history books, which he wrote under the pen name Michael Rank. Then he had them translated to foreign languages. Then he worked with a narrator to make them audiobooks. Then he created used them to create online courses.

Scott also started a podcast called “History in Five Minutes” — short episodes that touch on any historical subject imaginable, from memorization in Ancient Greece to accidental inventions in Victorian England. As of this writing there are 137 episodes of History in Five Minutes. They have been downloaded 1.5 million times.

Scott still writes history books, but now he also teaches academics how to write, self-publish and market their own books. He offers this teaching in the Thesis to Book course.

In 2014 he started the website The Scholarpreneur — an active and rapidly growing community of scholars who have take their academic knowledge outside of a traditional university setting. Here he writes blog posts and hosts webinars about how an MA or PhD can make a living on the open market through self publishing, online course creation, thesis advising, freelance academic translation, and paid public speaking.

Scott also hosts the Scholarpreneur Podcast, where he features interviews with academics who are building extraordinary businesses. One recent guest is Gregory Sadler, a philosophy professor who has built a YouTube channel with over 1 million views. Another is Margaret Hiley, a freelance academic translator between German and English who is earning far more now than she did as a lecturer in England.

Lastly, Scott helps MAs and PhDs finish their thesis. He speaks at universities, telling grad students how they can go from crippling writer’s block to finishing their MA thesis in three months or their PhD thesis in six, even if they don’t know what to write or haven’t finished their research. He distills the principles that helped him go from endless dithering to churning out 500-1000 words a day.

If you would like to see a sample of Scott speaking and have him at your university, please click here.