a publisher and have been approached by many scholars who want to turn their dissertations to books, i want to gain some valuable skills in doing this kind of work to offer them some assistance. I would like to get a mentor to assist me in case you know of some one, kindly help me

June 28, 2022 at 1:42 am

I am Deniz Çupi and I live in Albania. I have finalized my Ph.D. on the topic: Discourse on environmental problems in Albania during the post-communist period” at Tirana University. So, I would like to publish it in a book. Can you tell me what are your conditions?

Best regards Deniz

January 14, 2020 at 4:19 pm

Hello, what do you mean when you make this comment in our text ” when I sent the mss. out to presses”,

March 28, 2020 at 12:39 pm

Hi there, I think your article is fantastic and really interesting but I had a further question for you.

I have just finished my degree in Business Administration (finished at 84% with dissertation mark as 90/100), and I have just accepted an offer to become a lecturer at an FE college. When I submitted my dissertation proposal to my tutor at the college, he asked me if I wanted to publish the research with him as a book (he’d be a co-author). I was ecstatic at this idea but now that I’m starting a career in education I’m wondering if this isn’t the right thing to do. Do you think this is a good idea? I have no real understanding of publishing research and I’ve been working as an administrator for the most part of my career, only now going down the route of lecturing. My newer long term goals are to get into lecturing at a university after getting my master’s and then working up through the chain. Do you think publishing this piece of work through my college now would be a mistake? The college has just won an award for being a very successful college so they have a good reputation but I’m not sure what publishing now would mean to me and my career? Sorry for long winded question! I don’t know if this helps but I am 22, living in England and my dissertation topic is; Attitudes towards unfulfilling employment: A generational analysis. Thank you so much! 🙂

December 20, 2022 at 10:10 pm

Dear the professor is in, You offer a lot of advice, much of it practical. The writing is crisp. However, I do dislike your overuse and overreliance on “the market.” Maybe it’s an American thing. I engage in academic work to challenge and combat neoliberalism, not to revel in it.

Sincerely, Chan Wai Tak

December 15, 2023 at 4:46 pm

Any recommendations on how to fund the process of developing the dissertation into a book (or several books, in my case)? Are there grants, fellowships, post-docs, or other sources of funding to enable focus on this project? Thank you.

January 10, 2024 at 1:40 pm

Generally postdocs are the best bet.

April 23, 2024 at 8:02 am

Here are my top five tips for turning your dissertation into a book with a focus on thesis editing:

Refine Your Argument: In the transition from dissertation to book, ensure your central argument is clear, compelling, and well-supported. Use thesis editing techniques to tighten your thesis statement, streamline your arguments, and eliminate any redundant or tangential content. Revise for Audience: Consider your target audience for the book and tailor your writing style accordingly. Use thesis editing strategies to adapt complex academic language into a more accessible and engaging narrative without sacrificing scholarly rigor. Restructure for Flow: Arrange your chapters and sections in a logical and coherent sequence that guides readers through your argument smoothly. Utilize thesis editing principles to improve transitions between chapters, integrate new insights, and maintain a cohesive narrative thread. Engage with Literature: Update your literature review and engage with recent scholarship to demonstrate the relevance and timeliness of your research. Use thesis editing techniques to integrate new references, revise outdated information, and strengthen your theoretical framework. Polish Prose and Style: Pay attention to the clarity, precision, and elegance of your prose. Use thesis editing tools to refine your writing style, eliminate jargon, improve sentence structure, and ensure consistency in tone and voice throughout the book. By incorporating these thesis editing strategies into your revision process, you can transform your dissertation into a compelling and publishable book that resonates with both academic and general readerships.

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How to Turn Your Thesis into a Book

Table of contents, introduction.

The transition from researcher to author can seem daunting, but turning a thesis into a book offers significant rewards. Publishing a book allows you to share your research with a broader audience beyond academia. It also helps establish your authority and expertise in your field.

A book enhances your brand and opens speaking opportunities, consulting engagements, and career options. However, writing a book requires reevaluating how to convey your ideas to non-specialist readers best. You must shift to a more accessible writing style and think creatively about crafting a compelling narrative arc.

For academic researchers, the thesis often represents the culmination of years of study in a specialized field. However, researchers can turn their thesis into a published book rather than let it collect dust. This allows them to reach a much wider audience with their ideas and establish themselves as authorities in their subject.

Books have a permanence and legitimacy that other mediums lack. While journal articles may have more prestige in academia, books make research accessible to mainstream readers. They have the potential to educate the public, shape dialogues in a discipline, inspire future scholarship and impact real-world practice. By publishing a book , researchers greatly amplify the influence of their thesis.

Yet, transitioning from researcher to author involves more than copy-pasting a thesis. It requires adapting to a completely different style of writing. Academic writing prioritizes precision, empirical rigor, complex language, and speaking to a niche audience. Books aimed at general readers use clearer prose, compelling narratives, and real-world stories and structure content more thematically.

Beyond making an original contribution to academic literature, publishing a book version of your thesis can provide career advantages and personal satisfaction. Turning a thesis into a book dramatically expands your audience and visibility. While only committee members may have read your thesis, a published book makes your ideas accessible to students, practitioners in your field, policymakers, journalists, and interested lay readers. This establishes your reputation as an authority on the topic.

With an academic book on your resume, opportunities for speaking engagements, consulting jobs, teaching roles, and media commentary will likely arise. Your work may even influence legislation or real-world applications of your research. On a personal level, adapting your writing style, finding your narrative voice, and connecting with readers can be deeply fulfilling. After spending years on specialized research, being able to articulate your insights to the public is incredibly rewarding.

Understanding Your Audience

When transitioning from writing a thesis to writing a book, it is crucial to recognize that the audiences differ significantly. Academic writing is geared towards a specialized scholarly community familiar with theory, methodology , and disciplinary conventions. In contrast, writing a trade book targets a more mainstream readership looking for an accessible and engaging narrative. As an author, you must identify who your new readers are and what kind of content would appeal to them.

Academic writing utilizes discipline-specific jargon, an impersonal tone, extensive literature reviews, and a rigid structure to establish authority on a narrow topic. Trade writing uses plain language, anecdotes, humor, and a flexible narrative style to captivate nonspecialist readers on a more universal theme.

Becoming an adept storyteller enables your specialized material to crossover to mainstream audiences. Master cliffhangers, plot twists, character development, and other devices to immerse readers. Share amusing anecdotes and clever turns of phrase to add flair. Stimulate imagination through vivid scenic descriptions. Pose thoughtful discussion questions to encourage critical reflection. Building rapport with readers amplifies the book’s real-world influence.

Adapting Thesis Content for a Book

Transforming a thesis into a book requires re-evaluating and restructuring the content for a more narrative-driven approach. Academic writing tends to be dense and technical, while general readers expect an engaging story and relatable concepts. As an author, you must balance retaining scholarly rigor and making the ideas accessible.

While academic texts impress with jargon and complex concepts, the general public loses interest quickly. As an author, focus on explaining ideas using everyday language. Define terminology and provide illustrative examples wherever possible. Break down complex arguments into step-by-step logic that is easy to follow. Quote outside experts to reinforce your points. Include stories and anecdotes to humanize the research. However, it upholds standards of intellectual rigor by substantiating claims and highlighting study limitations.

Personal perspectives allow readers to connect with the author and material more deeply. Share what motivated your research questions and discuss memorable moments from collecting or analyzing data. Describe conversations with study participants that illuminated key insights. Use examples from your own life to illustrate broader concepts. Occasional touches of humor also help. Such anecdotes breathe life into academic subjects. However, ensure that any personal information shared is appropriate and relevant to the discussion.

