Introduction

Hello. Hello. I hope you’re doing well today. Today we are continuing our series on book introductions. If you’re not caught up, I’ve shared two episodes so far in this series—episodes 28 and 29—so be sure to listen to those as well.

A question I hear often is: What am I supposed to do with my literature review? This is something I hear from people who are transforming a dissertation into a scholarly book. You have this whole long literature review and you’re wondering where it will fit into your book. Similarly, you might have had a theory chapter in your dissertation, and you’re also wondering what you should do with that.

Like, you did all of this work to write these chapters, and now we’re like—well, what happens? Today, I’m going to give you some tips for how to rework your dissertation’s literature review for your scholarly book. Let’s get into it.

Welcome Message

Welcome to Academic Book Writing Simplified. I’m your host, Jane Joanne Jones, a writing coach and developmental editor who’s here to give you some tough love about the way you write. This podcast is for women and nonbinary scholars in academia who are writing academic books but feel as if the process is a little—or a lot—like a mystery.

If you’re ready to trade your confusion and frustration for ease, clarity, and purpose, you’re in the right place. Let’s head into today’s episode.

Dissertation vs. Book: Understanding the Difference

Before we get into how to rework your dissertation’s literature review for your book, let’s talk a bit more broadly about the difference between a dissertation and a book—because this is important.

A dissertation is meant to prove your expertise. You’re doing it to earn a PhD, to earn the title of expert on something. A book, however, assumes that you already have expertise.

And here I’ll offer the caveat I always offer when I say this: we know that based on your identity and how people receive your identity, the assumption that you have expertise may not be there. But if someone has agreed to publish your book, it is because they believe you have expertise.

This distinction between proving expertise versus having expertise is really important because it informs how you leverage and engage the secondary literature in a dissertation versus a book.

Literature Review: Dissertation vs. Book

In a dissertation, your literature review is pretty exhaustive. It’s meant to be a really thorough, broad, and comprehensive summary of the literature—you want to show you did the work.

In a book, however, you’re using that secondary literature to build your argument and the significance of your argument for the reader. You’re explaining what others wrote and how it relates to what you hope to prove and illustrate in your book.

It’s not just there to show, “I know this.” It’s to show how your argument challenges, complements, or builds on the literature that already exists.

So given that difference, you can imagine that exhaustively showing what everybody said is going to take up much more time than selecting certain texts to highlight key points.

Streamlining and Ethically Citing

That doesn’t mean you ignore other literature. We’re still citing ethically. We’re just not spending a lot of time discussing every single thing we’ve read.

The literature review in the book—because of the work it’s doing—is going to be shorter. It’s usually folded into the introduction of the book. It’s not separated into its own chapter. Nor is the theory, really.

In some disciplines, there is sometimes a theory chapter—like I’ve seen that in political science books, for instance. Not all, but some. But generally, that theoretical overview and literature review is included in the introduction of the book, which is why we’re talking about it—because this is a series on book introductions.

How to Condense Your Dissertation Literature Review

Now that we understand that difference, how do we actually do it?

First, think about how you’re going to narrow or sharpen your focus. One way to do that is by thinking about the most important themes in your book and how those themes relate to your argument.

There might be, say, three main themes in your book. You’re like, okay—so I need to organize this literature I have along these three themes and explain how they fit. To start, you might even make yourself a chart—theme one, theme two, theme three—and then say, “Which literature falls into which category?”

Some literatures or individual books will cross categories and that’s fine too. You’ll be able to see bodies of work. Then in your introduction, you might refer to bodies of work instead of going author by author.

From Summary to Analysis

Another way to organize is by asking: What is the argument I’m making? and How does this argument build on, complement, or challenge prior literature?

“Builds on” means, it’s good, but I’m going further.
“Complements” means, yes, we’re aligned.
“Challenges” means, I don’t agree with part or all of what this author is saying.

That’s when we move from summary to analysis. You’re analyzing the literature in relation to your argument.

Ask yourself: Why is this citation here? What work is it doing? You don’t have to answer that in the writing—but you should know the answer as the author.

