ADVICE FROM OUR EDITORS

REVISING THE DISSERTATION INTO A MONOGRAPH

WHY do I need to revise my dissertation?

Your dissertation will need significant reworking to be considered publishable by most academic
presses. Exceptions may occur when a doctoral student, usually with a publishing track record, has
planned for book publication from the outset.
Certain types of arguments lend themselves to publication in either book or journal form. For
example, an historical study in which conclusions emerge from the narrative, or an attempt to
push a particular debate further through the close reading of texts, may require 80,000 words for
development; while a single conclusion reached by or proven through primary research may be
much more effectively presented in 10,000 words.

WHO is the audience of my work?

You need to think about who you are writing for, as the audience for a monograph is different to
the audience for your dissertation.
A PhD thesis is a sophisticated test of research abilities and is aimed at an audience of your
supervisor, examiners and immediate colleagues. A monograph is aimed at a broader audience of
academics and researchers and the approach should change accordingly.

WHEN should I begin rewriting my thesis?

The process of rewriting is almost always more difficult and time-consuming than authors imagine. Typically,
a minimum of 12 months’ work is needed – however it has been known to take five years or more! You
may want to jump right into revisions after your committee accepts your dissertation, but we advise giving
yourself a bit of time and space so that you return to the project fresh and invigorated. Most academic
publishers will only consider fully revised dissertations. Once you’ve completed revisions and a press has
expressed interest, be prepared to go through another round of revision after a peer review process.

Palgrave Macmillan accepts proposals based on dissertations, even when those

dissertations have been made available in online repositories. To be considered ready
for publication, those dissertations must have been significantly revised. To help with
this revision our editors have put together the following advice...
HOW do I revise my dissertation?
Consider your audience
• Look closely at the books you have found most persuasive and engaging and identify what
makes them successful.
• Keep your audience in mind constantly. Most monographs are specialized books and have
a fairly targeted audience. Spend some time thinking through the possible readers in your
audience and then revise with them in mind.
• Do not assume that readers will be as familiar with the literature as you are. Illustrate your
points with examples and provide context.
• The introductory chapter should be the reader’s way in to the argument. It must be accessible,
compelling, and clearly state the aims of the book.
Look at your approach
• Make sure your book’s title and the table of contents offers a clear and descriptive roadmap to
the book.
• Think about the narrative flow of the book and make it as cohesive as possible. Many PhDs have
a more ‘stop-start’ approach, in which a point is made and then backed up with evidence. It may
be possible to reduce some of this evidence, or to confine it to endnotes. The organizational
structure is very important to the success of the final book.
• In general you should aim to cut out or significantly reduce your review of the literature. Instead,
relevant literature should be cited at appropriate points throughout the text.
• Substantial methodology sections should be omitted. You may discuss your methodology in the
introduction or opening chapter of the book, or talk about it briefly as you present your results.
• Add a conclusion that brings together the main points of the book and brings the book to a
definitive close.
Consider the style of your writing
• Make sure that all sentences are clear, coherent, and concise. Animate abstract ideas with active
verbs and only use jargon as a form of necessary short-hand.
• Remember to remove all references to ‘this thesis’ or ‘this dissertation.’ We advise authors
not to mention the book’s origins as a PhD thesis in the preface or acknowledgments, as this
information is often repeated in catalogue listings for the book and it can, unfortunately, be
detrimental to sales.
• During the process of fine-tuning a PhD for publication it can be very valuable to have chapters
read informally by colleagues or other contacts. An external eye can be helpful in pointing out
omissions, suggesting new arguments, and in reassuring you about the quality of the work.
• If English is not your first language, it is highly recommended that you find a native speaker with
expertise in your field to check through the final manuscript.
There are a number of production issues that you should keep in mind
• Be aware that not all illustrations/tables/diagrams are suitable for book publication. These will
need to be negotiated with a publisher.
• Remember that you will need permission to quote copyrighted material. There are resources on
copyright law and permission available on request.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 BOOK PROPOSAL

DOS AND DON’TS

Before submitting a book proposal...

