How To Publish Your Thesis Into A Book In 4 Steps

Completing your thesis is a seminal moment in your life. It represents your Magnum Opus. It’s your contribution to knowledge. After completing it, it’s hard to imagine that it will probably sit on a shelf and not contribute to humanity as much as you would like.

You might be wondering how to publish your thesis to a wider audience. It’s not as hard as it may seem. You can solve this by publishing your thesis as a book.

In 4 doable steps, you can turn your thesis into a book that people can get their hands on.

Reconfigure Your Thesis

A thesis may resemble a book in length and depth, but it’s not a book. One of the first tasks in PhD thesis publication is to reconfigure your thesis to be more like a book.

When you begin reconfiguring your thesis, you need to first determine what market you want your book to appeal to. Are you focused on fellow academics? Do you want it to be used as a resource in undergraduate courses? Do you want to appeal to those who are trying to expand their knowledge in the subject?

Once you have your target market in mind, you can proceed with reconfiguring your thesis. It may require you to remove certain chapters, change chapter order, merge chapters, and split chapters. As you begin this part, you’ll probably want to get help from someone who has experience publishing a thesis as a book. It’s important to know just how your material needs to flow to meet your target audience.

Edit Your Thesis

After you have a reconfigured your thesis, you can figure out the editing that you need. Again, your target market for your book is going to be different than for your thesis. You’ll need to ensure that your book resonates with people and is easily understood. This is probably the toughest step in turning your thesis into a book, but using a thesis editing service can make it much easier.

Changing the wording is a first step in editing your thesis. This goes hand in hand with improving reading ease. You’ll want to define words in the text or use simple to understand words.

For example, while it’s perfectly acceptable and standard to say that you used Stata 9.0 for analysis, it’s not commonly known outside of academia what Stata 9.0 is. Saying that you use the commercial statistical analysis program Stata 9.0 is easier to understand.

Sentence structure should be changed as well. Flesch–Kincaid readability tests are used to determine different reading levels of texts. The formula to determine level is dependent on the number of syllables used and the number of words in each sentence. Sometimes it’s difficult to use shorter words, but breaking up large sentences can be very effective at making your text more readable. Again, a thesis proofreading service has the expertise and knowledge to make this task easier for you.

Find a Publisher

Once you have finished editing your thesis, you are ready to find a publisher. While some publishers will provide editing services, it’s much better to edit before submitting to the publisher. This greatly enhances the chance that the publisher will publish your thesis since it’s closer to publication status.

First, you need to ask your professors about who you might get your thesis published. Your university might either have a university press that can handle your book or they might have a publisher that they regularly deal with. While this is generally a good start, it’s not the only research you should do. Depending on your market, you may or may not want to go with one of the suggested publishers.

Your target market will often determine what kind of publisher can best handle your publication. Search the internet and find publishers in your subject area that publish books for your target market. Look for small publishers who are open to niche books.

Failing this, you can always look into self-publishing. With a fully edited book ready to go and an idea of how to market your book, self-publishing can be a very good idea. Most of the work has already been done and there are many on-demand publishers who get your book quickly in print. Many of them will even make your book available on Amazon.

Promote Your Book

One of the last things you’ll want to do is to promote your book to your target audience. You can start by opening a blog, posting about your book on social media, and reaching out to people who are in your target market.

For example, if your goal is to be a resource for undergraduate courtesy, start contacting professors and share your book with them. Oftentimes, your publisher will handle the bulk of your marketing, but you have a stake in it as well.

These four steps, from reconfiguring and editing your thesis to finding a publisher and promoting your book, will help you know how to publish a thesis as a book. You can make your thesis be what you designed it to be: an important contribution to knowledge.