Crafting a Compelling Narrative

Academic writing often focuses solely on facts, theories, and data analysis. While important, this approach rarely captivates readers outside one’s field. Storytelling techniques offer a solution—they provide structure, conflict, and resolution to make the content more compelling. For instance, case studies allow researchers to frame their work around a specific person or organization, adding a human element. Techniques like foreshadowing, flashbacks, and cliffhangers also heighten narrative tension. Applying story arcs to research gives readers a reason to care beyond factual accuracy.

Weaving in real-world examples brings sterile academic concepts to life. For example, an economic treatise could profile a small business owner grappling with rising inflation. This puts a human face on monetary policy debates. Case studies also showcase how theories operate in specific organizational contexts. Infographics, photos, diagrams, and other illustrations make complex ideas more understandable. Using relatable examples and visuals helps concretize abstract arguments for non-specialist readers.

Writing Style and Tone

The shift from formal academic writing to a more conversational and engaging tone is key when adapting a thesis into a book for a general audience. Academic writing is often dense, technical, and aimed at a narrow group of experts. In contrast, trade nonfiction requires an accessible writing style that feels like a conversation with an intelligent friend sharing hard-won knowledge.

When academics write books for general readers, they must consciously work to transform their formal thesis prose into a more relaxed yet authoritative style. Sentences should generally be shorter and less complex. Technical jargon should give way to clear explanations and vivid examples. The text may directly address the reader through second-person narration and rhetorical questions.

While academic writing seeks an objective, impersonal tone, trade nonfiction benefits from revealing glimpses into the author’s experiences, passions, and personality. The strategic use of anecdotes about the writer’s intellectual journey in a candid first-person voice makes the book more approachable and involving for readers.

That said, professional decorum must be maintained while allowing one’s voice to emerge. Too much informality risks undermining the writer’s scholarly credibility. A thoughtful, nuanced take on the subject matter, with careful qualifying statements where needed, reminds readers that this is still an expert guiding them through complex terrain.

Occasionally, the author might consciously decide to retain some technical terminology where no equivalent plain language substitute exists or adequately conveys the precise meaning. In such cases, clear definitions should be supplied the first time such a term is introduced. The glossary can also be utilized for convenient reference.

By emphasizing quality over quantity of information and spotlighting the most critical insights from the thesis, scholarly authors can craft books that inform and enlighten readers without overwhelming them. The art lies in judicious simplification without distortion of meaning.

How to Turn Your Thesis into a Book: Navigating the Publishing Process

Exploring publishing options.

The traditional publishing route involves signing with an academic or trade publisher. This option benefits the publisher’s distribution networks, marketing capabilities, editorial services, and imprint credibility. However, competition is fierce, with low acceptance rates.

Self-publishing offers greater control and faster time-to-market, enabled by print-on-demand technology. Platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing make self-publishing accessible. The downside is that marketing and distribution remain the author’s responsibility.

Understanding Literary Agents and Academic Presses

Preparing your manuscript for publication.

Before submitting your manuscript to publishers or self-publishing, it is crucial to ensure it is polished and ready for publication. This involves careful editing and proofreading to eliminate any errors or inconsistencies. It is also important to format your manuscript according to the publisher’s guidelines or industry standards. Creating a visually appealing and well-structured book will enhance its professionalism and appeal to readers.

Creating a Book Proposal

When submitting your manuscript to publishers, it is common practice to include a book proposal. This document provides an overview of your book, including its subject matter, target audience, market potential, and competition analysis. It is also important to highlight your qualifications and expertise as the author. A well-crafted book proposal can help publishers understand the value and marketability of your book.

Marketing and Promotion

Navigating the publishing process can be challenging, but with careful planning and consideration, turning your thesis into a book can be a rewarding experience. By understanding the publishing industry landscape, preparing your manuscript effectively, and implementing effective marketing strategies, you can increase the chances of your book reaching a wide readership and making a meaningful impact in your field.

We have delved into how to turn your thesis into a book that melds creative storytelling with scholarly acumen. It is a transformative act that extends the reach of your rigorous academic efforts to inform, engage, and inspire a general audience. The endeavor presents an opportunity to refine your ideas, solidify your expertise, and broaden the dialogue within and beyond your field. The thesis-to-book transition requires critical adjustments in writing style, narrative construction, and audience engagement. It demands that complex ideas be distilled without diluting their significance, enabling readers from various backgrounds to glean insights and appreciate the depths of your research. At once a scholarly and creative pursuit, reshaping a thesis into a book offers academics a wider platform for influence. It allows a work that might otherwise remain within the confines of academic circles to educate, affect public discourse, and potentially guide policy and practice. Upon successful publication, seeing your work in book form is not simply an act of personal accomplishment but a contribution to the collective repository of knowledge that charts new paths for understanding and innovation. Whether navigating traditional publishing avenues or embracing the autonomy of self-publishing, the meticulous effort to produce and promote a book is an adventure with unique challenges and rewards. The act of persevering through these stages is a testament to the importance you place on the dissemination of knowledge. Ultimately, transitioning your thesis into a book is more than a mere reformatting of academic work; it is a sharing of passion, a conversation extended to curious minds, and a beacon for those seeking to delve into your study’s essence.

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How do I convert my PhD dissertation so that it can be published as a book?

I have just completed a PhD by research, which I think has some merits in being available as a book (This is, of course, my personal opinion). The research cuts across several fields (e.g. sociology, public policy).

I am wondering what I need to do to take the next step.

In particular:

How do you turn an academic piece like the dissertation (which is written for the examiners) into a book (which is for the general public)?

How do I find publishers who specialise in my field?

publications

11 Have you asked your advisor about this ? Much like "Don't walk. Run", this could serve as a generic answer for so many questions here :) – Suresh Commented Jan 9, 2013 at 4:38
3 What are your goals for publishing. Do you want to make money? Do you want it to count towards tenure? Do you want it to educate the general public? Promote your research? – StrongBad Commented Jan 9, 2013 at 13:01
I want to promote my research to (1) make it widely available and (2) to get some kudos for my CV. Unsure how these two goals could be reconciled. – Javeer Baker Commented Jan 9, 2013 at 23:12
3 I mean, a PhD dissertation is written for the examiners (with detailed referencing) but a book to educate the public has a more relaxed and reader-friendly style (i.e. less referencing details etc.). – Javeer Baker Commented Jan 9, 2013 at 23:21
@JaveerBaker if you start your comments with an @, like I did here, the person will receive a notification. I would say that books for the public don't have a more relaxed referencing style, they just have less detail that needs to be referenced. – StrongBad Commented Jan 10, 2013 at 9:22

4 Answers 4

Why do you want the book?

For prestige?: publishers who contact you, don't do any review and charge high prices will only increase your prestige to those that don't know them (and these are probably not those you want to impress).
For dissemination?: why not just put the pdf available (as was already recommended)?. Those who are interested will find it, those who are not will probably not buy a PhD thesis
For money?: I doubt you will really make much out of it.

My recommendation: put it as a pdf on your website / your school's dissertation repository. If you see that lot's of people download it, consider an improved version as book.

