Workshop

24 September 2026 

From Dissertation to Book 

A one-day workshop on preparing the first academic book

with Marc Abernathy

9:00-17:00

A dissertation and a book are different objects written for different readers. A dissertation has a captive audience of examiners and is built to demonstrate command of a field; a book must earn readers who are under no obligation to read it, beginning with an acquisitions editor who decides in minutes whether a proposal is worth sending out for review. The biggest challenge in preparing a book proposal is writing for that different audience: making an argument rather than proving competence, and identifying both a readership and a place in a publisher’s current list.

Drawing on my experience working with professors and postdocs on book proposals for academic presses, and on my daily work editing manuscripts and funding applications across the humanities and the social and natural sciences, this workshop is built around the participants’ own projects, so that everyone leaves with a plan for their own book rather than general advice. The fee covers the day rather than the number of participants, so the format is flexible — and the larger the group, the more of the individual work moves to a second day.

Target group: Doctoral researchers and postdocs preparing a first book (all disciplines) 

Marc Abernathy works daily as an editor and strategic adviser on manuscripts and funding applications across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. His work on book proposals is with authors approaching precisely the presses that early-career researchers in area studies target: he has worked with a professor on transforming a Habilitation into a book proposal for Princeton University Press, with a postdoctoral researcher on sharpening a proposal for Harvard University Press, and with a further professor on a proposal for Cambridge University Press. He has also edited an introduction for a University of Michigan Press book.

Venue: 

Seminarroom 3.03, 3rd Floor, Classen-Kappelmannstr. 24, 50931 Cologne

Registration: 

Interested PhDs and Post-Docs should send a e-mail to Julia Wummel jwummel(at)uni-koeln(dot)de until 1 September 2026