As writers, authors or potential authors, we have all been there. The blank page, the
gargantuan task of putting our ideas down on paper, the screen, the tablet, whatever your
chosen medium. If we want to write a book, we wonder how on earth we will get from the
first sentence to the finish line. In the case of a PhD or dissertation, the situation is a little
different. We already have the initial body of work, have slaved and agonised over it,
received painful feedback, run the gauntlet of a viva or thesis defence and survived, albeit
scarred, and now want to turn the magnum opus into a published — or publishable — book.
Where to start? Shall we release this tome immediately, or invest more effort?
For many of us, revisiting the thesis to do more work on it and revise it substantially with a
view to a different audience may seem overwhelming. However, it is usually a necessary step
in the publishing process. You may be embarking on this having already secured a publishing
contract, or you may be revising before you submit the book for review. Either way, the
following are pointers to help you navigate this exciting path toward what could be a
reinvention of your existing work.
Aims
It is important to distinguish between the aims of a thesis or dissertation and those of a book.
While a thesis is a demonstration of your ability to research, parse arguments and create a
coherent line of argumentation, proving or exploring a central thesis, a book has a different
context and potential audience. In a book, you want your readers to be interested in your
point of view and you do not have to demonstrate the gamut of proof in quite the same way
as in a thesis.
That does not mean you should make unsubstantiated claims, particularly in an academic
book, but there is more leeway for your own opinion, your own style of writing and for
drawing conclusions earlier than you might have done in a thesis. In some ways, a book
begins with the conclusion rather than ends with it. You know where you are going. Rather
than making your reader wait until the final chapter to discover what you have established,
you can allow your central argument to shape the book from the outset.
Identify Your Audience
One of the key questions for any author is: Who is going to read my book? Who is my
potential audience? This is certainly the case when converting a thesis into a book, and it is
something your prospective publisher will want to know.
Does your book have an interdisciplinary focus? What are its key subject domains? Will it be
of interest to researchers, academics or students? Could it be used to teach students on
specific courses? Could there be a professional or practitioner audience outside academia?
Try to be specific. “Academics and students” encompasses rather a lot of people. Which
academics? Which students? In which disciplines? At what level?
Thinking carefully about your readership will also help you make decisions about terminology, theoretical density,
chapter structure and the amount of background information you need to provide.
Rethink the Title
Yes, I know, you may be attached to your thesis title, and it accurately describes your
research. However, no matter how much it resonates, now is the time to reconsider it,
preferably before you revise the book substantially, as a title can help guide you in the
direction of the chapter structure and the line of argumentation.
Diverse perspectives exist, and sometimes the title emerges organically from the text.
Personally, I feel the title serves as a strong guiding force, so it is worth really considering the
main theme or themes of your potential book and then creating a title that you can live with
but that also serves several purposes.
You want to clearly signal what the book is about. You want it to be discoverable online. You
may want it to hit a particular subject field or discipline such as comparative literature or
psychoanalysis. An academic publisher will pay close attention to the title and may suggest
rewording or inverting it to make sure it will be discoverable in searches.
Think of keywords associated with your research, topic or special interest and work these into
the title. It does not have to be the most elegant or mysterious of titles, but it should
accurately situate your work and, if possible, show your contribution to a field of knowledge.
Rethink the Methodology Section
One of the key steps in reworking your material may be to cut out, reduce or reframe the
methodology section of your thesis. This is where you showed the examiners that you
effectively know how to research. Your prospective readers are not judging you according to
quite the same criteria.
They want to be interested in what you have to say and, where relevant, how you came to
believe or think something; you do not necessarily have to take them through a step-by-step
guide to how you arrived at every conclusion.
This will of course depend on the discipline. In some books, methodology remains central to
the argument and should not simply disappear. But ask yourself whether you really need a
discrete methodology chapter or whether the material could be shortened, incorporated into
the introduction or introduced at relevant points throughout the book.
Even if you do keep the methodology section, try to rewrite it from a livelier perspective than
a laying down of facts, and reconsider long quotations that privilege others’ voices over your
own.
Develop a Stronger Authorial Voice
This has to be one of the most important points to consider when writing a book or
converting your thesis into one. Readers want to hear your opinions, your thoughts, your
conclusions, not only those of others.
Of course, this is not strictly speaking true in the sense of imparting knowledge about your
subject of research, which may involve extensive engagement with the work of specific
authors, psychoanalysts, philosophers, theorists or researchers. Nonetheless, readers want to
engage with your particular perspective. Bring this to the fore as much as possible.
When writing a thesis, we become used to writing in a certain measured, scientific, almost
personality-free style. This is the opportunity to let your style shine, to state your position
more confidently, to let your real intellectual investment and, where appropriate, even your
own personal experience come to light.
You can write a balanced research-based book and still bring yourself into the picture. At
least, I am coming from the perspective of psychoanalysis, where subjectivity is privileged as
the lens through which we view the world and there is an acceptance that we cannot entirely
avoid taking a subjective slant on a subject.
So how do we achieve this authorial voice?
Fundamentally, rethink long quotations you may have from other scholars, authors and
researchers and try to place your own thinking around or in place of these quotations. Always
try to comment on them from your own point of view. If you need to keep them, shorten or
paraphrase where possible. Some publishers will also discourage or restrict epigraphs at the
beginning of chapters, particularly where copyright permissions may be required, so this is
another area worth reconsidering.