2 In many disciplines (especially the humanities), it is still obligatory to publish a monograph in order to get a PhD. Although, there is shift to cumulated PhD theses with articles in peer-reviewed journals, sociology, at least in Continental Europe, still values monographs. – non-numeric_argument Commented Aug 14, 2013 at 9:50
These questions are very important and I suggest they be considered. In my field, a book published by a shady publisher would only make you look worse as an academic. – Behacad Commented Sep 21, 2014 at 18:25
-1 In my field it is very uncommon not to have one's PhD thesis transformed into and published as a book. It is also quite important to have the book published by a highly-regarded publisher. – henning no longer feeds AI Commented Jun 19, 2015 at 15:25

Your first question is quite tricky (to answer and to do). It depends on what you mean by "the public". A version for academics needs little change from a thesis. For students you need to consider how to highlight what can be learnt from your work. For the general general public, you'll have to start thinking about rewriting perhaps quite a bit, keeping your language accessible and building a narrative. As I am in a different field, perhaps some or all of this is already a part of your thesis.

The second question is simpler, who publishes the books that you read for your thesis?

If your university does not require you to publish your dissertation as a book, I would be very reluctant to invest the time needed to get your dissertation published. I would put the PDF of your dissertation on your own website, making it available to everyone who wants to look at it. I would spend the time needed to rewrite your book on writing more peer reviewed articles. Either by publishing chapters from your dissertation, or by doing new research. I think publications are more important than a book, especially for someone like you who still has only a few publications.

As a partial answer, Springer used to publish (theoretically) outstanding PhD thesis in Mathematics in its 'Lecture notes in Mathematics' as research monograph. However I do not know how many of the published volumes are Phd thesis. Definitely a (math) thesis requires a lot of polishing and rewriting before publishing.

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How to turn your PhD into a book

Turning your PhD into a book is a mark of success in many disciplines, especially the humanities. Many people pursue this goal immediately upon finishing their PhD as part of an overall academic career strategy. I didn’t have to, because I already had a job and I wanted to start building a research reputation in another discipline (and I started blogging).

I feel like a bit of a fraud because I am sort of writing about something I have never done… However, Thong, (the husband of one of my PhD students, Nguyen) pointed out that I have been involved with five published books, with two more in the pipeline. You can thank Thong for convincing me I am experienced enough to give you a useful outline of the academic publishing process, so here we go.

As it turned out, I knew much more than I thought. I couldn’t cover everything about academic book publishing in one blog post, so this is part one of three I plan on the topic. I encourage you to write in with more questions. I know many established academics read the blog and I hope some of you will write in with further advice in the comments!

Step one: consider carefully… is it a book, or something else?

First of all, just because doing a book is prestigious CV addition, do you really need to write one? Doing a book is a HUGE time commitment, even if you start with a copy-edited dissertation manuscript. And don’t expect to make any money from all this effort; it’s a bonus if you do, but if you expect nothing, you won’t be disappointed. Don’t expect much measurable research impact either. You’re likely to end up with an expensive book with a small print run, that won’t result in piles of citations.

If you want to get your research out there for people to use, it might make more sense to write a series of blog posts, do a self-published ebook, a documentary film or exhibition. Or just leave the manuscript in your university library where it can be downloaded for free. PhD dissertations are the most downloaded type of document in many university research repositories so … do nothing. Your work will still have the potential to reach people who are interested.

It’s a different matter if you see a non-academic audience for your book. Some disciplines, like history, produce research with commercial potential. I’d encourage anyone who sees this potential to follow it up. A mass market publication has less academic snob value, but trust me: having a book that actually sells enough to give you a hefty royalty cheque is super satisfying!

Step Two: make contact with a potential publisher

Locating an academic publisher is actually a lot simpler than most people think: just look at the spines of the books on yourself and do some Googling. Unlike mass market publishing, where people rely on agents, academic publishing is still a ‘cold call’ proposition. Have a look on the website for instructions to authors about how to get in touch – and just… do it.

There are ‘slightly less cold’ approaches, which, I think, increase your chances. One simple (but maybe not obvious) technique is to visit the publishing stand at the next conference you attend and engage the people in the booth in a bit of a chat (it’s a good idea to skip a session for this purpose – they will be more willing to talk to you if it’s quiet). Don’t be shy, they are used to being approached. Generally the person selling books will either have a role as a scout, or be able to call in the person who is there for that purpose. Once they seem willing to talk, ask what kind of works they are interested in publishing. If their general interest seems to align with the work you have in mind, try out a short (I mean two sentence) pitch for your book idea and ask if it sounds interesting. Last year I did this at a conference and got a business card, which I then followed up with an email, very successfully.

Smart publishers are always on the look out for new work, so you might find they approach you. Great! Just make sure it’s a real publisher, not a dodgy thesis publishing mill. You can tell if it’s a real publisher because they will ask you to write a proper proposal. Anyone who promises to publish your PhD without changes is highly suspect. While some advisors will still tell you not to put your dissertation in the insitution repository, some publishers use this as a place to identify potential books and will approach you. Or, you could start a blog – if you manage to generate enough of a readership to be noticed, they will find you, trust me.

Step Three: sell the idea

The next bit – getting them interested in actually buying your idea- is tricky.

Book publishing, especially academic publishing, is a marginal business. Even boutique academic publishing outfits, who employ three people, are not charities. Publishers are interested in one thing above all others: selling books. It’s easy to lose sight of the profit motive when you work in an academic environment, which is essentially a not-for-profit enterprise.

Your mileage may vary, but I always prefer to get the publisher invested in the idea before I go to the trouble of writing a whole proposal. You might get a few knock backs before someone is interested. Doing heaps of work in a proposal template you’ll have to change anyway is a waste of time. Write a cover letter to your contact, or the email listed on the site for this purpose, with a short pitch for the book, clearly signalling the intended audience and why you are the best person to write it. If you have already published papers or, better still, blog posts, you can include some circulation numbers to demonstrate people might buy it. For example, here is a short excerpt from the pitch letter I recently wrote to a small, but well known academic publisher:

We cannot keep up with the requests for talks about our research and there is particularly intense interest from the community in the methods. A lot of people are fearful that ‘the robots are coming for our social science jobs’, but we have a totally different take, which is a ‘human in the loop’ approach (I wrote about this on the blog a couple of weeks ago: Are the robots coming for our (research) jobs?). I think now would be an ideal time to get something to market and your methods series format is perfect.

My approach here was to leverage the existing interest in our research work to demonstrate there was already a market. Note I use explicit commercial language ‘get something to market’ to show them I understand the profit motive. I didn’t try to tell them the work is intrinsically interesting or important, even though this is my primary motive in writing it. Being an important book doesn’t matter if there are not enough people willing to buy it. Of course, academics should publish non-commercial work, but that’s why we have journals and conferences.

I now need to convince the publisher that I am the one to get it to market. Having a successful blog is a huge advantage here, but this is a co-authored book. I know the publisher is keen the writing team doesn’t fall apart during the writing process. As I understand it, this happens often enough for publishers to be understandably skittish. The best way to prove you can write together is… to already have written together. So I followed with this paragraph to soothe their fears:

… What makes me really confident about the project is it builds on the strengths of our existing collaboration. Hanna could bring her 15 years of experience as a computer scientist working. Will works in science communications and, in addition to being a good writer, is used to working across disciplinary boundaries….

This letter got me an (almost) immediate request to submit a full proposal. The ‘almost’ is important, which leads me to step four… which will be in part two of this series because I have already reached my (self imposed) word count. Now I’m wondering: are you thinking about publishing your dissertation as a book? What questions are in your mind? Or do you have any experience of the publishing process you would like to share? Love to hear from you in the comments.

So, you’re thinking of writing an academic ebook…?

