Posted on Monday, 8th September 2008 by CopywritingCat
Q. I’ve been approached to co-author a book about retirement planning. What should I be concerned about?
A. Your message doesn’t indicate why and how you were approached.
Example A: “Hi, I notice you have written a few books about Florida. I would like a co-author to because my book will compare Florida and Arizona as places to retire…”
Example B: “I liked your last book. We have similar interests. Can we talk about developing a joint project?”
If the approach sounds more like A, I would pay attention and dig deeper. If it’s B, I would run as far and as fast as possible.
I would also get a written agreement before investing time in writing (as compared to scoping the project and investigating the potential co-author).
I got suckered by an author who seemed to have a track record of successful book publishing. We had several phone conversations about a possible book. Then I moved and he actually tracked me down to continue the conversations.
That should have been a clue: why did he need me? He has awesome professional credentials and a platform that would get an agent’s attention for a nonfiction book in his field (as we were contemplating).
After several enjoyable but fruitless phone calls, I said the equivalent of, “Fish or cut bait.”
It turned out he wanted 50% of credit and first author mention just by supplying ideas through conversations. And he really didn’t have much time to work on the project…although he had time to travel to exotic places on vacation and a lot more.
Then I noticed: all his previous books had been co-authored…each with a different co-author. Somehow I’d never noticed. Next time, I would try to talk to a previous co-author first.
Well, it makes a good story. And I always like to share what I learn. If I had insisted on a written agreement after the very first conversation, I would have saved many hours of my time.
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Tags: book marketing, co-authorship, promoting a book, writing a book
Posted in writing a book
