By leonard cassuto july 24, 2011 my last column centered on the new difficulties that graduate students face in turning their dissertations into books. Some readers responded that plenty of dissertations shouldn't be revised into books in the first place. Here's a lesson for graduate students that i had to learn the hard way: a dissertation is a book length project, but it's not a book that is just awaiting cover art. It's true that your dissertation showcases your original contribution to a particular field. But not all original contributions take the form of books, even if some pieces of your contribution will one day become a book. I thought i had written a book worthy manuscript when i turned it in and got my ph.d.

But i was soon disabused of that illusion by rejection notices from grant makers and tepid responses from academic publishers. I'd like to say that the ordeal gave me wisdom, but what i remember best is the stress. Then i spent a few more anxious years writing a book based on a few ideas that were contained in my dissertation. Those events took place more than 15 years ago, but my experience remains sadly typical of the guidance or lack thereof that many graduate students receive when they enter the scholarly industrial complex. The escalating demands of the academic job market and the tenure track force many new ph.d.'s to seek book publication of their dissertations regardless of whether that is the best showcase for their scholarship. University press editors have been complaining for years about the flood of career motivated book manuscripts that wash over their transoms.

Lindsay waters, executive editor for the humanities at harvard university press, has pointed out that when a department requires books of its junior faculty members, it effectively outsources its tenure decisions to university presses. Waters, a publisher of books, has ironically found himself a flag waver in a movement to re privilege articles. Viewed from a wide angle, such complaints from publishers may appear a bit disingenuous. University presses are attached, after all, to the same universities that demand book contracts of their job and tenure candidates, and one of the original reasons that academic presses came into being was to publish dissertations.

But the cold, hard fact is that academic publishers find it harder and harder to sell scholarly monographs these days, so they're simply not publishing many of them anymore. Editors are trying to publicize that shift, but knowledge travels slowly when it has to crawl over high hopes and expectations. Broadsides like the report of the mla task force on evaluating scholarship for tenure and promotion on which i served advocate ending the tyranny of the book in tenure decisions, but the battle for awareness is still being fought.

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Here are some observations for graduate students to consider as they cross the dissertatory expanse: do not imagine that publishers will read your dissertation. the fact is, they almost never will mdash at least not before you have revised it significantly. If you think your dissertation might make a book, you should consult william germano's excellent getting it published when the time comes for you to start making revisions. the primary purpose of your dissertation is to get you a ph.d. in other words, the most important goal of a dissertation is for it to be approved. It's not a test of your dignity, fortitude, man or womanhood, or even of your intelligence. ordinarily fewer than five people will read your thesis. that's not counting those with whom you share dna or a bed. Think about that when you catch yourself toiling toward some mythical standard of perfection. your dissertation is part of your education. it's not just a goal of your education.

You thesis is almost certainly the first project of its magnitude that you've attempted, and such things take practice. It takes a while to assimilate a large amount of material and the different perspectives it affords. Lots of foods take time to prepare regardless of the brilliance and/or tirelessness of the cook. expect your thesis to evolve as you write it. a dissertation allows you to pursue tangents mdash and you should. Writing a dissertation not only involves you in learning your topic, but also in learning its implications.

In consultation with your adviser who should know the contours of the field , do follow your curiosity when the opportunity presents itself. The excursions you take may or may not enlarge your topic, but they will certainly enrich it. More important, they will become part of your writer's foundation mdash the blueprint of your scholarly house mdash in years to come. The chapters you write at the end will reflect more learning than the ones you wrote early on, and they'll also display a more acute sense of where the project may be going. for academic job searching, parts of your dissertation will need special polish. your dissertation work forms an important part of your qualifications for both academic and nonacademic work, but nonacademic employers usually care more about the credential than the actual thesis. But for academic employers, you'll use one section of your disseration as a writing sample for job applications. Depending on your discipline, you may need to set aside another section for use as an on campus job talk.

You should tinker with these public portions of your dissertation until they possess depth and insight, read smoothly and persuasively, and gleam as brightly as possible. An increasing number of departments understand that many dissertations should be published not as books but as a series of articles. The increased mobility of articles also increases their potential influence in the conversations you want to enter.