How to make an index for your book or dissertation

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Publish Your Thesis as a Book with ISBN

As a Ph.D. scholar or academician, you must have spent an inordinate amount of time by your desk trying to come up with your Ph.D. thesis. Now it is important that you publish your hard work to make it available to students studying that area and also people interested in that subject. In fact, your research may have a wider scope. Besides being a matter of immediate interest to your fellows and students, your research can also receive the attention of a broader audience, if you want.

Why Should You Publish Your Thesis as a Book?

The inclusion of Academic Curriculum: Most successful academic books have their roots in great research work. Broader interest in your research topic may result in the inclusion of a topic in the regular curriculum. When a topic is read widely, it creates more awareness.
Preserving Knowledge : Ideally, knowledge outlives the researcher and hence, researchers have a solemn responsibility to preserve the fruit of their lifelong endeavour. And this can be done by turning a thesis into a published book.
Documentation: A piece of research is best preserved and used when it becomes available as a book with ISBN. In such case, it can also be referred by colleagues and junior research fellows pursuing the same field. ISBN is a unique number that helps in the listing and tracking of a published book worldwide.
Enriches Research Field: Great thinkers have a responsibility for their area of study. Publishing a thesis enriches the specific research area. This also creates an opportunity for the researchers to carry forward their own line of work and in some cases, create a legacy.
Research as Inspiration: Many scholars publish their work as a vital clue as well as a source of inspiration to the students of the next generation. Say for example: John Dalton’s atomic theory. Most of the things he suggested in his theory were later proved flawed. But, his proposition opened a new avenue in the field of scientific research.
Research as a Link to the Future: Some researchers come up with concepts that are unrivaled and unprecedented and most importantly beneficial for the society. But, they themselves could not get on the right course. So, it failed. But, if they would have documented their ideas in a book or so and if that eventually got picked up by someone who could put them in the correct line of action, imagine the enormous good that could come out of it.
Research for Recognition: When researchers find something radical or solve an old problem of humanity, they publish their thesis in order to be recorded in the literature as the exponent of that theory. In this case, publishing a book gives the authors scopes to earn the unique right and overwhelming recognition.

What Are The Benefits?

Having looked at the different motivations to publish a thesis as a book, we can now turn our attention to the more personal benefits publishing offers.

Royalty: The first that easily comes to our mind is royalty. Royalty is a commission, authors get from the sales of their books. This is a recurrent earning and who does not know that there are unpredictable expenses in the research field. For many researchers, this is like an incentive to carry on with their work.

Adds More Values to Research : Another benefit of publishing is, it adds credibility to research work. It may sound weird. But it is true. No one knows or even cares to know what a researcher is doing inside the laboratory or study. But, the moment published books start coming, the editors review and the Press covers authors’ interviews, people start getting serious about it and this way researchers influence a wider network of people. Our culture needs more scientists, researchers, and inventors as our role model for some positive influence.

How Can You Do It?

Ph.D. research is usually published in the form of a journal article. There are a few options to consider when you think of publishing your Ph.D. research.

Convert the Entire Ph.D. into a Book: You can consider this option if your thesis covers a wide area of interest and concern; proves its relevance to a broad audience and propose a solution or alternative.
Publish Part of Your Thesis as a Book: This option can be considered if parts of research are ongoing or awaiting results.
Contribute to an Edited Book: You can contribute your research article to a book that compiles a number of essays on a similar topic. A well-edited book offers different perspectives of particular research and thus broadens the scope of PhD-based research via collaboration.

To conclude, you can simply publish your dissertation. But converting it into a book will be a rewarding process. Go slowly with it but start positively and work on it regularly. When you are done, get in touch with the book publishing companies to turn your thesis into a book. After all, a valuable thesis is worth all the attention.

For any kind of further query for your thesis publication email us at [email protected]

80 thoughts on “ Publish Your Thesis as a Book with ISBN ”

Dear Sir/Madam, Hope I meet you well. Just read about the opportunity you have for academicians, as I am one of the them, and would like to publish my M.Phil and Ph.D Theses. I’m an Adult Educator with specialisation in Adult Learning and Education, Community Development, Entrepreneurship and Distance Education. I’m a lecturer and Coordinator of Accra Learning Centre, School of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana, Legon. Will get back to you for the details concerning the entire process of publication. Counting on your kind cooperation. Dr. Isaac Kofi Biney Lecturer/Coordinator- Accra Learning Centre SCDE, College of Education University of Ghana Legon.

Thanks for showing interest in publishing with us.You will soon receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

Thanks for taking time to read our blog. Please write to us at [email protected] if you have a thesis to publish.

Dear Sir/Ma I have completed my Ph.D work but the work is unpublished but some part of the work was developed as journals and it was published both local and internationally. Now having seen the information in your site i decided to contact you. How much will it take me to publish my researched work with you people? If the book is published and it was demanded by some body and the person paid for the book what percentage will i get?

Thanks for showing interest in publishing with us. You will soon receive a formal communication from our side and we will get into a discussion about royalty benefit, copyright and other things in detail.

Are you provide any guidance for converting the phD thesis into book or any format?

Thanks for showing interest in publishing with us. We offer publication guidance. You will soon receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

I need clear information about how to publish my dissertation

Thanks for showing interest in publishing with us.You will soon receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail. You can also write to us directly at [email protected]

DO YOU ALSO PUBLISH? IF GIVEN A THESIS CAN YOU PUBLISH?

Thanks for taking time to read our blog. Yes, we will publish your thesis. Please send your complete thesis to us at [email protected] . You will also receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

What are the conditions for publication? Is it free? Will the publications be in refereed journals?

Thanks for taking time to read our blog. Please send your complete thesis to us at [email protected] . Our packages start from $149. If you want to publish your research paper in a refereed journal, I will forward your interest to our journal division. You can also consider publishing your thesis as a book with ISBN as discussed above. You will also receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

Thanks for your advice. I will definitely get in touch with you. At how much do you publish this book?

Thanks for taking time to read our blog. Please send your complete thesis to us at [email protected] . You will soon receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

Its a fantastic idea. I am interested. Can I publish my thesis for masters as well.

Hi Rose, thanks for your interest and appreciation. Please send your complete thesis to us at [email protected] . You will receive a formal communication with the details from our side shortly.

I have completed my PhD dissertation since 2010, it has become dusty but I think I should publish it now that there is an opportunity to do so. I research in the field of traditional medicine and the Jesus miracle in Mark 7:31-37.

Thanks for showing interest in us. I will share the publishing guide and package details with you in a short while. Please remember to check your spam folder also.

Thanks for taking time to read our blog. It’s great that you have decided to publish your thesis as a book. I will share the publishing details with you shortly.

Nice post. I was checking constantly this blog and I am impressed! Very helpful info specially the last part 🙂 I care for such info much. I used to be seeking this particular info for a long time. Thanks and good luck.

Thanks for taking time to read our blog and appreciate our work. I will share the publishing guide and package details with you in a short while. If you do not receive it in the mailbox, check your spam folder also.

I want to publish my PhD thesis into a book I need guidance

Finished my MA thesis in 2014. Not published. Can u consider it?

Thanks for taking time to read our blog. Please send your thesis at [email protected] for review.

Compliments, im interested in publishing my Ph.D thesis on tourism law, it is a novel writing on this areaa of law in Nigeria.Kindly email me the terms and conditions o this .Thank u

Excellent website. Lots of useful information here. I am sending it to some pals ans additionally sharing in delicious. And of course, thanks for your effort!

