Three Important Issues to Consider as You Revise Your Dissertation into a Book
I’ve written about this topic before, but the more I work with authors at this stage, the more I notice common challenges. Revising your dissertation into a book is not easy! So in this post, I discuss three of the major differences between books and dissertations and provide some tips about how to move forward with your book manuscript.
You need an overarching argument: Dissertations are often written quickly and their chapters are often written discretely. It’s common for graduate students to be rushed in their writing so they do not have the time or headspace to really figure out what argument links the material together.
As you transition your manuscript into a book, you will need a book-level argument. This is a broad argument that is big enough that it needs two-hundred pages to develop it and support it. It’s an argument that people could (might) disagree with and one that will ideally be generative for other scholars, in that it gives them something to build upon in their own work.
As you think through the argument for your book, you might start by brainstorming about what is new about your material. What does it help readers to understand that they might not have before? What problem or gap in the literature does it respond to? What does it do that is new as compared to other work that you have read? Your argument will be responding to gaps or problems like this.
The go back to the manuscript and read it again. Take note in a separate document or on a paper of the various arguments that it contains. Then play around with them. How do they group together? Is there a broad argument that encompasses the smaller (chapter-level) arguments of the book? If so, does that relate to the gap and/or problems you have identified? If not, how can you revise the potential arguments to form a broad argument that drives the book?
This can be time-consuming work. If you are feeling stuck or want more guidance, consider working through the Dissertation-to-Book Workbook, which has helpful exercises to guide you through this work. It also can be useful to talk through your thoughts about argument with someone else, such as a colleague or a developmental editor or writing coach. Sometimes saying things aloud and responding to others’ questions brings clarity.
Once you have a working argument, write it on a post-it and stick it up where you write to help guide your work. Revise it as necessary.
Your chapters need to build on each other. It’s very possible that the chapters in your dissertation were also not terribly linked by argument. It might be that they functioned as case studies, with each using varying material to basically reiterate the same argument. It might be that they responded to fairly different arguments, so were more connected by their content.
But for a book, your chapters need to be interrelated and they need to build on each other. Each ideally should contribute to your overarching argument in a slightly different way than the one before and in a way that it could not have done if those previous chapters were not already doing the work they did.
To test whether this is happening in your manuscript, take some time and go over your chapters again, pulling out their overarching arguments. Now consider these arguments together. How do they relate to each other? Do they build on each other? How do they work together? Also think about each chapter in relation to your overarching argument. How do they relate to that? Are there any that don’t that you might need to rework or discard? Are there some that do, but that overlap? If so, should those chapters be combined or reworked?
Another test is to try and shuffle the order of your chapters. Does this affect the book? If not, you need to do more work on the chapters and their arguments.
In working on conceptualizing how the chapters fit together, you might think of an upward sloping line. The line represents the overarching argument. The earlier chapters fall near the lower point of the line. Each contributes some information that helps begin to build and support the book’s larger argument. The following chapters take the argument a bit higher, partly because they can build on information that was presented in earlier chapters. The final chapter can do more than all of the other chapters since it has the luxury of coming after them . Try drawing this line on a large piece of paper and then brainstorm your chapters beneath it, mapping what each one adds to the story you are telling. Making this a more visual process may help to you brainstorm about how the pieces could best fit together.
Audience matters: This is not to say that audience didn’t matter in your dissertation! It did, but it was likely a very narrow audience (your committee!). This is a strange kind of writing. You know that committee member A loves Hegel; better include some Hegel. You know that committee member B loves dense ethnographic description; better be sure to throw in some of that. Committee member C hates anything quantitative; better limit such discussions!
Your book, however, needs to speak to more than four people. While academic publishers don’t expect that your book will become a best seller, they do expect you to be able to make a compelling case about who will read it and then they expect you to write for these people.
As you begin thinking about audience, I suggest that you be specific. Most books do not appeal to a broad discipline (i.e. philosophers), but rather to subsets of disciplines (i.e. cognitive philosophers). So take some time and start defining who you see as your core audience. Unless the book is truly interdisciplinary, this will likely be one group. They are the people who you will most want to focus on when you write. (Thanks to William Germano who has shaped my thinking on audience! For more discussion, see William Gemano’s Getting it Published, pp 5-7 in the third edition).
Then think about other potential academic audiences. Which other disciplines/subfields of disciplines might be interested in your work? What do you need to do to ensure that your work appeals to them? For example, I had intended for my book to appeal to scholars of gender studies, but I didn’t ultimately include much discussion of gender-oriented literature or go deeply into what my book added to such discussion. Doing so would have taken some time, but it also would have expanded my audience. You don’t need many other audiences, but having one to three other groups who you think your work will reach is generally a good idea.
Finally, consider whether you hope for students or general-educated readers to read your book. It’s not necessary to have either of these groups as target audiences, but if you do, it will shape your writing. For example, if you intend for the book to be adopted in undergraduate classrooms, be sure you explain theoretical concepts and don’t assume readers have a broad background knowledge of the topics that you are discussing.
I like to suggest that you imagine a kind, thoughtful, critical reader to stand-in for each of your audiences and then write to those people. Perhaps write their names on a post-it note and stick it up by your desk (right next to that argument post-it!). Doing so can help make writing feel more concrete and makes it easier to consider what you need to do for each of your audiences.
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There are other differences between dissertations and books, but these are some of the broadest conceptual differences. Spend time thinking about them early and often and return to them through your revision processes. Try not to get frustrated if you are not completely sure of your answers; you probably shouldn’t fully know them yet! The important point is to be reflecting on these issues and refining how each works in the book as you go. Happy writing and thinking!
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