If you're a writer in search..
of a credible partner . . . ..

This Book Will Show You How To:

Decide if you're ready to collaborate
Ask the questions that'll reveal if your book idea will
. . .fly
Figure out your finances
Fashion an agreement that'll protect both of you
Hone the people skills that'll get the job done

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Do You Need
a Literary Partner?
(Chapter 1 excerpt: Comrades in Ink)

O.K., so you want to write a book.

You think you've got a terrific idea. You've got piles of research on the subject. Or maybe you've got nothing on paper but have spent a lifetime gaining on-the-job experience. In any event, you're pretty sure there's no other book like this—though if there were, readers would love it.

You're busy. You don't know beans about publishing. And even on your best days, you'd concede that you're not a polished writer, though you're willing to help as best you can. You'd consider sharing the financial reward, if any, in return for aid in getting the darn thing written and sold.

So where do you go to find a partner? And how can you tell if he or she has the right stuff? Not only the expertise . . . but also the temperament and moxie you need.

Or . . . you're a writer. Maybe you haven't made the Big Time yet, but you know you've got the skill, the savvy, the perseverance, and the affability to work well with others. What you don't have is an idea you can call your own.

How do you team up with somebody in a way to make his or her dream—and yours—come true?

That's what this book is all about: Matching the idea person with the writing person. And equally important, helping keep that team intact until the partners have produced the book…and gotten it published!

In this book, I'm going to seek to provide some guidelines about how to choose an author (if you're a writer) or how to choose a writer (if you're an aspiring author), how to work out an agreement, and how to get along with each other so that the book and/or book proposal gets done, gets sold, and, achieves, I hope, artistic as well as commercial success.

I've been on projects where as many as four or five previous attempts at collaborating failed. That wasn't necessarily because the writers were incompetent or the aspiring authors irascible. Instead, it was usually because there was poor planning or poor rapport. So I'm going to seek to give you insights, ideas, and techniques that will not only maximize the likelihood that your collaboration will work but that it'll be a pleasant one, too.

Successful collaborations take place in every genre, from romance novels to biographies, from plays to poetry, from software manuals to coffee-table art books. Anywhere that words are used, collaborations are possible, even probable. All that's required is something important to say . . . and someone to help you say it. Many writers and authors are collecting royalties for books that, without their partner, would never have been produced.

In this book, we're going to be talking largely about non-fiction because that's the most common kind of book . . . and the most common type of collaboration. But a lot of novels are either ghostwritten or heavily edited by a collaborator before the manuscript goes to an agent or publisher.

So just keep in mind that many of the same principles we'll discuss also apply to fiction and any other literary form.

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