How to tailor your academic work to a wider audience

How to tailor your academic work to a wider audience

Often, when readers think about books written by academics, wordy texts spring to mind, and people switch off. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. If you’re looking to convert your academic writing (whether it be a dissertation, essay, or PhD thesis) into a book, then tailoring your work to suit a wider audience is beneficial. It can give you broader coverage and is a fantastic opportunity to educate more people about a topic you love. In this blog, we’ll discuss a few ways that writers can make their books more accessible.

Who is your audience? 

If you’re thinking about converting your academic work into a more mainstream book, then considering the identity of your wider audience is vital. To start, you must establish whether you’re aiming to reach a different audience from when you initially wrote it. It’s important to know if you’re looking to convert your work previously aimed at academic experts into an accessible book for general readers or if you still have a purely academic audience in mind. 

You may be a historian aiming to teach a general but educated audience more about the colosseums of Ancient Rome. You know your readers have to be curious about Ancient Rome, like Tom Holland a fair bit, and be history buffs. Perhaps they’re undergraduates looking to dig deeper into how the beauty of those stone colossi hid such sinister violence. In this case, you may be able to stick to what you already have with a few changes to make it more “bookish”.

By comparison, if you aim to reach a general, uneducated audience, then it’s likely that more modifications would be necessary, as opposed to readers who are in academia.

How will your topic attract general readers?

If you’re converting a PhD or a dissertation into a mass-market book, you may need to change your original title. While it would create a lot of work to deviate far from your chosen subject, you might want to make smaller edits that appeal to wider readers. As such, it could be worth thinking about what other topics crossover within your own writing.

In this case, was there a stage in your research or writing when you had to study a new topic or brush up on an old one? You can use your skills to incorporate other topics to make your book more accessible to a wider readership. Then, make sure you edit the manuscript accordingly throughout, making any crossovers clear within your introduction and opening chapters. 

However, this may not be relevant for every author. If your target audience is a more academic one, like Seth’s audience who are largely focused on neuroscience, you may want to stick to a singular topic, with language that is understandable for your readers. It’s also important to keep in mind that there’s always an audience for more niche titles, even if that audience is smaller. 

After you’ve decided on your topic and audience, you can begin the editing process. 

How do you adapt your writing style for a general audience?

Everyone has their own unique writing style. To state the obvious, academic writing is formal, and sometimes this can limit an author’s individuality when it comes to voice. It can also be more complex for general readers to digest. There are several ways to adjust your style to make it more accessible to a broader audience.

One of the main takeaways when writing for a general audience is making your language as clear and digestible as possible. If your book is full of terms and references only understood by fellow academics, then you’re almost guaranteed to alienate your wider readers. Here are a few practical tips: 

• Swap out more complex words and phrases 
• Be confident and direct, avoiding language like “it’s possible that” or “it can be argued”
• Shorten sentences
• Define complex terms or ideas straight off the bat 
• Use analogies or stories 
• Use active voice instead of passive voice
• Add anecdotes to give the writing more of a personal feel and a brief storyline
• Remove academic styles like academic numbering or switch to endnotes instead of in-text citations, with an explanation of the research
• Structure things in a chronological approach rather than thematic
• Ensure that your chapter titles are short and provide a clear outline of the book 

Making these changes can create a massive difference in reading experience for your readers.

Where you publish matters!

Finally, where you publish your book determines what kind of readers your work will reach. Academic writing is usually published on academic websites such as Google Scholar, JSTOR, or Oxford University Press. However, readers looking for a bedtime read are unlikely to delve into Google Scholar. Introducing your book to a wider sphere of readers is key, so you might wish to self-publish or seek a more mainstream publisher. If you need help landing a publishing deal, get in touch and we can help you prepare a submission.

Whilst academic writing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, an accessible and well-written academic book can be a much more appealing prospect as opposed to a complex and confusing one, regardless of whether your audience is educated or general. If you’re struggling to make the changes needed, it may help to work with an editor. Get in touch if you would like to discuss this topic further.

By Beth Keeley