• DO research publishers to decide which are • DON’T propose your PhD thesis – there
most suitable to consider your proposal and needs to be evidence of reworking.
look for what proposal materials they require. • DON’T submit your proposal to numerous
• DO proof-read your proposal. editors – target the most appropriate.

Title/subtitle

• DO be clear – focus on the keywords • DON’T be abstract or obtuse.

that will increase discoverability and
search optimisation.
• DON’T expect to be able to change
your title at the last minute -
bibliographic information about your
book will be fed out to the market well
in advance of publication.

Brief description

• DO aim to grab the reader’s attention. • DON’T assume specialist subject

• DO focus on the following questions: knowledge on the part of the editor
What is the book about? How is it – most editors work across a broad list.
distinctive? What does it offer that other
books don’t? What needs does it satisfy?
 Table of contents/chapter outline

• DO be as detailed as possible (approximately • DON’T restate the chapter outline of your

300 to 400 words per chapter) including the thesis – make sure that you are outlining
introduction and conclusion. the proposed content of your monograph.

Market and competition

• DO look at the market from the • DON’T write ‘there is no competition’ –

publisher’s perspective.
• DO make clear how your proposal relates
to each competing book – how it differs
and how it will extend the debate.
• DO provide evidence of the interest in
your field and include academic and
professional associations.
• DO include existing books from the publisher
to demonstrate awareness of its programme.
this can be translated as ‘there is no market.’
• DON’T assume that ‘a general audience’
will be interested in your proposed book;
most monographs are for an academic
audience and that is appropriate.
• DON’T write disparagingly about
competing books.

Additional information

• DO be realistic about the submission date and • DON’T suggest close colleagues or PhD
expected word count: Do you have a timetable supervisors/examiners as peer reviewers.
for completing the book? What portion of the
manuscript is already completed?
• DO show awareness about copyright and
permissions – think carefully about whether
you really need to include third-party material.
• DO suggest peer reviewers who know
your subject and anticipated markets,
particularly if your research is likely to
appeal to a specific geographical region.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 DEMYSTIFYING THE PEER
REVIEW PROCESS
AT PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

The peer review process is an integral part of academic publishing. Palgrave Macmillan peer reviews
everything published in our academic programme – while our editors know what will suit the
publishing programme and the market, it is important that the quality of the scholarship is
properly vetted by a specialist in the relevant academic community. Peer review is an indispensable
service in the academic community and our peer reviewers are a valuable part of our publishing process.
Peer reviewers are asked to give their opinion on a selection of issues. Some of the questions asked are:
• Does this proposal offer a useful and/or original contribution to the field?
• Does it adequately engage with recent scholarship?
• Does it take existing scholarship forward?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed book?
We ask potential authors to suggest peer reviewers in their proposal. We use these suggestions, as
well as our own pool of peer reviewers, to ensure that we select an appropriate reviewer(s). When
brainstorming potential reviewers, consider the following:
• Does this person have experience working in the research field in question?
• Is this person sufficiently versed and well-respected in your field?
• Does this person have intimate knowledge of the subject in question? If so, can they remain
unbiased in their review?
We work hard at Palgrave Macmillan to make the peer review process as efficient as possible. We
know that authors need feedback quickly and, as a result, we manage review deadlines carefully.
While review times vary according to a book’s peer review needs, most of our potential authors
receive comments in 2-3 months’ time. When a reviewer’s comments are supportive but suggest
revisions to strengthen the project, we accept revised manuscripts for a second round of peer review.