I need to know the terms and condition

I want to publish my thesis

I am a researcher in the field of materials science. Some theses of my scholars are not yet published as books. Now I wish to convert them as books and I need helps from you

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Where do I send my Thesis to for review and publishig as a book

Thanks for showing interest. Please submit your manuscript at [email protected] .

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Dear Sir / Madam

I would like to publish my Ph.D. thesis into a book with ISBN and would like to know the detail for publication.

I want to publish my Ph.D. thesis. Please inform me about next necessary steps.

Dear Sir/Ma I have completed my Ph.D work but the work is unpublished but one part of the work was developed as journals and it was published internationally. Now having seen the information in your site i decided to contact you. How much Time will it take me to publish my researched work with you people? Book with isbn

Thanks for showing interest in publishing with us. It takes about 40-50 days in standard situation. But, it depends on the length of the manuscript and author response time. To start the publication process, please share your complete manuscript with us at [email protected]

I wish to apply for the publishing my thesis

I need to publish my thesis into book . Please help me in this regard

Send me process of thesis publication in book form

Thanks for showing interest in publishing with us. You will soon receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

Thanks for writing to us. You will soon receive a formal communication from our side answering your query in detail.

I have a PhD to publish. ¹ Do I have to pay any charges? 2 Will it be freely accessible online by researchers.?

Excellent blogs, Hi, I have just completed my PhD and want to get it published as a book.please provide more information about it.

This is an excellent blog, I will like to know the necessary requirements for the publication of my PhD work into a book by you. Kindly outline the deliverables and benefits, as well as coverage for the publication.

Thanks for getting in touch with us. You will hear from us soon.

I need to publish my DBA thesis as a book. How much does it cost? How long will it take to publish the book? What royalty percentage am I entitled to on each book sold? How do I know about the number of books sold at any given time? Will the book be visible globally?

Excellent . Hello , I have completed my M. Phil and want to publish my thesis as a book? Am I eligible to do it? My subject is Bangla and i am from Assam. And if it’s possible then how much of cost need for it? I hope you will response my word’s I am waiting for that. Thank you so much.

Thanks for reaching out. Please share your phone number so that we can have a further communication on your project.

Turning Your Thesis Into A Book

Tips and tricks to rewrite for a different type of reader, from Teresa Pitt, a legendary former Senior Commissioning Editor and Publisher with MUP.

MUP occasionally publishes books that have begun their lives as theses and academic research projects.

Some recent examples include Susan Carland's Fighting Hislam, Glenn Morrison's Songlines and Faultlines and Rebe Taylor's Into the Heart of Tasmania .

But rewriting a thesis is not simply a matter of making revisions to existing text. Here are some tips and tricks to help turn your thesis into a book (or perhaps a manuscript you can submit to publishers – including us ).

An original thesis should be regarded as the basis for an entirely new work, written with a new audience in mind. This new work will address intelligent general readers who seek to be provoked, engaged, intrigued and/or seduced into reading your book. General readers do not expect you to prove to them how thorough your research has been, or how many other texts you have consulted. They simply want to know what you have found out and what you think about it.

The most important tasks in rewriting a thesis are to:

Remove all academic scaffolding

In a thesis, the examiners expect you to explain what you are setting out to do, and how you are going to go about doing it, before you actually do it. Then, after you have done it, you are required to restate or summarise your methods, findings and conclusions.

In a book, these preliminaries and wrap-ups are superfluous. They get in the reader's way, become repetitive and obscure the impact of the real subject matter. They also take up valuable space. The Abstract and Introduction that are both essential in a thesis are not needed in a book. Neither are the usual chapter Introductions and Conclusions.

Ordinary readers want you to get straight to the point. Thus, anything that sounds like "In this chapter I will argue . . ." or "In this chapter I have shown . . ." should be deleted immediately.

Reorganise the material

When writing for the general reader, you should introduce the most arresting, intriguing, or unusual aspects of the work the heart of the matter immediately.

The background information and theoretical discussions should come later. As a rule of thumb, start from the particular, and work to the general, rather than the other way around. In journalism, the rule for any story is always to "grab the reader's attention" in the first paragraph – indeed, in the first sentence. It may seem strange to compare a serious academic work with a newspaper story or article, but in fact the best serious non-fiction writers follow a similar principle.

The most interesting, arresting or unusual parts of the story or argument should come first to attract the interest of the general reader, you can go back later to provide the necessary background and interpretation.

Refocus clearly on the heart of the story

You need to "pick the eyes" out of your thesis. That is, you must decide what the most interesting or important issues or themes are, and concentrate on these, ruthlessly discarding the more peripheral material. Background material for example, surveys of previous literature, historical background, discussions of earlier and current theories, arguments, methodology, etc. if retained at all, should be moved from the beginning to the ends of the book, or incorporated in a much-condensed form into the relevant sections of the main text.

Remember you are writing now for non-specialist readers. You must be aware both of what you want to tell them and of what is going to catch and retain their attention.

Reduce the scholarly apparatus

Most theses have a enormous number of footnotes and an exhaustive bibliography, all designed to impress your examiners with the breadth and depth of your research. Having successfully impressed them, you now need to cut or condense your notes ruthlessly, and to reduce your bibliography to a reasonable size. Keep only what will be genuinely useful to an ordinary reader.

Any discursive or explanatory notes should either be incorporated back into the text or deleted altogether. Notes should be restricted to sources only, and should be turned into endnotes rather than footnotes.

Rewriting and new writing will be necessary. Having sketched out a new structure and focus, you now have to start writing all over again to create a completely new work.

As you rewrite you must move firmly away from the usual impersonal, abstract academic style. This means hunting down and expunging instances of:· academic jargon (find a way of expressing the concept in plain English, especially the first time you introduce it):

long, complex, convoluted sentences (no sentence should contain more than two ideas, which should be expressed as directly as possible)
inordinately lengthy paragraphs (break your paragraphs up as much as possible and vary them between, say, three and twenty lines)
abstract nouns (use concrete nouns wherever you can) the passive voice (don't say "Similar observations were made by Johnson and Smith"; say "Johnson and Smith made similar observations")
the third person used for yourself (don't say "In the present writer's opinion"; say "I think").

You must learn to address your writing as directly as possible to an imagined non-specialist reader, using a natural, personal, and unpretentious voice and using plain English. Audience awareness the sense of a real, actual person to whom you are talking/writing is one of the most useful communication skills you can develop.

Try to imagine, as you write, that you are talking about your work to an intelligent, educated friend over the kitchen table or in the pub. Your friend is in another field altogether and knows little or nothing about your particular speciality, but is curious to know more about what you do. You would talk to this friend in quite a different way than you would write for your examiners. It is this friendly, straightforward, conversational style that you need to develop.

A number of academics who have become successful writers for a general audience have gained great benefit from joining a writing class in order to develop their writing skills, to enhance their audience awareness, and to unlearn the unfortunate writing habits instilled during their academic training. Courses in creative writing and non-fiction writing are widely available, and we recommend you give this option serious consideration.

Kevin Brophy's Explorations in Creative Writing would be an excellent place to start.

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turning your thesis into a book

Lots of people want to turn their thesis into a book. This is not always possible – not all theses make good books. But it may also not be desirable. Some disciplines revere the scholarly monograph so writing one may be very good for the career. But others hold the peer reviewed journal article as the gold standard; in such cases, it may be better to get stuck into turning the thesis into a set of papers, rather than sweating over a manuscript. However, if you do want to do the book business, then you have to think about what the common advice – this book is not your thesis – actually means.

The first and most important difference relates to purpose.

