Excerpt
We're so glad you've joined us on this exploration of coauthoring nonfiction! We believe that collaboration offers benefits across a whole host of areas, and in Collaborate to Create: A Guide to Coauthoring Nonfiction, we will help you understand what a collaborative effort can bring to your writing and publishing efforts, how you and your coauthor can capitalize on the opportunities, and how to avoid the pitfalls that can founder a collaborative project.
What do we find appealing about coauthoring?
Anyone familiar with Matty's nonfiction platform, The Indy Author, is familiar with her love of the nautical metaphor, and as with so many other topics related to the writing craft and the publishing voyage, sailing offers a great metaphor for collaborative work: double-handed sailing teams in competitive racing.
In double-handed sailing, two sailors manage all aspects of the voyage—plotting the course, adjusting the sails, maintaining the craft—on a journey that demands precision, trust, and seamless coordination.
Each sailor brings unique strengths. One might excel at reading the wind and trimming the sails, while the other is a master at plotting the course and maintaining focus under pressure. Success depends on the ability to harmonize distinct roles and communicate effectively, even under the stress of rough seas or unanticipated headwinds. For longer races, one sailor might need to take full responsibility for the craft for a period of time to enable the other to rest.
Like these sailors, coauthors steer their book to the finish line of a journey that neither could have achieved on their own.
Michael sees another metaphor for collaboration in his own life: video games and the concept of "leveling up"—a concept that he used for his author business, Author Level Up.
In the gaming world, to level up means to ascend to a new level where the skills learned at an earlier level help the player navigate the new level's challenges. Players must continue to practice their new skills to move to the next challenge, in a constant state of simultaneously exercising their existing mastery and achieving new levels of mastery.
When two people combine their skills, they can level up much faster, as in two gamers tag-teaming a level in a video game. In the same way two sailors must have precision, trust, and seamless coordination, so too must gamers work together to achieve their goals. Some games are best played solo, but others can only be won through collaboration.
We believe that some goals of a writing and publishing career are more attainable via collaboration than via solo work.
Why Coauthoring ... and Why This Book?
Collaborating on a nonfiction book brings with it so many potential benefits, enabling you to:
•Tap into the knowledge of your coauthor to deepen your knowledge of a topic about which you are already an expert.
•Become an expert in a topic that's new to you.
•Add a book to your portfolio that might never have been created as a solo work.
•Expand your audience to your coauthor's fans and introduce your coauthor to your own fans.
•Earn income from your jointly produced work.
•Lay the foundation of a relationship that can benefit both of you long after the book has been published.
Matty values collaboration because it expands the portfolio of topics on which she can offer courses and workshops and expands her exposure to and reputation within the indie author community she wants to reach.
Michael values collaboration because it moves him toward his goal of building a portfolio of nonfiction that covers every aspect of what it means to be a self-published author in the twenty-first century.
Which of these seem most appealing to you and align most closely with your goals for your author career? What benefits do you anticipate from coauthoring beyond the ones we've listed? (You'll have a chance to capture these at the end of this section.)
Our Coauthoring Experiences
Matty's first collaborative effort was with the book Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting with Readers Using Short Fiction, which she coauthored with Mark Leslie Lefebvre. Matty, who had indie published some Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts and was wondering what else she could do with these works, heard Mark make a brief mention on his Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing podcast about the promotion and marketing opportunities that short fiction offers writers. She got in touch with Mark and asked him if he would consider doing a full podcast episode on this topic, which he promptly did. She got in touch with him again, saying that she thought the episode provided the basis of a book and asking if he would be willing to coauthor that book with her. Mark agreed, and Taking the Short Tack was born.
What drove Matty to pursue a coauthored book? First, she knew that writing the book with Mark would provide a fantastic opportunity to deepen her understanding of the business side of short fiction, a topic about which Mark is an expert. The idea of gaining experience in a creative approach she had never used before, coauthoring, was appealing. And, frankly, she was enthusiastic about tapping into Mark's reputation and reach in her target audience: fellow indie authors.
Michael's first collaboration was with fiction: writing the bestselling fantasy thriller series Modern Necromancy with his friend Justin Sloan. They wrote this series before collaborations were popular and before many of the current tools on the market were created. On the nonfiction front, Michael also coauthored the bestselling nonfiction book 150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered with Orna Ross, Director of the Alliance of Independent Authors.
The first book Matty and Michael coauthored together, From Page to Platform: How to Succeed as an Author Speaker, came about based on a conversation we had over dinner when we were in New York teaching at the Writer's Digest annual conference. We discussed how we had landed the gig, approaches we took in negotiating our speaker agreements, and some of the best (and worst) practices we had developed or seen related to delivering an excellent presentation and engaging our audiences. By the end of that conversation, we knew we had enough valuable information to share with our fellow authors to merit a book.
And this book, Collaborate to Create: A Guide to Coauthoring Nonfiction, came about because once we had completed work on From Page to Platform, we recognized the value that collaboration on a nonfiction work could bring, realized that we had developed a valuable set of best practices for such work, and knew that others could benefit from hearing about the challenges we faced and how we overcame them.
