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How do two equally contributing authors write a book as equals?

Two authors writing a book together as equals is unusual.  Normally with non fiction the book itself is written by someone with the knowledge and expertise. A contributing author is often a well-known expert or celebrity who writes a short introduction.  The addition of the forward by someone of high status helps to attract more readers and encourage sales.

Memoirs or biographies of well known people are often written by a professional writer.  The person who does the writing is called the “ghost” writer. Their name may not appear anywhere as the book is written in the voice of the celebrity. To reveal the name of the ghost writer would be like showing how a magic trick works.

A mix of these two approaches is seen in the work of novelist James Patterson. His name always appears on the cover but there is often another name as well.  The combination of the two a more powerful offering.

In other cases where two contributors collaborate on a book each may have a clearly defined skill.  Writer and photographer and in the case of books for young children writer and illustrator.  Most of Julia Donaldson’s successful children’s books are illustrated by Axel Schiffler who also illustrates the work of other authors and is well respected in his own right.

In the world of academia often there are many names contributing to a white paper, scholarly article or book.  Usually there is a hierarchy and a lead researcher or professor even if the results are documented by others in the team.

How should two  collaborators approach writing a book?

This was the question we faced when deciding to write our non fiction book “Distinctive Voice – the fearless guide to a wholehearted blog worth noticing“. There weren’t many examples of co-authors to give us inspiration. When we checked the idea on amazon we noticed that there was only the opportunity for one author tends to be defined as the lead.

The first option we considered was to write a chapter each in our own voice. But we decided that would be too confusing for the person reading.  (Part 4 of our ebook is about valuing the needs and wants of the reader and this is important to us.) In our work with clients we work together and we wanted to replicate that experience. Also we were going to use stories about clients, and include elements of a process that we use in person that could be followed by our readers. So we rejected that idea.

Check in with our values

So we followed our own process and first checked in with our values.  We work together with clients in a consultation.  Although we each may make a different contribution,  our aim is always to empower the women we work with to connect with themselves.  We can provide advice and inspiration as well as accountability or challenge but the sessions are never about us.  We are in service of the principle that our contribution is based in everyday language and any metaphors are non technical and based on nature.

Collaboration involves compromise

We decided that the stories of our work with clients would be easy to record as it was not congruent for us separately take responsibility for joint clients. But beyond our shared commitment to being as authentic as possible we would each contribute stories from our own experience as additional examples. These could highlight our own distinctive voice and add colour rather than confuse!

Should we have employed an editor?

We could have employed an editor at any stage.

But we had already delivered most of the material as a course or in consultation

Had tested it with real people

Jean had already edited a number of books

We were interested to manage the process of getting an ebook on to amazon ourselves

We felt we had the skills and connections to do our own marketing

We thought it would all be easy.

Setbacks which delayed progress

As things developed we discovered it wasn’t as easy as we first thought!  We both value our families highly and they were our first priority during the pandemic.  So the book went on the back burner for a while.

Then when we came to reevaluate the material we discovered that not only the world had changed but so had we.  Nothing dramatic enough to reject the whole project, but enough for some long and interesting conversations.  We talked about nuances of meaning and priorities as well as the structure.

We accepted that this delayed us a lot. With a commitment to authenticity it was more important for us to make it really meaningful than worry about failing to hit our own self imposed deadlines.  Although this took a long time we enjoy our conversations and our shared values.

This encouraged us to make our own internal process more transparent.  In fact it made our own conversation about Monet’s garden in France feel more important and we now have it at the start of the book.

Although we missed a large number of deadlines we enjoyed the apparent setbacks and discoveries as they helped our thinking processes. In fact we realised our conversations were an enjoyable part of the whole book-writing process. Reaching a conclusion which was satisfying to us both was an important aspect of authenticity and partnership for us both. We then restructured the book to include a whole section on Setbacks in Part 3.

What have we learned from co-authoring that could be helpful to others?