The thesis is a text which is written to be examined and evaluated. As such, it follows a particular form, and the writing has to do particular kinds of work. You must show that you know the literatures. You must show that you understand research, and can justify why you have used the methods you have. You have to explain and justify how you analysed your material/data. You have to argue that the research contributes to knowledge. The examiners want to see all of these aspects dealt with, in detail.

The reader of a book, on the other hand, is not concerned about the same set of things. They buy the book primarily because they are interested in the topic. They haven’t bought the book to go through a trawl of what other people have done or how your research methodology sits within a tradition. They don’t want pages of audit trail. They want to know what you think and what you’ve done. So while your book will include other people’s research and possibly some discussion of method/ology, this will usually be succinctly presented in relation to the argument that you are making.

For this reason, I often suggest to newly completed DRs that they consider starting their thinking about a book at the end of the thesis, with the findings and conclusion.

After all of your research, you’ve come up with something. You started with a question but now you know the answer. While the thesis was structured around the question, and how you got to the answer, the book must BEGIN with the answer, explain why the topic is important and then go on to do something interesting – trace a history or show how policy is playing out or develop a new framework for thinking about the topic of tell a hitherto hidden story about it and so on.

Another key difference between an examiner and a book is to do with readership.

The thesis is written for examiners. The examiner is obliged to read the whole text. No matter how plodding, difficult, or messy it is – or how elegant and stimulating – they must get through the lot, as that is their job. They won’t like reading it if is tough going, but they’ll do it. An ordinary reader on the other hand has no such obligations. They’ve paid good money, or picked up your book in the library or borrowed it from their supervisor and they expect you to maintain their interest. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading.

So in writing a book there is no option but to think carefully about your authoring options. What is the best, most seductive, enlightening, persuasive way to present what you have to say? The thesis chapters are probably not it. Three chapters presenting the data followed by a discussion? Maybe the reader would prefer the discussion unfolding in concert with the data, organised around big meaningful chunks…or…. The book is an opportunity to think more creatively about how to put the argument together. It’s another challenge, but a good one.

So it’s a sensible idea, I reckon, to think about the book of the thesis as a rewriting, not a revision. It’s not just a bit of a fiddle with the introduction and conclusion and then plonking the rest in, but rather a restructured text written for a different reader and for a different purpose. While you may well be able to modify some existing thesis chapters in the rewritten text, what you end up with is likely to be different from the thesis that you wrote first.

For that reason, it’s often a good idea to leave a bit of time between completing the thesis and writing the book proposal. Write an article or two and then come back to the thesis. Look at it afresh, and think about how you could rework the material into the most interesting text possible.

About pat thomson

27 responses to turning your thesis into a book.

Thanks very much for this post. I am not sure I want to write a book – I will probably write a few papers instead, but I do see gaps in my field where my research could fit usefully in a longer format, like a book, and your post offers very useful advice and links. I can kind of see where my research could go next, now that I am writing my conclusions, so perhaps extending my project and turning that into a book could be an exciting thing to pursue in the next couple of years. We shall see… 🙂

Alas, Pat ~ I have an opposite problem. (I guess your invaluable advice applies as much to A&H as it does to social science.) The way I write up research appears to be turning a book into a thesis. … The ‘inner creative’ wants out. I like to call her a ‘muse,’ but sometimes she’s just a nuisance. I printed off 6 months work (41,570 words) over the weekend, inc. assorted preliminary material, and drafts of the Intro. + Chapters 1 – 4. Phew! Half a book’s worth, albeit chapters do have possibilities of being re-wrought into papers. However, have proved to myself that attacking it as if it IS a book ~ deadlines, so many words a day, etc etc., is the only way to get it done. Besides, it’s the only way I know how ~ but I foresee a lot of rewriting! The print-out’s hard copy insurance; half a year’s work from grinding grindstone is not to be vaporised in one of those terminal Computer Events which can, and do, occur. OTOH, I did commence with The Question, so at least got THAT right 😉

In terms of process rather than genre, getting the thesis done can be harder than a book in my experience… But yes words per day, deadlines all v important. All the best with it.

Great post, and timely for me! I am rewriting my thesis at the moment (two years after completion) by ‘flipping’ everything, e.g. starting with the answer rather than thesis question and situating relevant theories within my research and approach rather than vice versa (everything you suggest, basically). I am fortunate that I only need to do this for the intro and conclusion as my thesis advisors supported my decision to write the thesis as a book and present it in an accessible, creative manner. Rewriting is a painful process and I’m not sure I would bother if faced with revisiting the entire thesis – journal articles would be easier.

Can I ask, do you think having your thesis freely available online, on the University website, will affect your ability to get a book contract? From what I’m reading here it seems they are such different things that the thesis being online should hopefully not put off publishers from wanting to publish as a book. Chris

I think it depends on the publisher. It’s not generally an issue but I’ve heard of a couple of instances where it was

We’ve recently published a monograph based on a thesis, with only moderate changes. However, this was on the condition that it was embargoed on the University’s website for 2 years. There’s no way we’d have published it had the material been freely available online. There are a few more theses in production, too, and they’re either embargoed, or are substantially different from the original.

Thanks Catherine – that’s good to know, and sounds like a good approach.

Reblogged this on anthropod and commented: This is a great post on how to turn your thesis into a book, and very timely for me as it is what I am doing right now. I haven’t taken all of Pat’s advice (I’m working on a full manuscript without a contract, for example) but her tips on rewriting are very useful. Ger post has reminded me that I’m writing for a specific genre – ethnography, quite different from a thesis – which has particular conventions that I need to follow, and inspired me to completely rewrite my introduction and conclusion with a new audience in mind. Now, if only I could churn out 2,000 words a day …

Do talk to some publishers Lorena ASAP unless you intend to self publish… Good luck with it.

Thanks Pat! I have found an interested publisher and the rep has asked for the entire manuscript so fingers crossed they like it.

Writing a book ? I think printing and publication through a renowned publisher, requires extra investment, which I am not willing to make at all. Is there a cheaper way of publishing your work as a book? paper bags version ? any ideas/suggestions ??

You can always publish your own book using a platform like kindle. Thesis Whisperer has a post about how to do this.

thank you for your timely feedback. Most appreciated!

ok thanks ..

I don’t know if I should publish my work, but still this is a good read! I get that the examiners’ job is to read every detail of the dissertation but I’ve heard instances where examiners don’t actually read the content and just skim through, then make their comments based on what they saw. How true is that?

id hope not at all. i usually hear the reverse – about how long it takes!

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Kindly inform me of other projects that are aimed at turning thesis into a book for inputs and suggestions. Regards Don

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Reblogged this on Phambichha's Blog and commented: Great advice to turn my thesis to book, focusing on differences between thesis and book on purpose and readership

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Pingback: thesis to journal article -where’s the paper? | patter

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I am considering self-publishing my thesis paper on Art Education. I did interviews for the bulk of my research. I was wondering to publish do I need permission to publish the names and interviews I already did???

You need to stick to the ethical permissions you negotiated before interview. It is usual to anonymise people so they aren’t recognised. If you didn’t have any permissions beforehand yes you should get them now.

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Turning your Thesis/Dissertation into a Book

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Genesis Global Publication is rapidly growing book publishing platforms that publish books in different areas like Science, Technology, Fiction & Fantasy, Conference Proceeding etc. Our objective is to help every new writer to give their idea an identity in the form of book. We ensure that every new writer get the recognition and rewards that they deserve and the opportunity to play a significant role in the global community. Our mission is to provide the online platform to all authors to convert their stories and ideas into books.

