Thread by @GregDowney1

Advice for turning your PhD into a book in anthropology, from a journal editor who sees a lot of dissertation chapters and has reviewed first book manuscripts for four presses: 1+

Recognise that you have a fundamentally different task in a thesis and a book: for the thesis, you were demonstrating your skills as a scholar for credentialing. You may have been meeting the archival function for your fieldwork, preserving what might potentially be lost. 2/-

A book is a different beast. What sells it and why people read it is because of what is innovative, new, or not available elsewhere. Unlike your thesis, no one HAS to read your book (well, maybe they do if it gets assigned). A thesis is scholarly; a book should be readerly.

oops... accidental new thread: You've got to take a less is more approach to theoretical material. Maybe 10-15% of the text and super selective. It should be there because it does important conceptual work, not because you need to prove you know it. 3/-

There are exceptions, but in general, the ratio I recommend is 50-60% original ethnographic/historical material you have found; 30% your analysis of the original material; 10-20% 'theoretical' discussion. 4/-

'Theoretical' discussion is just you answering the question, 'If you buy everything I've said, WHY does it matter?' To do that is going to drag in other scholars' work. But the worst undercooked articles I get and manuscripts I read are filled with inappropriate theory... 5/-

stitched awkwardly to material that it doesn't really help illuminate. You don't HAVE to talk about any theorist, even if it's your advisor's or peers' favorite theorist. I can't emphasise this enough. No one gets published because their references list has the 'right' names. 6/-

(That's too strong. Not 'no one.' My preference would be that no one would get published because they genuflected in the right direction.)
Anyway, back to the main thought... 7/-

If you do not know what is innovative or new in your own work, you need to present it and talk to people about it and give it to your smartest, most honest colleagues to read. The sad fact is that we often lose sight of why our own work is cool. 8/-

Then, once you know what is new or innovative realise that THIS is why your book will get read and published, not the thoroughness of your literature review or the high quality of your footnotes about someone's favourite theorists. 9/-

When you revise, revise to push this part of the book to the central argument, not in terms of pages or wordage, but in terms of how the book features it in the introduction, framing, and progress of the material. 10/-

Delete the theory dumps and the lit review. If you can't find places to discuss a theorist that incorporate into the chapters with your own material, then they don't belong (this is SO HARD and painful, but it makes the book so much better). 11/-

Read your book manuscript OUT LOUD to yourself (you should already be reading everything you send to anyone for publication out loud, but if you don't habitually, now is DEFINITELY the time to do it). I could write a lot about how reading OUT LOUD shifts the way... 12/-

you pay attention to the text. You will catch infelicitous phrasing with your ears that you don't with your eyes. And you can hear the rhythm and poetry of the text better, so reading it out loud produces a more pleasing text to the reader (which is all important). 13/-

While doing this/after doing this, CUT. Cut brutally. Cut maniacally. You think it's finished? Cut 10%. Every cut will produce a better text. I know... this sounds crazy. We love our words. Cut them. Cut circuitous writing. Cut cliché. Cut passive voice. 14/-

Cut unnecessary qualifications to your arguments, waffle words of all sorts. Just cut. It will force you to say things more directly, more forcefully. Cutting will clarify your text. You will be surprised, the most quoted lines from your text will be short, punchy sentences. 15/-

Then cut 'meta-essaying': 'I will argue...', 'In the following chapter...' 'In my opinion...' Peel this sort of distancing, self referential text off like it was a nasty film that had built up on your ideas. Stop worrying that we won't know who's making the argument. 16/-

Finally (for now), let the narratives or the research material itself do the heavy lifting. Stories of the people you have met (not first-person 'adventures of the ethnographer') or facts from the ethnography are the best way to introduce ideas. 17/-

Let the analysis and theory flow from the material, not precede it. The rhetorical form of the book argument is inductive, even if the actual origination of the material is a more complicated back-and-forth between scholarly and ethnographic work. 18/-

Some of my colleagues will disagree, I'm sure, but I don't believe in reflexivity for its own sake. When it's necessary for the analysis or theoretical work, when it is crucial to understand the project, sure, but there's something mildly narcissistic in an anthropologist... 19/-

Who goes to study another group of people, or even 'their own people,' and finds that the most interesting thing to write about is themselves. Again, there are genres where this is the central concern, and I recognise that, but that's not what I'm talking about. 20/-

(This last point has an amendment that there are clearly exceptions. I recently had a student who was worried to show me her work because it was autoethnography, but when we worked through it, I thought it was brilliant and necessary given the issue she was working on... 21/-

(The point is that it was driven by the nature of the project, not the default setting for ethnographic work.) 22/-

The most important, summary that I can give is that, as a journal editor, and as a manuscript reviewer for presses, I want to see what the author has to offer. What will sell me is their thoughts and ideas. Even a small innovation or original element... 22/-

So often, I feel like my job is clearing away a morass of borrowed material which the author has been led to believe is more important than their own ideas, analysis, or insights, to get to what THEY have to offer. You don't have to make outrageous claims about your work. 23/-

You don't have to pretend you invented the wheel if you use the wheel well and in a new, clever way. The innovation can be quite 'small.' But is crucial and gives life to the work. 24/-

And you definitely DON'T have to say you're the 'first' or 'only' person who's done X. That's the only time when I'll want to see your literature review because then I'll think the claim is likely more an indication you haven't done your homework... 25/-

The bottom line is that I would rather read a good use of a concept I hate or a theory I disagree with than an overwritten, scared use of my own work even. I love having my intellectual judgments overturned. There's joy in finding out I was wrong. 26/-

I'll probably stop there, even though I could say more. The monologue has gone on long enough! 27/27

(Side note: As an exercise, writing 'I will argue...' is great! If you can finish that sentence, an article or chapter or book will be much better. Then delete the 'I will argue...' part, and you have a great argument sentence.)