During this academic year I’ve been involved in various enterprises on top of my commissioned research work, teaching, and writing commitments: solo self-publishing, collaborative self-publishing, and course development. And they’re all starting to come to fruition!

The course I’ve been involved in developing with Dr Janet Salmons is Path To Publishing, aimed at people who have a completed doctoral thesis or dissertation and want to publish from it to support their career goals, whether academic or otherwise. We opened for registration a few days ago and, even though the course doesn’t begin until October, people are already signing up! Universities are recognising that the course we are offering is excellent value for money and will benefit their early career researchers, and individuals are welcoming the opportunity to receive expert help with a complex process. The course is limited to just 20 participants, to ensure that we can give everyone good quality personalised feedback.

The collaborative self-publishing is a short e-book, co-written with Dr Nathan Ryder, called Self-Publishing For Academics. And it’s available for pre-order! The link is for Kindle books but it is also available via iBooks, Kobo and Nook, with Oyster and Scribd to come. Nathan and I have combined our experience of self-publishing various texts in a range of formats, and written the e-book we wish we’d had when we started out. The formal launch is next Wednesday 18 May, so prepare for whooping and hollering.

The solo self-publishing is my series of short e-books for doctoral students. The first, Starting Your PhD: What You Need To Know, is now permanently free to download. The fifth, Research Ethics for your PhD: An Introduction, is with my editor and should be out next month. I just have the sixth and last one to write, on Finishing Your PhD: What You Need To Know, and I’ll be done!

It’s an exciting time towards the end of a really busy year. I’m still kidding myself next year will be easier, but actually I think it’ll just be different. I’ll be working on my next full-length book, on research ethics (I’m in the middle of preparing for that right now), running Path To Publishing with Janet, and managing my commissioned research work and teaching too. It’s just as well I like my work!