9 Things to Look for in Being a Collaborative Author

I’m writing this blog from Bali, Indonesia, where I’m attending the Global Speakers Summit. However, I wanted to take a moment to share some of my biggest disappointments as a collaborative author in other people's books or from what I’ve seen in other collaborative books. ​

I want you to know what to watch out for because, in the beginning, I didn’t know. Now that I’ve joined more and more collaborative books—I think I’ve been in seven—I know what to watch for and what I wish more collaborative books would do.

Also, if you’re reading this blog, we also have this as a podcast episode and as a YouTube video. 

Side note--our collaborative book Dynamic Women Trailblazer Secrets just came out, and we have Leadership Secrets coming out next year. The first two books in the series were Success Secrets and Confidence Secrets, and now we’re putting out the fourth book, which will be published in February 2025. If you want information on that, check out this link. 

Let’s go through My 9 Biggest Disappointments as a Collaborative Author (Aka what to watch out for)

 #1: No strategy for writing. 

In my very first collaborative book, I was given the topic, the logistics of how many words, what font, and how it needed to be submitted. I was given 10 days to submit, but I received absolutely no strategy or support for writing it. 

No one told me, “This is how to come up with your topic” or “This is a good strategy to have.” It was basically just, “Give us your piece.” 

So what I did was book sessions with my business advisor and marketing strategist about it, and I had that ability to go back and forth with them on what's the best strategy for this, what message should I be putting out based on the kind of the offerings I had at the time.

That's what I think is really important, and that's why, for us in our collaborative books, we have a few things that we do. 

1. One being an Idea Generating Session because we want you to have ideas percolating on the topic so you can figure out which is the best one. 
   
2. Then we also have sessions around how to use being in a book to boomerang business back to you. Some strategies around how to use your bio section and how to seed plant within your piece without being salesy.
   
3. Plus, the ability to have other people read your piece and give feedback. ​
   

These are some of the things you need to be looking for. 

#2: Not having an editor 

They might say, “We're going to just read it over to make sure that it’s ok” or something, but not actually having someone do the editing. When I did my first book, Dynamic You, which is the nine pillars of being a dynamic woman, I had three different types of editors, and I didn't know there were different types of editors. 

When we do our books, we have an editor who reads your piece over. I also read your piece over and while we don't necessarily change content or do major editing, we're looking for…

• Is this the correct grammar and spelling?
• Is it a professional piece?
• Is the message clear? 

We're really wanting all the pieces in the book to be the best they can be, while also honouring your unique voice you have. You don't want to have no editing of your piece in a collaborative book but you also don't want to have too much editing where they basically just rewrite your piece and you're like, “I don't even recognize it anymore.” You want to have your unique voice still coming out in your piece.

#3: No social links in your piece so readers could reach out to you easily

I can remember being part of a book, and there was no ability for the reader to get in touch with me. There wasn't even a bio. There was just my name as the author of the piece. 

If they wanted to get in touch with me, they'd have to Google me and make sure they found the right Diane Rolston. I don't want that for the readers of my collaborative books. I want them to love the piece, love the message, and then get in touch with you. 

We always have three social links that you can share. Maybe it’s your…

• Website
• Email
• LinkedIn
• Linktree
• Instagram
• Facebook

Whatever it is. You'll have three so that your reader can get in touch with you in the best way. That's something you want to look for in collaborative books. 

Again, we don't want it to be salesy, but let's make it easy for the reader to get in touch with you, especially if they want to work with you, or they want to book you as a speaker, or whatever it may be. We want to make the path to connecting with you as simple as possible.

#4: No social media assets, so also no consistent brand

The people who put the book together give you no social media assets, so meaning there are…

• no mock ups of the book
• no announcement of you as an author
• nothing that you can use to promote the book

What we do in ours is a lot of preannouncements of the book that you can share. We also then do the “Book is coming” promo posts, the book being launched, and announcing you as an author.

Then we do the “Launch Party is happening”. Then “You can buy the book”. ​

Because there's no social media assets with a lot of the other opportunities, or they have their own, but very few, there's no consistent brand. We offer a whole bunch of different types of assets, again, because you have different social platforms, newsletters and so on. We do banners, stories, posts, reels, videos, etc. We do it all so that you have whatever you need for whatever platform. 

That gets me to my fifth thing to look for.

#5: No personalized social media assets you could share.

A lot of collaborative books don't do any personalized social media assets. We announce our authors with their image and name. 

Having the personalized ones means they are unique to you and help you to position you as an expert and an authority, and then we also do personalized videos for you.

I think it's really important that the authors are front and center of the book since they are the stars writing their pieces. ​

#6: No headshot on the cover and/or no name.

