book-review

PhD Guides As Audiobooks

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I have news! The short e-books I have written in the PhD Guides series are being produced as audiobooks! They are being voiced by the excellent Leigh Forbes who is a joy to work with. As with the print books, the first one – Starting Your PhD: What You Need To Know – is free of charge, and it is available now. There are currently multiple distributors working to make the audiobook available. As each platform goes live, the links will be added below — so please check back regularly for updates.

I know many people prefer listening to reading. Some find it more accessible, and for others it is simply more convenient because they can listen as they run, drive, clean their home or do other activities that don’t require much brainpower. I have been wanting to produce audiobooks for years so I am delighted to have reached this stage.

There are various reasons I made this e-book free in both formats. Partly it’s a marketing decision: the first e-book in a series is often free because (a) people are more likely to take it up and (b) if they then enjoy listening or reading, they are more likely to buy other books in the series. And partly it’s a gift to the research community which has given me so much. It includes all the information I wish I’d had before I started my own PhD. Though one of my aims for the book is that it can help people, for whom a PhD is not the best course of action, to figure that out before making a financially, mentally, and emotionally costly commitment. I loved my PhD, but it’s not right for everyone, and finding that out before you start is infinitely preferable to finding out a year or two into the process.

I’m hoping that one day some of my other books will be produced as audiobooks, but that is beyond my control. If it does happen you can be sure I will write about it here. In the meantime, if you decide to listen to any of my audiobooks, please do let me know what you think.

Available links so far:

Kobo, Walmart
NOOK Audiobooks
Libro.FM
Google Play
Storytel
Everand
Chirp

Why Did I Edit Such an Expensive Book?

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods, published last month, is at present only available in hardback at a recommended retail price of £140, or as an ebook at £126. Regular readers will know that I have ranted on this blog before about the iniquitous prices charged by some academic publishers, and advocated working with not-for-profit university presses. So, it is reasonable to ask me, as some people have: why did I agree to edit this expensive book for Bloomsbury?

The backstory is this: Maria Brauzzi, an editor at Bloomsbury who I did not know, emailed me in late 2021 to invite me to edit a Handbook of Creative Research Methods for them. At the time I had started work on editing a creative data analysis book for Policy Press with Dawn Mannay and Ali Roy, and chapter proposals were landing in my inbox. We received over 60 proposals, most of which were good. We had originally intended to produce a normal-sized book with around 12 chapters, but with so many good proposals to choose from, Policy Press agreed to produce a Handbook of Creative Data Analysis with around 30 chapters. (I’m delighted to say that is now in production and will be published in early September.)

Even so, selecting the chapters to include in the Policy Press Handbook was tough. Then I had a brainwave! I hadn’t replied to Maria at Bloomsbury because I couldn’t decide whether to accept her invitation. So, I emailed back and told her I had too many good proposals to fit into the Handbook I was doing with Policy Press, and asked whether I could pivot some of them into the Handbook she wanted to commission for Bloomsbury. She said ‘yes!’ so I ended up being sole editor of one Handbook and lead editor of another at the same time. 

I do not recommend this course of action unless you have, as I had then (and I’m glad to say, have again now), a solid, competent, and reliable support worker or other assistant. I could not have edited this Handbook without my support worker’s help. But editing it meant I was able to offer publishing opportunities to people who deserved them, including some people from marginalised groups. I’m glad I could do that, even though it meant working for a publisher who screws royalties down to the bone, lower than any of my other publishers, while earning a massive profit by selling books at prices that most people can’t afford.

So, to redress the balance a tiny little bit, I am offering a free copy of the Handbook to one of my blog followers. If you’re not a follower yet, you should be able to see a ‘Follow Blog Via Email’ notice with space to enter your email address. Any blog follower who wants a chance of a free copy needs to comment below and check back here a week after this blog has been posted to see who has won. My support worker will put all the names in a hat and pick one at random, then add a comment stating who will receive the free copy. I will post a book to that person, wherever they are in the world. 

Congratulations to Lucia 🎉 our winner of the prize draw for a free copy of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods!