Collaborative Book Writing 101

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by Kelly DeBie

Waves frantically to our readers...how have you all been?

It’s been quiet around here for the past few months. I blame summer.

Now that it’s officially fall, it seems that almost every writer I know has begun to hunker down and get serious about writing again.

One of the biggest projects I am working on currently is a collaborative book. The title of it is Sunshine After The Storm: A Survival Guide for the Grieving Mother, and it should be available as an ebook next month, in hard copy shortly thereafter. 

It is the brainchild of Alexa Bigwarfe, who is currently in Washington, DC advocating on behalf of the March of Dimes.

As the title suggests, it is a book targeted to an audience of women who have endured infertility, miscarriages, stillbirths and the loss of their children. Assembling the writers for the book was made possible only through years of connections online of women who were willing to tell bits and pieces of their stories in their blogs.

With each story shared, others would come out of the woodwork, leaving comments and even being brave enough to write about their own losses. Over time, more and more of us became connected to each other, so when the idea of the book came to be, it didn't take long to circle the wagons.

This specific subject matter was quite amenable to a group approach because each of the contributors had a different experience to share, and as a cumulative whole we have addressed a large spectrum of maternal grief issues. An individual writer would, hopefully, only have experienced one or a few of those losses, but not all of them. Bringing our stories together lends more credibility to the book as a whole because we are all speaking from experience, not speculation.

As with any kind of collaborative project, each contributor brought their own background and experience to the piece, in addition to their own style and approach. We've been fortunate thus far that we are all on the same page as far as content and structure go. We've worked together to pull quotes from our own experiences to open each chapter as well.

I don't honestly know how much of the heavy lifting Alexa has done with the book, as she has been the one responsible for all the details. She found the editor and has been the contact person for everything, all the way down to choosing the images for the cover. I suspect she has put far more work into this than she leads on, and for all her efforts, we are tremendously grateful.

With this particular project, there hasn't been a financial motivation to write the book. There never was, and from the beginning, we agreed that the majority of the proceeds would be put back into printing additional books to distribute to hospitals and clinics to help grieving mothers. As an individual writer, I may eventually see a small return on it, but this particular book wasn't written for that reason. It was written to help other women. In the event that a collaborative book is written purely for profit, you would have to make sure that all contributors are agreed on the distribution of income from it ahead of time after all overhead was covered.

Obviously, how you go about gathering writers for a collaborative book will depend on the subject matter. Given the right subject matter, a collaborative approach can be preferred to solo writing, and I believe this is one of those subjects. It certainly cuts down on the amount of material that each person needs to generate, but provides a legitimate publishing opportunity.

In addition to all that, you also have a larger circle of influence built in for marketing simply by virtue of the fact that different writers contributed to the piece, and each will share it with their friends and fans. This book has already drawn a significant amount of interest as a result of our varying reaches.

This book has been a true labor of love, built from years of pain, put together for a reason, and is one that I am proud to say that I am a part of.

Write What You Know (or at least do really good research first)

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by Kelly DeBie

I’m at this place in my life where I’m reading a decent number of self-help books. All of which are written by so-called experts in whatever the topic is, none of which seem to have very much information that pertains to me or is relevant to my situation.

For their sakes, I’m going to assume that whatever they have written, though it doesn’t apply to me like the cover promised it would, must have mattered to them. At least when they wrote it, that is.

These books seem to not only be off the mark, but filled with judgment and condescension, as though whatever experience the author is drawing from is the only important one, and their opinion the best one available.

I suppose it sells books to suckers like me who keep buying them. I read most of them, then throw them across the room.

Sometimes I think my frustration with these books, and with so much non-fiction writing in general is that there almost needs to be this assumed superiority in knowledge, even if it’s not based in truth. Without that hook, that new and improved version of information, without the new sound bytes, how else would they sell the books?

It’s true, I suppose, that non-fiction writing just is that way.

The air of superiority, the specialized knowledge or experience that is unique to each writer, captured and packaged for the masses, even if it almost never directly applies to anyone else.

Without that, aren’t we just regurgitating the same material over and over again?

I suppose so, but then I also suppose that my suppositions mean that I’m arguing with myself.

This notion of expertise in non-fiction writing, self-help writing in particular, is both required and based in falsehood.

Or maybe it’s just that I’ve grown weary of this universe full of self-proclaimed experts, particularly given that so many of them are later revealed to not actually have the knowledge base to be clinging to that illusion of superiority.

You know what I’m talking about, or at least I’m assuming you do.

The “experts” who aren’t. Who don’t actually know what they are talking about. Who have little or no expertise in the area that they claim to, but sell it well.

While it may be slightly more difficult to publish and sell a book based on an unsteady foundation of knowledge, the internet is full of people who do it on a daily basis.

The political pundits who don’t even understand the text of the laws they argue about. The parenting gurus who have had exactly one child for five months and three days. The relationship experts who have marriages that end in ugly divorces. The moms who proclaim how best to raise a child with (fill in the blank condition) even though their children don’t struggle with that issue at all. The life coaches who mostly have failed at careers of their own. The financial planners who can’t balance their own checkbooks. The hypocritical vegans. The nutrition bloggers who couldn’t even tell you where something falls on the glycemic index.

Them.

I could go on and on and on, but I’m again assuming you’re familiar with the phenomenon. Are some of those topics the type that a sufficient knowledge base can be formed with just doing adequate research? Maybe. 

Are most of them of that variety? No.

When people ask me for advice about starting to write, one of the most common things I tell them is to write what they know. Be honest. Be transparent. Be authentic. Don’t try to be something you’re not, because even if you manage to fool people for a little while, eventually you’ll be found out. Eventually people will see through it.

If that doesn’t work, and you still feel compelled to write about something you aren’t familiar with, make sure you do exceptionally good research. Cover your bases. Learn about whatever that topic is in depth. Then learn more.

Understand though that sometimes there is simply no substitute for experience.

And remember that once something is published, whether on the internet or in a book, it’s going to live on for all eternity. If you’re just giving a topic lip service, someone, somewhere will find out and all the delete buttons in the world won't save you.

I’d rather be unknown and have integrity than be famous for being a fraud.

But that’s just me...