Our goal is to provide constructive feedback

that will result in a better book.
Ultimately, the peer review process is mutually beneficial for our authors, our reviewers, and
our publishing programme. It helps Palgrave Macmillan assess the quality of the project, offers
reviewers an opportunity to play an active role in the developments in their field, and gives the
authors important insight into their projects and how they can be improved.
For additional information on the peer review process at Palgrave, please feel free to contact a
member of our Editorial team.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 GLOSSARY OF

ACADEMIC PUBLISHING TERMS

Basics

Preliminary pages (also ‘Prelims’) – pages at the start of the book numbered in Roman figures (often includes title
page, copyright page, contents page, acknowledgements and preface).
Acknowledgements – personal thanks and formal acknowledgements for permission to reproduce copyright material,
placed in the preliminary pages.
Copyright – legal right created by the law of a country; it grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to the
work’s use and distribution, usually for a limited time.
Permissions – process of getting approval from a copyright holder for the use of third party material for reproduction
in a publication.

Stages of your work

Manuscript – text submitted to the publisher by the author in draft or final form (often abbreviated to ‘ms’). Typescript
may be used interchangeably.
Peer review – process of vetting the quality of the scholarship through a read by a specialist in the subject area.
Copy-editing – detailed work on a typescript to ensure accuracy in spelling, grammar, punctuation, word usage
and citation style.
Proof – document produced by the typesetter to show pages in their final form. This is your chance to check the
accuracy and layout of the typesetting and to finalise your index.
Advance copies – printed books received before the publication date.
Review copy – copies of the book sent to relevant media for use in preparing a review/analysis of the publication.
Print run – number of books to be printed from one order.
Reprint – additional print run of a book after the initial printing, with no changes.
POD (Print on Demand) / MOD (Manufacture on Demand) – technology that allows single copies of a book to be
printed economically, after an order has been received.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 Marketing materials

AN (Advance Notice) – information about your book that is circulated to key customers six to eight months ahead
of publication.
NBL (New Books List) – produced quarterly; a catalogue of all new paperbacks, Palgrave Handbooks, and Palgrave
Pivot titles that we will be publishing in the forthcoming quarter.

Marketing terms

Backlist – term used to describe books that are more than one year old.
Frontlist – books in their first year of publication.
Forward programme – books not yet published but forthcoming.

Formats and publishing options

Edited collection/contributed volume – work where individual chapters are authored separately, and brought
together by an editor.
Monograph – a work on a single specialist subject.
Palgrave Pivot – publishing format at lengths of between 25,000 and 50,000 words, longer than a journal article but
shorter than a monograph.
Palgrave Open – we offer the option to publish open access (OA) research across a variety of formats.
Series – set of books on a similar theme, which are formally grouped. The series will often have a series editor in charge
of commissioning new books for the series and supporting their development.
Textbook – book likely to be used as recommended reading on university courses.
Trade – publishing for the general market, rather than specifically academic, scholarly or professional readers.
Handbook – original survey of the state of a discipline, comprising at least 400 pages of original chapters of 25
contributors or more and intended as a reference work.
FTIP – first time in paperback.
Dual/SIM – simultaneous hardback and paperback publication.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 File types

EPS (.eps) Encapsulated Postscript – file format used to transfer PostScript image information from one programme to another.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – method by which large electronic files can be sent from one destination to another very swiftly.
JPEG (.jpg)/Joint Photographic Experts Group – easily compressed format for graphics files.
PDF (Portable Document Format) – software that reduces the file size in order to make documents more easily transportable.
TIFF (.tif)/Tag Image File Format – file format for the storage of bit-map graphics and scanned images. Useful for
images where quality is important.

