Research to Bestseller: turning your research into a creative non-fiction book boot camp

Expression of interest for 2022 : Please register here

If you are interested in writing a popular book based on your research (and maybe even making some money), this Boot camp is for you! Our first ever book writing Boot camp is designed to help you think about translating your research into a mainstream, research based book that would be interesting for a major publisher.

Reports of 'the death of the book' have been greatly exaggerated. Books continue to be bought online and in stores, and downloaded as e-books in very healthy numbers. The readers buying these books are fascinated by ideas-based writing.

Often called creative non-fiction, this category encompasses science, history, politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, language, psychology – the list is diverse and endless with the unifying factor being that this is where research is brought to life and transformed into writing that engages, educates and entertains.

This workshop will be in our famous Boot camp mode, with information, exercises and time to write in the company of others. Come armed with an idea or two for a book and be prepared to write fast and furiously!

We will look at how to take your research and rework it for an intelligent, non-specialist audience. It will set out the steps needed to become ‘talent’ – the sort of person with a profile that makes a publisher sit up and take notice. You will learn how to prepare your writing for publication and pitch it to a trade or commercial publisher.

By the end of this workshop you will have:

1) An idea of how to get yourself noticed and become ‘a person of interest’ to publishers.

2) Thought about what in your research might make the beginnings of a book.

3) Identified possible audiences for this book

4) Worked out how best to identify potential publishers and how to best pitch to them

The camp will be held on three separate Fridays:

3 June 2022

17 June 2022

24 June 2022

Each zoom meeting will be quite long-from 9:30am - 4:30pm - and will feature a mix of short instructional workshops and time to write and think. This Boot camp is only open to HDR candidates at ANU. It will obviously be suitable for humanities candidates, but we want to encourage scientists who are interested in developing their science communication career to apply too.

There are only 30 places available. We expect this Boot camp to be popular, so we will prioritise people closer to the end of candidature. Make sure you read the monthly HDR Update for details about our other development opportunities. This is sent to your ANU student email address at the start of each month.