After a long, hard slog, you’ve finally completed your thesis. Your supervisor has lavished you with praise and suggested you should get it published. Full of naieve enthusiasm you send copies of your thesis to publishers, sit back and wait for the royalties to come rolling in.

Except they don’t. The truth is that publishers don’t publish dissertations – they publish books. And the two are quite different. Your thesis was produced to demonstrate your research capabilities. The harsh reality is that no one really wants to know how good a researcher you are.