Technical information

Artwork – term used to describe the illustrative matter in your book, from basic charts to freehand drawings and photos.
Binding – process of fastening printed sheets together and securing them in either a cover for paperback or a case for hardback.
Blurb – brief description of your book. This term can be used to refer to the text that appears on the back (also known
as ‘back cover copy’) or on the inside cover of a book. It can also refer to other short publicity material, e.g. catalogue
blurb, leaflet blurb, marketing blurb.
Cover copy – text on the jacket of your book (used to refer to both text on the front and back).
Copy – any text used throughout the book or text used on promotional material.
Extent – number of pages in a book.
Font – a typeface.
Format – the size and layout of a book. The most common formats are Demy Octavo (216 x 138), Royal (234 x 156),
and Crown Quarto (246 x 189).
Half-tone – photograph or image.
ISBN (International Standard Book Number) – 13-digit number unique to every publication and which is used to
identify the book.
Justified text – text spaced to reach margin on both sides.
Typesetting – applying specified fonts and page designs to the copyedited typescript, in order to produce a set of
proofs illustrating the final size and style of the published book.
PostScript – page description and programming language; electronically describes the typesetting.
Proofreading – reading a proof copy of a text to detect any errors (undertaken separately after the final typescript has
been copyedited and typeset).
Publishing services – term used to describe the services supplied by the Palgrave Macmillan production department:
copy-editing, typesetting, printing, etc.
Ragged edge/ragged right – text justified to the left hand side with varying line lengths on the right.
Typography – the style of letters; often used when discussing the font or ‘typeface’ on the jacket.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 ADVICE FROM

ANGELIKA BAMMER AND

RUTH-ELLEN BOETCHER JOERES
FOR EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS

Angelika Bammer, Emory University, and Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres, University

of Minnesota, editors of The Future of Scholarly Writing: Critical Interventions
provide advice to ensure that your writing is both effective and sustainable.

What if we thought of our writing as content instead of form, not as a container for
thoughts we are presenting, but as part of the thinking itself? When we think about
what and how we would like to write (as opposed to what and how we are supposed to
write), would we write differently?
These are questions that we ask ourselves as scholars in fields where writing is both
a form of inquiry and a means of presenting our work. While there is no recipe for
good or effective writing, some ways are better than others. It is important to ensure
that your writing is generative, that it allows the intellectual and creative potential of
your work to unfold. Such writing will not only be effective, it will be sustainable. The
following are some ways to proceed:
• Realize that your writing is consequential. It is material, it has effects. Writing does
things, and you are able to do things with it. What do you want your writing to do?
• Imagine writing fearlessly, without the anxiety of getting it wrong. How would you
write if you weren’t afraid to experiment, to try things out, to buck convention when
the convention needs bucking (or uphold it, when you value what it holds)? How would
you write if you dared to say the unpalatable, to tell the truth as you see and think it?
• Writing is a craft: take it seriously. Work with language and explore its possibilities;
see how you can make it work for you. When you craft something, it isn’t about you:
it’s about what you’re making. If you are lazy, cut corners, take the easy way out (like
using clichés instead of thinking things through for yourself or saying what’s popular
so that you will be popular), the quality of your work will be lessened.
• No matter what you are writing about, it is you who stands behind the writing.
Take responsibility for that fact and the corresponding fact that others will be affected
by it. To return to where we began: writing is consequential. It has effects. Consider
what they are. What will your writing do for you and what will it do for others?
And finally, before the intellectual demands of scholarship take all the fun away,
remember that writing is also an art. So while you are busy producing knowledge,
conveying ideas and forging arguments, don’t forget the poetry of it. Or the music of
it. The joy and beauty of it. Think about what a reader hears as they read your words,
writing that asks: are you there, are you listening, I have things to say and I want to
know how you will respond.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 ADVICE FROM

DANIEL VARNDELL
FOR EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS

Daniel Varndell is the author of Hollywood Remakes,

Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox.