Have a clear aim

Our aim was simply to publish a book together. That meant we had to have a published manuscript and to keep the partnership alive. Which we have done. We felt no need to write a bestseller, or spend a lot of money and time marketing the book. All kinds of opportunities come up along the way and we needed to remind ourselves of our aim from time to time.

Respect each other’s differences

We have different cultural and personality differences. Ute is a native German speaker, despite her excellent English, and often the language structure of German evokes a different thought process. We tried to accommodate different types of thinking and feeling so it would be accessible to different people. Especially those who thought they did not like the idea of blog marketing.

This took much longer! We had several internal deadlines which we ignored in favour of a development in our ideas.  By the time we finished the manuscript several years had gone by, but we kept on collaborating and the partnership remained stable.

Write for your reader

We kept the reader in mind all the time as we wanted her to enjoy reading and also to take action.  So we included things to do at the end of each chapter and also more intuitive aspects to think about as we find the mind shifts are as important as actions.

Test your ideas to see how they land

We kept our email list up to date with our progress, and also used social media.  Initially we released a chapter about setbacks to our list to see how they would respond.  We did not ask any specific questions and the feedback we got was supportive but not particularly helpful.

When we had the manuscript nearly complete we sent it to a select number of “beta” readers. This time we were more prescriptive in the questions we asked as we were genuinely looking for focused answers.  The responses were hugely helpful and included some ideas we were glad to include, as well as some we decided to disregard. We released the book in two halves and sent a list of specific questions which we wanted them to answer.  We asked about the content of the book, and whether the title and subtitle felt appropriate.

Cover Design preferences

Authors often present two alternative covers for their audience to choose the one they like the best.  We had this in mind to do but in the end ran out of time and missed this step. However we did get feedback from a designer about the first cover idea which resulted in a change of subtitle.

She said that the cover looked as though the book was a thriller and she expected to see a dead body.   So we changed it to look more friendly and also amended the subtitle  to show that the book is a “guide to a wholehearted blog worth noticing”.   Anyone buying the book expecting a crime novel filled with world weary policemen and bloodthirsty villains would be very surprised!

We did release the cover image before publication and got a good response.

Have a Plan but don’t be surprised if it changes

We thought we already had a structure from the courses we had run, and our work with clients.  However as we looked in detail at the voice and ethos of the book we found it was the relationship with the reader and their perceptions that were more important to us than doling out information.  So in addition to including the setbacks chapters we also cut out a lot of the technical information we had intended to include.

Technology changes so quickly and we knew that the communication principles were more important than any software updates.  But we had to state this clearly so that someone writing a blog or longer social media post could use any platform and get results.

Lead your readers to your website.

It is difficult to get anything more than numbers from sales figures.  Ideally with a non fiction book we wanted readers to take more action or follow up. So we have included a download which can be accessed via the book in return for an email address.

Unanswered questions may remain

Our audience is women who would value support and encouragement to be more confident in establishing their authentic online presence. Our big question was around whether they identified with a certain description.

We were unsure whether our target audience felt comfortable being described as in “mid-life”.  We knew “middle aged” does not sound appealing and we could have included an age definition as in “Over 40” or “Over 50”.  We have left this a bit vague as we did not find any conclusive answers, and those we got were quite conflicting.  So we have used general descriptions such as “not in the first flush of youth” or “non-millennials” We hope to get clearer answers as the book is read by more readers.

Benefits of co-author collaboration

Collaborating on writing the book meant that we helped each other.  When one was busy the other could take over.  It was much more pleasant to share both the successes and the failures with each other.

We also gained a great deal from our conversations. These weren’t always focused but helped to develop our thinking and strengthen the partnership.  This definitely helped us reach the conclusion.

If you are thinking of collaborating on an equal basis to write a book we hope you will find some of these points useful.

Do let us know.

PS. To read the ebook that we co-authored as equals  “Distinctive Voice – The fearless way to a wholehearted blog worth noticing”  please click on the link. It is about finding your own authentic voice and encourages you to try ideas and activities. See what the review say! It is in the top 100 list of blogging books on Amazon UK.