Building the Gap

We’re also thinking about how to set up a gap, because that is obviously incredibly important. It was probably important in your dissertation too, depending on how you structured it, but it’s especially important in books: what is novel? What is new?

You use the literature to show where those gaps exist. And that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re critiquing—like, criticizing—the literature. I want to be careful about that. It’s not about bashing existing work and saying yours is better, which is sometimes what people think when they hear the word gap.

Instead, it’s about showing how you take a different perspective. Maybe this argument is well-established in one body of literature, and you’re bringing it to another. Maybe the anthropologists have figured it out, but in sociology? Not so much. You might say, “They’ve got it over there—but over here, we don’t.” So you’re bridging something that hasn’t been connected yet.

So when you’re setting up that gap, you’re showing how your book is continuing and enhancing a conversation that was already started—or even starting a brand-new one. Like, maybe people are talking about X, but you argue that we really should be talking about Y. You say: “That’s great, but it’s based on an assumption,” or “it overlooks something,” and therefore, “I argue we need to be thinking about Y instead.”

That’s the gap. And the literature is the set-up—it builds up to your contribution.

One way to think about this is the bridge and the gap. A bridge connects your work to prior work—it “builds on,” which you’ve probably seen a lot: “This research builds on…” That’s a bridge. It’s taking us somewhere new.

But a gap is something different. It’s what the literature hasn’t done. That could mean something hasn’t been analyzed at all—an empirical gap. Or it’s been analyzed, but in the wrong way—or missing something crucial. That’s a conceptual gap. Either way, you’re explaining that something is missing.

And this sets up just enough tension—not suspense, per se—but that sense of “we thought we had this figured out… but actually, there’s more.” It makes the reader think: Oh. I want to know why we missed that.

How Does This Look on the Page?

So then the big question: How does this look on the page? Because I know you’re probably like, “This all sounds good… but how do I write it?”

First, think about your introduction length. In earlier episodes, I talked about that too. You don’t have to be rigid, like “It must be exactly 15 pages.” No. But you do want to be intentional. If you promised your publisher a book of 80,000 words, how many words go to the intro? You don’t want to overdo it.

Second, don’t waste real estate with things like really long quotes. You’re not trying to prove you read the book—that was the dissertation’s job.

Let your endnotes or footnotes do some heavy lifting. When you say “scholars have argued,” you can list those scholars in a footnote instead of naming them all in the intro. You’re still citing ethically—just not spending paragraphs on things your audience already knows.

Focus on analysis, not summary. That means talking about scholars in the plural: schools of thought, established debates, emerging conversations. You might say, “This idea, most persuasively argued by…” or “A line of inquiry led by…” You’re grounding your work—but you’re getting out of the listing mindset.

Now, you know I don’t like to give hard word counts—but this section of the introduction? It could be around six pages, maybe a bit more. But again, don’t write to the number—write to the function. Does each paragraph earn its place?

And the best way to figure that out? Read introductions. Especially first books. Look at how other scholars do it. Not just what they say—but how they structure it.

Watch for red flags:

• Too many block quotes
• Long lists of scholars
• Too much context that belongs elsewhere (e.g., appendix or methodology)

Be thoughtful about where everything goes.

Summary

So, to summarize:

• A dissertation has a more extensive, summary-based literature review.
• A book has a more concise, analytical literature review that is folded into the introduction.

It’s not that you don’t discuss secondary literature in a book—you absolutely do. You just do it very differently.

If you’re saying, “I already did all of this in my dissertation—it was short,” that’s great. Go ahead and fold it in. But if you had a long literature review—twenty-plus pages? That’s not going in the book as-is.

Final Thoughts

I’ll share some resources in the show notes—some of my writing about the difference between dissertations and books—to help you out.

In the meantime, go back to the books you admire. Look closely at the introductions. How do those authors—especially first-time authors—talk about secondary literature? Do they summarize in a paragraph? Do they cluster ideas by theme?

That’s what you want to notice. Not just what they say—but how they say it.

Closing

As always, I hope this was helpful. We’ll be back next week with our final episode in the series.

Until then, be well, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode.
Remember: writing an academic book is challenging, but that doesn’t mean you have to overcomplicate it.

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