After completing and defending my PhD thesis, the question very quickly turned to
the need to publish. Much of the advice I received advocated publishing the thesis as
soon as possible, mainly to catch the REF and thereby enhance the prospect of finding
a job. A monograph is, however, a very different body of work to a thesis. So, rather
than sending out a proposal at once, and simply rewriting a chapter of the thesis to
go with it, I ignored the advice and decided to think of the book as a new project. This
involved taking key concepts from the thesis, but significantly reworking and developing
them. This approach took a long time (three years, post-viva) because the work was
undertaken alongside HPL teaching and summer work, which slowed the project down
considerably. However, the proposal I eventually submitted to Palgrave was a book
proposal, rather than a modified thesis proposal. As such, the submission process
was significantly easier; the project was accepted, a contract issued, and the completed
manuscript took just three months to finish and submit. The book appeared in print just
eight months later (less than a year after I first submitted the proposal.) I have no doubt
that this was because I took that time to develop the project.
I understand that this might be difficult to hear when you’ve recently completed a
PhD, and find that you are competing in a job market that is saturated, and often quite
unstable. The temptation is to try a short cut, and publish the thesis quickly. However, in
taking the time to develop my project beyond the thesis, I found the process of getting
my doctoral research published much easier in the long run. I found that I had a better
sense of what an academic book is (in contrast to a PhD thesis); I had a much more
rounded understanding not only of my subject area, but also of the field into which my
research would be received; and, finally, I gained confidence through liaising with the
editorial staff at Palgrave, who supported me at every turn.
Two months after publishing my monograph with Palgrave, I successfully applied for a
lectureship at the University of Winchester, and am now a full-time permanent member
of staff. I wish the very best of luck to any and all of you on getting your
theses published!

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 ADVICE FROM

OLGA ONUCH
FOR EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS

Olga Onuch is the author of Mapping Mass Mobilization.

“To write and publish a book, it takes a village!” This is how I begin my book
presentations and launches. It is certainly true of most early career academics who are
trying to adapt their past doctoral work for a book monograph, as they need to rely on
the help and advice of several mentors, colleagues and a good copy editor, along the
way. Also crucial to this process – the dissertation to monograph metamorphosis -
is a helpful, professional and knowledgeable editorial team. I certainly benefitted
from both.
I asked many questions along the way, which helped me maintain control over the
publication process and also allowed me to learn a great deal. But it is also equally
important to remember that this is ‘your’ project and that you need to stay true to yourself.
Publishing Mapping Mass Mobilization was clearly very important for my career
development. Not only did it help my receiving permanent Assistant Professor job
offers but also allowed me to showcase my ability to complete a large research project
from research design to monograph. Publishing the book has led to greater professional
exposure in my field and has resulted in several invitations to give academic talks in
Canada, the USA, the UK, and across Europe. Mapping Mass Mobilization is now my
academic calling card.
The main advice I have for scholars just starting this journey is to make sure they have
the right ‘village’ to support them along the publication process and to ask many
questions along the way. An author’s first book is special in so very many ways, but it
is also an incredibly important learning experience.

For more information please visit www.palgrave.com

 ADVICE FROM

MARKUS FRAUNDORFER
FOR EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS

Markus Fraundorfer is the author of Brazil’s Emerging Role in Global

Governance: Health, Food Security and Bioenergy.

I think that publishing a book with a renowned publisher early on is fundamental to

a successful career. A book increases your international visibility, attracts attention
of leading scholars in your field and boosts your publication list. And the best of it,
publishing your thesis is not that difficult, just give it a try and submit your
book proposal.
Your PhD thesis is worth much more than you might think, and, certainly, you would like
your thesis to be read and appreciated by more than just the few professors in your PhD
committee. That’s why you put so much of your time and passion into it!
Of course, you will be required to change your original thesis (the structure, language
style, chapters, etc.) into a more publishable format. However, this was the process
I enjoyed most as I could be more flexible in the language used, avoiding the all too
often extremely dry and technical style which is preferable in a PhD thesis. So, turning
your thesis into a book actually opens up a whole new horizon on how to present your
ideas and arguments, and on how to communicate with a wider (worldwide) audience.
All these skills, which you will learn in transforming your thesis into a book,
are essential for a successful academic career and will help you become a
better scholar.

To find out more, or to submit a proposal, please go to

www.palgrave.com/submit