This post is for recent PhDs who have just finished a dissertation. If that’s you, congratulations! You’ve just accomplished something incredibly difficult and you should be proud.

If you’ve always imagined turning your dissertation into a book, you may be thinking it’s now time to start the process of revising your manuscript. But I say no! For one thing, you and your brain definitely need a rest, and you deserve to take one. 

You may not be able to take an actual vacation right now, but you should at least take a vacation from your dissertation. To help you do that, while still helping you move toward your eventual goal of publishing a book, I have a few tips. I published them as an advice column in Inside Higher Ed, so you can go read them in full there.

Once you’ve read the tips, you might want some pithy reminders you can keep close by over the next six months to a year while you let the diss marinate. Enter my handy handout you can either print out and pin over your desk or keep at the ready on your computer desktop:

Download the one-page PDF here

Download a screenreader-friendly Word doc here

Once you’re ready to begin the process of pitching your book for real, my How to Publish a Book from Your Dissertation checklist will help.