Years back, I was advised that I should not expect my PhD to be the best thing I would ever write. ‘It had better not be!’ expostulated the academic in question, ‘otherwise you’ll never be able to make any progress in your academic career.’ Although in fact this turned out to be true, it was still terrible advice, because it assumed that a PhD should be judged according to the same standards as other (real) literature.

Much wiser was the dissertation director who told his student that ‘the dissertation would be the last piece of his student writing, not his first professional work’ (William Germano).

Some PhD theses are books in their own right (I don’t know whether Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, submitted as his PhD thesis, falls into this category); but most are not. We all know what we’re talking about: leaden chapters, interminable repetition, pedantic redefinition, quagmires of references, tedious detours to back up the most obvious things, dreadful writing.

As PhD students watch their projects mutating away from the pellucid and meaningful essays they originally conceived, they become afflicted by terrible cognitive dissonance and a sense of failure (I speak for myself, at least).

We can’t explain our work to our partners. Our friends don’t want to talk about it. At Christmas, familial interest dissolves into despairing silence. (And, by the way, never tell a graduate student that they don’t understand something until they can explain it to their partner: it’s not true, and it only leads to broken relationships.)

But really there is no need for all this despair; all that is needed is calm recognition that a PhD thesis and a (real) book have totally different audiences and totally different functions.

A PhD is written for an audience of one: it’s a monstrous love letter to one’s supervisor. It’s an incantation to protect the writer from the ghosts of academics past, as represented by the examiners. And it’s an application to join an academic club. Once admitted, one can safely start producing informed and engaging books which enlighten the world (some disciplines are better at this than others).

There may be plenty of raw material in the thesis that could be reworked into a book, of course; and Melbourne University Publishing provides priceless advice for making the transformation.

1. remove all academic scaffolding;
2. reorganise the material to make it more interesting and accessible;
3. refocus clearly on the heart of your story or argument;
4. reduce the scholarly apparatus;
5. rewrite to give your text a direct and personal voice, to address the reader in plain English, to eliminate all instances of academic jargon, and to create new links for the restructured material.