Also, it’s important to have your headshot on the cover. Some collaborative books don’t have that - they just have the publisher or main author on the book. In cases where your headshot is there, they don't put your name on it. That's pretty bad. 

On the back of the cover of the book we put all the images of all the authors, plus their name. Because I don't know how many times I've seen books, and it just has all the images and no names, so you don't know who the people are, or it has all their names and no images. 

Again, this is something to pay attention to it. I think it's super important to your experience as a collaborative author. 

#7: There’s no celebration or party or acknowledgment

There's no party, no launch party, nothing happens. The book just comes out, and then it's  flat. But it's really important that there's an opportunity for a celebration where all the authors get together and their fans, their supporters, and their readers come together to be able to not only launch the book, but acknowledge that these people wrote a piece and are now published authors. That celebration piece is so important to really lock this in as a milestone in your life. 

Look for opportunities for collaborative books that have a celebration of some sort. We now do them virtually because we have authors from all over Canada, all over the states and into other countries. A virtual party makes sense. 

We used to do two in Canada, one in Ontario, and one in British Columbia. But now we find that because our authors are everywhere, a virtual party makes more sense. 

#8: No wholesale copies

You need to be able to buy the book at wholesale rate. What this is going to do for you is, then you can make some money off of every book. Or if you choose to use the book for leads, to hand out as “Thank you gifts” to give to clients, to use as an add-on to packages, whatever it may be, you need to be able to buy the book at a low rate, so that you can make money off of it or, as I said, so that it can be something you give away, but your expenses aren't too high. 

I've been part of books where I have to pay retail for the book, and it then doesn't make sense for me to heavily promote that book, order the book, carry that book to my speaking engagements. I'm only going to do that with collaborative books that I can get at wholesale rate. 

That's one thing that we do, and we also don't have a minimum purchase. You can buy them as you need them, which is a lot better than having to buy 3000 books and have them sitting in your basement or your closet. 

The other thing around wholesale copies is, I also share 21 plus ways of using the book to gain more sales, more opportunities, more clients, more speaking engagements, whatever it is, just ways to use the book to move you towards your goals. 

#9: No connection with the other authors

I think it's really important that you have the opportunity to connect with the other authors. One of the benefits of being in a book is being able to expand your network by connecting with the other authors. 

When we look at all the different things that we offer, and you can check it here, there are multiple times you can connect with other authors. 

• We have the Book Writing Strategies Course. 
• We have the Idea Generating Session. 
• We have the Author in the Box sessions where we give all the content that you need to be able to promote it. 
• We have a launch party. 
• We have a Mastermind, where you also get to invite a friend. 

These are all the extra pieces that you get, where you get to hang out with the other authors. 

Wrapping Up

Those are the nine different things to look for in being a collaborative author. I didn't know these before I started joining other collaborative author opportunities. These are things I was very disappointed with. 

One of our authors came into our Trailblazer Secrets book, and then she had an opportunity to be a part of another book. She probably invested four times as much as she invested with my opportunity in the Dynamic Women's Secrets, and she said she got not even close to a quarter of what we offered. She just thought what I did was the standard, and it's not. 

I'd love for you to be part of Leadership Secrets, which is coming out in February 2025. September 27 is the final opportunity for you to get a Return On Investment Strategy Session. That's a one-on-one session with me where we're going to look at how you can use being a part of this collaborative book as a way to propel you towards your goals so that you can get a higher ROI or return on investment. I'm saying you can easily tenfold it, because you can expand your network, attract leads and opportunities to you, then you can use them to increase your revenue, get you closer to your goals and so much more. 

There are so many other things, but they're specific to you. The ROI session disappears, Friday, September 27 11:59pm, Pacific time. You don't want to miss out on that. That is a huge bonus. My business coach is like, “Diane, that's offering too much”, but I want to do that for you, because, again, that's another disappointment is that I never had the opportunity to do an ROI session with the person giving me the opportunity for the book and seeing things from their eyes, especially because I've been in seven books and I've put out three of my own, so I've had a lot of experience with collaborative books and strategy around books, and would love to really dive in deep and come up with some great ideas for you. 

I'm going to go hit the pool now. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate you. If you haven't yet, share this with a friend who you think has a great leadership story or secret, or is thinking about being part of a book, because these nine things are huge in not being disappointed, in being a part of a collaborative book. 

Read my other blogs:

1. 5 Reasons to Be a Collaborative Author When you Have Your Own Book or are Writing One
2. 3 Ways You’ll Get Left Behind by NOT Being an Author
3. 5 Myths You've Been Led to Believe that Are Stopping You from Being an Author