Genesis Global Publication accepts UG, Master's, and PhD thesis/ Dissertation for online publication as a book with a unique ISBN. Submit your Final Project Report and have your work recognised by a global audience.

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Note : When a thesis incorporates unique unpublished work, it should not be deemed prior publication, according to COPE criteria. As a result, even if material is publicly available in university repositories and a Creative Commons licence may or may not apply, it is allowed to be published as a manuscript or a monograph in a journal.

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Turning Your PhD Thesis Into a Book

"A book is what happens later, once you’ve grown past the dissertation,” said Dominic Boyer, a Cornell University Press series editor, “when one argument rises out of the analytics and becomes something on which you can build an intellectual agenda. Books are driven by arguments, not by constellations of analytics. But the only way to get to a good argument is to experiment and fail a lot in the dissertation and post-dissertation process” ( as cited in Hughes, 2018 ).

Before we discuss the steps of transforming your thesis to a book, there are some things to consider beforehand to ascertain whether going down that route is your best option. Since PhD work is often specific in scope, there are different factors to consider before publication. Depending on the scope of your topic, you may want to look into just using a few parts of your dissertation in a book, or you may want to collaborate with other researchers in the field to contribute to a collection of research in that field or topic. If your aim is to publish your PhD work into a full-length book, however, then there are different considerations to have in mind. These are things that a potential publisher would also be looking at, with the main aim to connect the author’s work with their readers. The relationship between writers and authors and the connection they may have are what publishing companies value. The first question would be whether the book would be of interest to a broader audience in the context of the specific publisher. Then, publishers would consider if the work’s quality is high, especially if the publisher’s audience is made up of scholars, researchers, and experts in the field. Finally, since a research thesis requires peer review and detailed analysis of its findings and conclusions, a similar process is to be expected for the book. That is why the publisher will be asking whether the work can hold up to the demands of a review by researchers and experts in the field ( Elsevier, n.d. ).

To start with, you will need to consider your audience. If you are publishing a book, you must know who you are directing your work to. “You need to jailbreak your research from the library and make it accessible to the largest potential audience,” said Hamideh Iraj (n.d.)., an MA in Information Technology who turned her master’s thesis into a book. “First, ask yourself who this wider audience is and why they would be interested in your research. They might be industry leaders, managers, researchers, students, university professors, or self-learners. To make your research accessible to them, you might need to reconfigure the main theme of your thesis.” After determining who you want your audience to be and reconfigure your thesis into a central theme that fits that audience, you will need to find a publishing house that specifically serves this audience.

Now that you have found an appropriate publishing house, you’re going to have to write a book proposal. You will need to contextualize by adding international or interdisciplinary context, if the research is of narrow scope, especially in the introductory and concluding chapters (Clague, 2017). A book proposal will, according to writer Tanya Golash-Boza, “briefly [contain] 1) a summary of the book that outlines the main argument, 2) a one-paragraph summary of each chapter, 3) a timeline for completion of the book manuscript, 4) a brief description of the target audience and potential classes for course adoption, and 5) the competing literature. Usually, these are short documents” ( as cited in Hughes, 2018 ).

Also, you will need to keep an eye out for predatory publishing mills, since not all publishers will have your best interests at heart. A good predictor would be if the publisher asked for the information mentioned above. It is more likely that they are legit publishers if they did. It is also noteworthy to mention that anyone who promises to publish your thesis book proposal without any changes is highly suspect. You should seek out legitimate academic publishers and you need to position yourself to have them find you. Although some publishers use institutional repositories, such as college directories, to find potential books, you can take initiative by nudging the process along. This could be done by engaging with people at conferences and mentioning the idea or starting a blog.

Things to keep in mind when finalizing a book are the factors that make a good book: 1) A concise and memorable title that uses keywords will help make the book intriguing. 2) Since the number of readers of a book are greater than dissertation readers, the more general your topic is, the more engagement you will get. 3) In a dissertation, you authority as an author must be proven, but as a book writer, it is assumed. Make sure to play that advantage. 4) While dissertations usually contain extensive documentation to prove authority, books document to credit sources and help the reader. 5) Keep in mind that dissertations can run long, but books are often far shorter ( Hagman, n.d. ).

eContent Pro offers both editorial services , such as copy editing & proofreading, and publishing services that include libraries and open access organizations, university presses and commercial publishing houses and academic and research individuals. By using eContent Pro’s services, you can be confident that you are well-equipped to turn the dissertation that you had put so much time and invaluable effort into a successful book that will propel your professional and academic career to great heights.

To learn more about eContent Pro, visit the website here or email [email protected].

Clague, Terry (2017, August 1). “A thesis is written for examiners, an academic book for scholars in general” – the basics of writing a book from your PhD. LSE Blog. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/08/01/a-thesis-is-written-for-examiners-an-academic-book-for-scholars-in-general-the-basics-of-writing-a-book-from-your-phd/
Elsevier (n.d.). Converting your PhD Thesis into a Book in Five Steps Elsevier. https://scientific-publishing.webshop.elsevier.com/manuscript-preparation/converting-phd-thesis-into-book-five-steps/
Hagman, Lorri (n.d.). Turning Your Dissertation into a Book. University of Washington Graduate School. https://grad.uw.edu/for-students-and-post-docs/core-programs/mentoring/mentor-memos/turning-your-dissertation-into-a-book/
Hughes, Joanna (2018, Dec. 18). Five Tips for Turning Your PhD Thesis Into a Book. Keystone PhD Studies. https://www.phdstudies.com/article/five-tips-for-turning-your-phd-thesis-into-a-book/
Iraj, Hamideh (n.d.). Guest Post: How to Turn Your MA or PHD Thesis into a Popular Book. The Scholarpreneur. http://thescholarpreneur.com/guest-post-how-to-turn-your-ma-or-phd-thesis-into-a-popular-book/

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Analytical Methods

A crispr/cas12a-based fluorescence method for the amplified detection of total antioxidant capacity †.

* Corresponding authors

a Key Laboratory of Quality and Safety Control of Citrus Fruits, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Southwest University, Chongqing, P. R. China E-mail: [email protected] Fax: +86-23-68349046 Tel: +86-23-68349046

b National Citrus Engineering Research Center, Citrus Research Institute, Southwest University, Chongqing, P. R. China

The CRISPR/Cas12a system is a powerful signal amplification tool that has been widely used in nucleic acid detection. It has also been applied to the assay of non-nucleic acid targets, mainly relying on strategies for converting target determination into nucleic acid detection. Herein, we describe a CRISPR/Cas12a-based fluorescence method for sensitive detection of the total antioxidant capacity (TAC) by utilizing a strategy of converting TAC determination into Mn 2+ detection. Specifically, the reduction of MnO 2 nanosheets by antioxidants produces plenty of Mn 2+ , which accelerates the trans -cleavage activity of CRISPR/Cas12a. Thus, a fluorescence enhanced detection method for TAC was established, with a detection limit as low as 0.04 mg L −1 for a typical antioxidant, ascorbic acid. More importantly, this method has been proven to successfully analyze TAC in beverages. The excellent analytical performance of this method demonstrates the great potential of the CRISPR/Cas12a system in simple and sensitive TAC analysis.

