#1: Signpost Differently: Signpost your Argument 

Writing a successful PhD means you need to signpost original knowledge. A book is not a PhD dissertation. What you are now signposting is your argument, so consider if your reader can take certain things for granted rather than slapping them around the face repeatedly. I kept using the phrase ‘in the space above’ to emphasise my argument in one chapter, but it became annoying for the reader. Repetition works in a dissertation but it doesn’t work well in a book.

That said, your introduction needs a few paragraphs where you signpost the significance or timeliness of your work. This is particularly important if you are working within the UK’s REF context, as it helps make the case for your book’s research excellence. You may also want to include a few lines in each chapter about the significance and rigour of your work. What you don’t have to do is demonstrate the ‘originality’ of every single new point. You are the expert now, own it!

2: Literature Review Differently: Incorporate Rather than Dump

The easy bit is axing your literature review: be gone! What was tricky for me was that I had mini-lit reviews at the start of each dissertation chapter as a way of setting up each chapter’s theoretical framework and demonstrating that I’d done the reading. In the book, this meant careful restructuring and integration of only the material that was absolutely necessary. Rather than presenting all that material up-front, I had to work out what was needed at the beginning each chapter to theoretically underpin it, and what literature needed to be incorporated into the body of the text. The benefit was that this helped make my points more clearly, concisely and persuasively.