Nijay always gets the best discussions going regarding academic career topics. His post requesting advice on what to do with a Ph.D. thesis is generating some wonderful responses from both published academics and editors. If you have personal experience with this process, for the sake of those of us who haven’t yet, please head over and leave some comments on your experience.

I was just talking to Ra’anan Boustan about this topic the other day. From that conversation, I understand that some pricey monograph series will give you the opportunity to forgo your royalties and will give you twenty copies of the finished product instead. Apparently, if you go with this sort of series, taking the copies is a better deal than any royalties you’d get from the select libraries that purchase your expensive monograph. [Update: V. Henry T. Nguyen makes this point in his comment on Nijay's post.] Boustan also clarified for me that most academic authors make hardly any money on their academic works throughout their careers. Unless you become a Bart Ehrman or Elaine Pagels, you will probably never get an advance for your books. Have others found this to be true?

Rob Barrett makes the comment on Nijay’s post that some folks publish two books out of their dissertation, “one more detailed and scholarly and another more popular.” I like that idea personally and have thought about aiming for that myself. But that’s a few years out. So, we’ll see what happens!