Graphical abstract: A CRISPR/Cas12a-based fluorescence method for the amplified detection of total antioxidant capacity

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A CRISPR/Cas12a-based fluorescence method for the amplified detection of total antioxidant capacity

Q. Wu, L. Xie, L. Ma, X. Long, L. Liu, A. Chen, Y. Cui, Y. Zhang and Y. He, Anal. Methods , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4AY01150C

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(PDF) Converting Dissertation into Book
HOW TO CONVERT YOUR THESIS/DISSERTATION INTO A PUBLISHABLE BOOK
Thesis to Book Convert
Thesis to Book Convert

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Converting your thesis into a book
How to turn your thesis into a book
How to convert PhD Thesis into a Book
How to convert Thesis to a Paper
Converting your thesis into a book: reproducing third party material
Turning a thesis into a book

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Convert your thesis into a book
Convert your thesis into a book. This how to guide takes you through everything you need to know to convert your thesis into a book. You can read all the information you need below, or watch this video from Books Commissioning Editor, Katy Mathers. Consider the level of conversion. What are book publishers looking for.
Turning your PhD into a successful book
Converting the entire PhD thesis into a book requires that your thesis covers a topic of interest to a large enough audience of scholars. Whereas a thesis starts with a question, a book begins with an answer and communicates its importance in the wider research landscape, tracing its evolution and impact. ...
How to Turn Your Dissertation Into a Book: A Step-By ...
Step 1: Identify your audience. Publishers are businesses that make money by selling books. This is true of "trade" publishers that sell books for the general public, and "academic" publishers that sell books primarily for students and scholars. Therefore, in order for a publisher to consider publishing your book, there must be a sufficiently ...
9 Effective Tips for Publishing Thesis As a Book
Once you establish your target audience, figure out the nature of book they would like to read. 2. Determine the Objective of Your Book. Reflect on the scope of your book and the impact it would have on your target audience. Perhaps it can be used as a textbook or supplementary for one or more courses.
How to Turn your Dissertation into a Book
However, let's say that you do want to convert your thesis into a publishable book, here are the general steps of this exciting undertaking: Find your match. Build your confidence. Get down to the nitty gritty. Pitch your work. Respond and revise. 1. Find Your Match.
Turning Your PhD Thesis Into a Book: A Publisher's Top Tips
1. A Statement of Aims. Briefly and concisely state the main themes and objectives of the proposed book: 1-2. Provide a concise (150-200 words) and compelling abstract for the book. 2. A Detailed Synopsis, Including Chapter Summaries. Proposed table of contents with chapter titles and subheads. List chapter headings and provide at least one ...
From thesis to Published Book: Transforming Academic Research into a
The cost of publishing a PhD thesis as a book can vary widely depending on several factors, such as the publisher, the length of the book, the number of copies printed, the type of printing, and the marketing budget. If you decide to self-publish your book, you will need to cover all the costs associated with publishing, such as editing ...
Turning Thesis into a Book
Turning a thesis into a book means more than simply printing and binding your thesis as is. Neither will it be a quick touch up or superficial revision. ... Additional resources on converting your thesis into a book: Harman, E. (2003). The thesis and the book: A guide for first-time academic authors. Toronto: University of Toronto Press ...
Publish Your Thesis as a Book with ISBN & DOI
Step 1. Send the following details (compiled in a single pdf file) to [email protected]. 1. Author's updated CV. 2. Supervisor's detail (Name, designation, affiliation, email id/mobile number); we may contact the supervisor for verification. 3. Scanned copy of the thesis approval certificate. 4.
Turning Your Dissertation into a Book
Dissertations are highly specialized, while books are geared to general readers. Dissertation audiences are usually fewer than 100 readers — books are about 500 or more, in general. In a dissertation, the author's authority must be proven; in books, it is assumed. Dissertations contain extensive documentation (to prove authority), while ...
How to turn your thesis into a book
To summarise: • Time to do the PhD and write the thesis: 3 years. • Time to start a PhD and be awarded: 4 years. • Time from being awarded a PhD, being told by contacts that the thesis should be a book. and getting a book contract: 2 years and 2 months. • Time from signing the contract to the book's release: 4 months.
My Top Five Tips for Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book-A Special
Here are my top five tips for turning your dissertation into a book with a focus on thesis editing: Refine Your Argument: In the transition from dissertation to book, ensure your central argument is clear, compelling, and well-supported. Use thesis editing techniques to tighten your thesis statement, streamline your arguments, and eliminate any ...
Converting your thesis into a book
In this video, Katy Mathers, Books Commissioning Editor for Sociology at Emerald, discusses everything you need to know to convert your thesis into a book. ...
How to Turn Your Thesis into a Book
Transforming a thesis into a book requires re-evaluating and restructuring the content for a more narrative-driven approach. Academic writing tends to be dense and technical, while general readers expect an engaging story and relatable concepts. ... The goal is to convert technical content into an intriguing narrative that draws readers in.
PDF From Dissertation to Book
book. Others are making a transition from having written more on the paper side, and are thinking about how you could convert those ideas into a book length manuscript. I've written three books. I fall in the second camp. I'm a statistician, so I'm primarily a paper person. But the task of writing a book is a daunting one.
How do I convert my PhD dissertation so that it can be published as a book?
As a partial answer, Springer used to publish (theoretically) outstanding PhD thesis in Mathematics in its 'Lecture notes in Mathematics' as research monograph. However I do not know how many of the published volumes are Phd thesis. Definitely a (math) thesis requires a lot of polishing and rewriting before publishing.
How to turn your PhD into a book
Step Two: make contact with a potential publisher. Locating an academic publisher is actually a lot simpler than most people think: just look at the spines of the books on yourself and do some Googling. Unlike mass market publishing, where people rely on agents, academic publishing is still a 'cold call' proposition.
Publish Your Thesis as a Book with ISBN
Convert the Entire Ph.D. into a Book: You can consider this option if your thesis covers a wide area of interest and concern; proves its relevance to a broad audience and propose a solution or alternative. Publish Part of Your Thesis as a Book: This option can be considered if parts of research are ongoing or awaiting results.
Should You Turn Your Dissertation Into a Book?
David Plunkert for The Chronicle. For many early career scholars in the humanities and social sciences, it's just a given: You turn your dissertation into a book. Not only that, but you begin ...
Turning Your Thesis Into A Book
Paperback. $29.99. But rewriting a thesis is not simply a matter of making revisions to existing text. Here are some tips and tricks to help turn your thesis into a book (or perhaps a manuscript you can submit to publishers - including us ). An original thesis should be regarded as the basis for an entirely new work, written with a new ...
turning your thesis into a book
Posted on September 23, 2013 by pat thomson. Lots of people want to turn their thesis into a book. This is not always possible - not all theses make good books. But it may also not be desirable. Some disciplines revere the scholarly monograph so writing one may be very good for the career. But others hold the peer reviewed journal article as ...
Publish Thesis with ISBN
Genesis Global Publication accepts UG, Master's, and PhD thesis/ Dissertation for online publication as a book with a unique ISBN. Submit your Final Project Report and have your work recognised by a global audience. Publication Charges 7999 Rs. (Indian Author) or 125 US$ (Foreign Author) Topics & Areas Covered: Multidisciplinary.
Turning Your PhD Thesis Into a Book
Things to keep in mind when finalizing a book are the factors that make a good book: 1) A concise and memorable title that uses keywords will help make the book intriguing. 2) Since the number of readers of a book are greater than dissertation readers, the more general your topic is, the more engagement you will get.
A CRISPR/Cas12a-based fluorescence method for the amplified detection
The CRISPR/Cas12a system is a powerful signal amplification tool that has been widely used in nucleic acid detection. It has also been applied to the assay of non-nucleic acid targets, mainly relying on strategies for converting target determination into nucleic acid detection. Herein, we describe a CRISPR/Cas12a-b