3 Main Things to Look for in Collaborative Book Opportunities

This is the second part of a three-part series about being a collaborative author. You can read the first part here. In this blog, I’m going to be covering what to look for in collaborative book opportunities.

Collaborative book opportunities

To kick things off, I want you to know that there are many collaborative book opportunities out there, mine included. After publishing five of my own books, three of them collaborative in the Dynamic Women® Secrets Series. We have Success Secrets, Confidence Secrets, and Trailblazer Secrets, and now in the next year, we're going to be launching Leadership Secrets. I also have my Dynamic Year Journal, my Dynamic You book and I’ve been in six other collaborative books. 

I don’t share this to brag, I share this only because I have learned a lot about the process: writing, editing, formatting, layout, editing, publishing and promotion. I have learned what to do, what not to do, and really what I look for in collaborative opportunities. 

All of them are basically going to have done-for-you options, meaning you submit your piece, and they put it in the book, and they publish it. But there are many other things to look out for. ​

This is true in the way that I look for opportunities, but I'm also noticing I've even joined books that don't have all of these opportunities. There's a different reason why I'm joining, but I don't get the full ROI (return on investment) when I am part of these book opportunities. I do it for different reasons. I won't fully go into that today. 

I want to let you know some things that you can look for. One of my collaborative authors in this new Leadership Secrets book came to me and said, ​“You know, Diane, I was part of another collaborative book, but I just didn't like how it was going, so I actually dropped out and asked for a refund. Now, I'm joining your book because I see the opportunities here and I see the different levels of opportunity that you're providing for my investment.” 

Side note: ​

We have a Call for Authors right now for Leadership Secrets and we have 18 spots for authors to jump in. There will be special perks for this group, but some spots are already taken and doors close April 17th at 11:59 pm PDT.

If you’d like more info, then join us on April 15th from 1-3:00 PM PDT, we are going to have a free training called “Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing”. 

We're doing two more Call for Authors throughout the year. But this group will have most of the perks. I encourage you to check it out to be part of this opportunity. 

Who is this opportunity good for?

• Anyone who has never been part of a book 
• Anyone who's considering it
• Someone who has written their own book
• Even someone who has been in books before maybe even many books and is looking for another great opportunity

The 3 things to look for in collaborative book opportunities

#1: Strategy Support

You're looking for strategy support. Now what do I mean by that? Well, I've been in books before. I joined, I paid the investment and then it was, “Okay, you need to submit your piece within 10 days.” Or “You need to have your piece in by this date.” 

What I would love to see happen more and what we do in our book is we offer a course called “Book Writing Strategies.” 

You get an idea-generating session with everyone to talk about what you could write about, so it’s easier to write your piece. Then we look at the “Book Writing Strategies” where you get strategies on what to write and how to write it to boomerang business back to you: leads, clients, sales, and opportunities. Then that gives you the best ROI.

There are a lot of different things I’ve learned over the years and in being part of six other people's collaborative books and three of my own. There's a lot of strategy in how to write your piece, what to put in your bio, what your title should be, and which links to use for readers to connect with you, each part of your piece is important so you can boomerang business and opportunities back to you. 

There's a lot of strategy that goes into every word. You can choose to just write your piece and submit it and be done. But I really think that if you're looking for a collaborative opportunity to be part of a book, you want to get that outside view of what’s possible. ​

Les Brown says, “When you're in the frame, you can't see the picture.” I give opportunities for not only the strategy piece, but a Mastermind day where I talk through more strategy, and you have an opportunity to share your piece with others so you can get that feedback. Plus, I look over everyone's piece. 

Strategy support is a big thing to look for in collaborative book opportunities. Being that I'm a business coach, life coach, and such, and have had so many of these strategies work for me in my business work, that's why I really want this to 

be a big part of the opportunities that you say yes to. ​

#2: Full promotion

What I mean by full promotion is in two pieces:

1. The publisher, or whoever is providing this opportunity, gives you promotional assets. I say full because you get your book, and then you say, “Now what do I do with it?” What we do on our team is we do something called “Author-in-a-Box” where you get all the promo assets needed to properly promote the book.

We provide you with the sales sheets, PR press release, and all the promo, including stories, videos, graphics, and everything. Not just, “Here's the book” and it's generic for everyone, it is personalized for you, your name, your image, and the ability for you to do that with the videos and other pieces. 

It's a full promo. It’s personalized. It is about you being announced as an author, promo for the virtual book launch party, as well as more promo for when the book is out to help you sell it. 

That's what I see as a full promo. You’re provided with the copy, the images or graphics, everything, so you can just copy and paste, basically because we want it to be easy for you. 

That’s why we call it “Author-in-a-Box”. It's super easy to just copy and paste into your email, onto your social media, or wherever you want to put it. 

2. The other side of this is actually that the publisher is promoting you. I think the publisher should be doing this by promoting all of the authors and their names, not just an image of them on a banner or something and no one knows who they are.I announce that everyone is an author on multiple platforms of mine, like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. It's on my banners I promote on my social.

You need both sides for it to be full promo. Then the publisher promotes the book to their network and encourages all the authors to do so with the opportunity for wholesale copies.

#3: Wholesale copies

This is definitely something you want to be looking for, the ability to purchase wholesale copies. If I give you copy and images to promo, then you can easily promote the book, sell the book to your network and make money off of it. 

Imagine making 10-20 bucks per book or using the book in a way that's going to help you bring in more clients, more opportunities, and more checks. That's key, right?

If you have to buy the book retail from the publisher or Amazon then you are not making money off it unless you raise the price, but you wouldn’t since it’s listed as lower elsewhere. This also stops you from being able to gift the books cheaply or using them strategically to for leads.

Bonus: 

Another thing that you want to look for in an opportunity that encourages you and teaches you the ways to sell the books and bring more business and cheques back to you by using the book. 

I do a training that gives you 20+ ways to use the book to bring in clients, opportunities, money, and sales. These are all proven things that I have done in my business. It’s really crucial that if you're going to invest money in an opportunity to be a collaborative author, you want to have opportunities to bring the money back to you and to get a really good ROI. ​

Wrapping Up

When you're looking for that collaborative book opportunity, you want to look for a publisher who’s giving you strategy support, the full promo, personalized promo for multiple parts of the book process, as well as wholesale copies so that you can make money off of it and teaches you how to use the book in different ways to bring business leads and money back to you. 

If you want to be part of our next collaborative book called Dynamic Women® Leadership Secrets, apply here. We have open doors right now until April 17. This is our first call for authors. I encourage you to jump in now. The best perks will be now. 

On April 15, we have a training called “Collaborative Author 101: How to Explode Your Audience, Establish Your Authority, and Leave a Legacy by Entering the World of Co-Writing”. You can join by registering here. It’s free to attend.

If you have any questions reach out to me, [email protected]. Stay tuned for the next blog (we are dropping right now) where I talk about the “5 Reasons to be a Collaborative Author When you Have a Book or You're Writing Your Own Book”. If I can say so myself, I share some really cool strategy in it as well. 

Read my other blogs:

1. How I Got the Courage to Stop Hiding
2. Make Your Own "Snow Day" with Diane Rolston
3. 3 Ways You’ll Get Left Behind by NOT Being an Author