Academia Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for academics and those enrolled in higher education. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am starting to write my thesis by the start of August this year. I want to write it in a format so that later I can publish a book out of it. How is it possible? Any suggestions?
Also, does this account for self-plagiarism? What are the key points I should keep in mind before start writing?
I would just focus on writing the thesis. If it is good enough to be published as a book, you will know when it is done. Regardless of what you do now, getting it into publishable form is going to be a huge job, and the problems will only become apparent once your thesis is finished. So what you do now is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to publishing your thesis as a book.
For another view on this see William Germano, From Dissertation to Book. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/288463.html The author says, and I agree, that a dissertation can be turned into a book successfully.
Some differences between a dissertation and a book: topic (narrow vs broader), purpose (demonstrate knowledge to superiors vs inform learners), audience (faculty vs students & nonacademics), style (purely academic vs appealing, readable, comprehensible), and author authority (frequent citation of previous works for credibility vs creating something new from a position of your own authority). Academic presses don't make a lot of money from book sales, and they don't want to lose money on your book, so sales are important. The way to increase sales is to have a wide audience, which implies a broader topic and a different style.
If you want a career in academia, your first impulse may be to squeeze several published papers out of your dissertation. But if you're constantly recycling your dissertation into a series of articles and a book, your growth as a scholar will be limited. The lack of new topics will stand out on your CV when you're applying for jobs.
