Turn Your Dissertation into a Published Book

In this episode, Dr. Sheena Howard shares her personal journey of converting her dissertation into an award-winning book, "Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation." Learn a practical, collaborative method that not only eases your workload but also enriches your content by involving other scholars and practitioners. This approach makes your book highly attractive to academic publishers. Gain valuable insights on how to craft a compelling call for proposals (CFP) to gather contributions, ensuring your work offers something new and meaningful to the academic community.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And I wanted to learn more about Black comics. The other contributors were able to take deep dives in different aspects of what I was already writing anyway, and anybody can do this, and academic publishers love edited books. They're super easy to pitch and get published, as long as you have a idea that's adding something new into the world. I don't want my work to be stuck behind an academic paywall. I want to leave a legacy, I want to reach my potential and I want to change lives. This podcast, power your Research, is my attempt to help the smartest people in the world do that very thing. My hope is that you use the lessons I share to make more money than what your higher ed job can ever pay you. I've done it, my clients have done it, and so can you. My hope is that you'll apply what you learn here and one day join the Power your Research program where you can work with me one-on-one. I help academics and educators increase their visibility, authority and income without the expense of a publicist, and I'm just recording this quick video to talk to you about how to turn your dissertation into a book. And if you are interested in translating your dissertation into a book, I have an easy method for you. This is the way I published my first book and my first book did very, very well. So, particularly for those of you who may be trying to think about how to publish your first book and you have a PhD, you did the dissertation, or maybe you're on your second book and you still feel like, hey, I want to turn this dissertation into a book, this easy method might work for you. Now, of course, there are lots of ways to turn your dissertation into a book. This is just the method that I have used successfully, and so the first thing is do an edited book. So an edited book is a book in which you write one chapter, maybe two. You write the introduction to the book and then you get other scholars and practitioners to write chapters in your book. That way, you are not writing an entire book, you are just facilitating the book and you are the editor, and this is how I published my first book Black Comics Politics of Race and Representation. Now you might be asking well, how does that translate into what I did with my dissertation? Well, my first book was on the void and gap I saw in the academic literature when I was doing my dissertation, and so for one of the chapters that I wrote in that book, I took a section of my dissertation and plopped it into the edited book as my chapter. Of course I had to add things, change some things around, put it into book format so it fit into the book. But I already had the background research in my dissertation and I put that into the book as a chapter. I already had background knowledge of the book, so writing the introduction was super easy. Writing the introduction to the edited book was super easy because I just did an entire dissertation on that and because I realized that I didn't know everything about my topic and I wanted to learn more about Black comics. The other contributors were able to take deep dives in different aspects of what I was already writing anyway, and anybody can do this, and academic publishers love edited books. They're super easy to pitch and get published as long as you have a idea that's adding something new into the world. Hey, everyone, real quick.

Speaker 1: 4:09

I don't run any ads on this podcast, so I have to rely on word of mouth. If this podcast has helped you in any way, please share it with a friend and follow me, dr Sheena Howard, on LinkedIn, where I give more free content on building your brand as an academic. If you tell me you came to my LinkedIn from the podcast, I'll make sure I accept your request. If you decide that you want to do an edited book in that way, you're going to put together a CFP, which is a call for proposals, and a CFP is just. You know it has a lot of different details in it. I coach people on this, but you know it basically talks about what the book is about. It asks anybody if they want to contribute, it has the deadlines of when people should submit abstracts and when the final chapters will be due, and the CFP is how you're going to get the contributors to write chapters for your edited book. And then, once you have the proposal and a sample chapter attached to your proposal and your sample chapter will be the chapter that you write most likely, and you know the different people that are going to be contributing to your book you type up little brief descriptions of what each chapter is going to be about, and then you go out to academic publishers and pitch your proposal to them, and so I hope this quick and easy method helps you publish your first book based off of your dissertation.

Speaker 1: 5:37

This is what I did. It still works. I've written several edited books. I love it because I don't know everything about the things I'm talking about, and I love to see other scholars and academics take deep dives into different aspects of a topic that I care about. And you know what. You should try it All right. So again, my name is Dr Sheena Howard. I'm the founder of Power, your Research, an academic branding company. I'm here to help you increase your visibility, authority and income without the expense of a publicist. Jump on a free call with me. I'd love to meet you.