After I finished my PhD-thesis “Textsorten im Internet zwischen Wandel und Konstanz: Eine diachrone Untersuchung der Textsorte Personal Weblog” in June 2014, I immediately published it as open access version. For various reasons, I wrote my PhD in German. One of my first thoughts after publishing it was to turn it into a “proper” book – in English, this time (by “proper book” I mean, for instance, reducing the length from 450 to roughly 200 pages and cutting away typical dissertation rhetorics, orienting not towards examiners but an interested semi-expert audience). The working title is “The Personal Weblog: A Linguistic History”. So far, I have finished a chapter on genre theory (including genre change) and one of the two concluding chapters.

An additional motivation for continuing with this project comes from Peter Lang Verlag: My PhD and the planned English book based on it were awarded the Peter Lang Nachwuchspreis, which includes the coverage of all publication costs for a print and an ebook edition. The award came quite as a surprise but I am really grateful for the opportunity and the additional motivation it offers for my book project!