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Free Workshops, Courses, and Video Replays
To produce this free mini-course I analyzed 188 humanities and social science book titles. I’ll teach you:
- Exactly how many words your title should be
- Whether you need to coin a catchphrase for your book’s title (and whether your catchphrase actually works as a title)
- The specific elements your book title needs to include
- How to order all of the elements in your book’s title
- How to make your book title “search-friendly” (this was something that tripped me up bigtime)
The Dissertation-to-Book Workshop
Sharpening Your Book Argument with Book Questions & Chapter Answers
Book Publishing Roundtable with Editors
First Monograph Publishing Q&A
Books We Recommend
Book Writing and Revising Tools
I (Katelyn) can’t speak highly enough of Scrivener as a writing and revising tool–especially for long and complex projects. Whenever I start to think “Oh, I can just write this piece in Word,” I inevitably stall out and migrate back to Scrivener. Why? I am a drafty writer; I need to get a lot of (really bad) words down on the page before I can wrangle my ideas into an argument-driven form.
How does Scrivener help? A project consists of one or more “Scrivenings,” each of which can be given a title and dragged around. Typically, when I’m working on macro (argumentative) revisions, I use the title to remind myself of the work each section or paragraph needs to do.
Scrivener also allows you to seamlessly display two units of text (or a research article and your text) side by side. I regularly have my messy draft (or an article I’m referencing) open in the left pane and my revised version in the right.
Another indispensable tool I (Katelyn) can’t live without is actually Microsoft Word’s built-in “Read Aloud” feature, whether on a desktop or a mobile device. I always thoroughly proofread my documents several times, but somehow every single time I use the “Read Aloud” feature, I catch missing and repeated words and several awkward sentences.
For some reason, I vastly prefer the voices on the mobile Word app (iOS) than the full desktop version–they sound much less robotic to me– but in the end, both work fine to help you get distance on your writing.
Blog Posts by Category
All Blog Posts
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Academic Book Titles: How to Title Your Monograph, based on 188 Titles
Your book title is an editor’s first data point, and many authors (myself included!) draft terrible titles. Write a strong title with the actionable lessons in this post!
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Finding the Right Academic Publisher #1: Seeing Your Book Through University Presses’ Eyes
You—the author—have the ultimate insider’s perspective when it comes to your book. You know everything about each object you analyze and how your ideas develop over the course of your chapters. Publishers come to your book through a very different perspective.
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Can Your Academic Book Reach “A General Audience”?
You might know that your book will need to speak to scholars in your discipline(s) and have heard that it’s unwise to describe your book’s audience as “a general audience interested in [topic]” on your academic book proposal. But regardless of what your book proposal says, you might still hold out hope that your book…
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Dissertation-to-Book FAQ
Are you finally ready to start revising your dissertation into an academic book? Or, are you still working on your dissertation, but wondering what the book process ahead looks like? In this comprehensive guide, I answer all your questions about how to go from dissertation to book. What are the best first steps to revising…
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Academic Book Proposals: All Your Questions, Answered
Writing and submitting an academic book proposal can seem like a daunting task. Below, I answer some of your most common questions and offer the best resources to consult to prepare your academic book proposal.
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When Should You Submit Your Academic Book Proposal?
Nothing seems to stress authors of first books more than this question: when should I write and submit my academic book proposal to university presses? When I was writing my own first book, the resounding answer my mentors gave was: wait until the full manuscript is done. For a while, this seemed like good advice.…
