I Built a Service That Turns Masters/phd Theses Into Actual Books

TL;DR: I take people’s Masters/PhD theses and turn them into readable, non-academic books using a mix of AI + a LOT of human steering. 3–5 days turnaround. $499. I’ve done 2 so far and the results were way better than I expected.

Why I Built This

I finished my own degree and realised something depressing: almost nobody ever reads these theses we spend YEARS writing. They just sit in university repositories, gathering digital dust.

Most Master’s and PhD grads I know want to share their work, but:

academic writing is… well, academic

rewriting it is exhausting

ghostwriters cost more than a used car

AI by itself gives you garbage unless you babysit it for hours

There’s this weird gap between “I wrote 60k words” and “I have a book people can read.”

So I tried to fill that gap.

What I Built

It’s called Convert My Research.

The workflow is basically:

You upload your thesis

I read enough to understand the argument

AI does a first-pass rewrite (removes citations, simplifies, restructures)

I poke it, redo things, steer tone, fix oversimplifications, re-run sections

Repeat until it stops sounding like a robot

You get a clean Word doc + a “what changed and why” report + a small guide for Amazon KDP

It takes me ~18–24 hours of actual work across a few days. I charge $499 because anything less and I’d be losing money, and anything more would feel gross.

What’s Happened So Far

I’ve done only two conversions, but both were fascinating:

1. A Biochemistry Master’s

Original: 22,963 academic words

Output: ~18k “my family can finally understand what I did” words

Their feedback literally made me smile

2. A PhD in English/Literature

The original was very… theory-heavy

The converted version reads like a narrative nonfiction book

An indie press is already looking at it (!!)

Big Realisation

The hardest part isn’t jargon. It’s finding the story buried under the academic structure.

Most people’s research is actually interesting — it’s just trapped inside Methodology Prison.

Things This Is Not

Just so there’s no confusion:

It won’t magically make you a bestseller

It’s not a substitute for a formal book editor

It requires being OK with major rewriting

It’s not for people who want to keep their work sounding academic

I can’t scale this to 500 customers — maybe 50–75 a year max

What I’m Trying to Figure Out

Do Master’s/PhD grads actually want this? Early signs say yes but sample size = 2.

How the hell do I reach people who just finished their degree?

Should I partner with universities or is that a dead end?

Can this scale without destroying the quality (probably not)?

Questions for HN

Would tech/CS/ML grads use this?

Any ideas on how to reach people outside humanities?

Anyone here wish they could turn their thesis into a book but don’t know where to start?

Am I missing something obvious that would kill this idea?

Site: (convertmyresearch.com) Samples: (convertmyresearch.com/samples)

Happy to answer anything.