Everyone involved in your book is biased — including you

Books are team efforts. People involved in your book project, like editors and publishers, have vested interests in doing things a certain way. There’s nothing malign about that, but as you work with these professionals, it can be helpful to know what motivates their decisions.

How the people on your book team are biased (and what to do about it)

Here’s where your collaborators are coming from.

• Your agent wants to maximize your advance, because that’s how they get paid more. As a result, they’ll recommend changes that are more commercial, even if that’s not the direction you want the book to go. They’ll push you to publishers offering the biggest advances, as opposed to publishers that may be a better fit for your book long term. Be aware that agents are generalists; they know more about the publishing business and less about your particular topic, a bias that’s reflected in the suggestions they make.
• Your editor has a particular view of how books works. Your editor is ostensibly there to help make your book better for readers, but inevitably their past experience colors their advice. If you work with an editor who edits a lot of memoirs, they’ll push your book to read like a memoir; if your editor focuses on self-help books, they’ll probably recommend that you add more encouragement or psychology. These are all reasons why you’re better off with an editor who has worked on many books similar to yours.
• Your traditional publisher wants to efficiently fit you into a slot. Unless you’re hugely famous or successful as an author, your publisher wants to publish your book with as little effort as possible. They’ll pick a publication date that fits their schedule, not yours, and resist efforts to publish sooner. Their editor’s review is likely to be shallow, because they’re saving money by making that editor work on many books at once. They may skimp on features like indexes that add cost. And they’ll expect you to accept their cover designer’s first design, because futzing around with additional designs costs them time and money. You can push back on some of this, but the publication date, once agreed upon, is the one thing they resist changing.
• Your hybrid publisher wants you to sign up for extra services. If you work with and pay a hybrid publisher, you’re the customer, so they’ll be far more responsive to your needs than a traditional publisher would. But hybrid publishers make more if you sign up for everything else they offer, like promotional and marketing services, even if you’d be better off hiring your own publicist.
• Your coauthors have their own agendas. If you work with coauthors, be as aware as possible of each author’s particular desires for the book. If authors disagree about objectives, content, terminology, which author is listed first, or any other element, that can cause conflict during both manuscript writing and book promotion. Get these issues out in the open and resolve them before the project gets too far along.
• Your ghostwriter wants to write what they know. Your ghostwriter’s job is to write the book you want them to write. But the ghostwriter is not you, that means there are gaps in their knowledge. Filling those gaps takes research, which is time consuming. Ghostwriters may also have challenges writing in your voice, since they’re working based on extensive experience writing in their own voices. If your feedback is reasonable and consistent, the ghostwriter is more likely to address your concerns.
• Your copy editor wants you to follow the rules. Copy editors know and apply rigid rules about how text is supposed to work. They have little tolerance for your creative ways to spell, use grammar, capitalize words, or place (or remove) dashes and commas. You can overrule them, but recognize when you do so that you’re making a choice that violate language rules so your book may appear unprofessional to readers.
• Your publicist wants to reduce your book to a hook. That means they’ll focus on what’s easiest to sell to media, podcasters, and the like — which may not be the book features that you’d prefer to focus on. Don’t let publicists misrepresent your core message; do allow them to simplify it for easier consumption.
• Your boss wants to benefit the company. If you work for an organization, they’ve got an interest, too. They don’t want you to write anything that damages their reputation, threatens their relationships, or violates their confidentiality. There may also come a time when their interests and yours diverge, for example, when you’re becoming too prominent and famous and drawing attention away from their own leadership. So be aware of their interests and balance them with your own.

As an author, you too have biases. You may want to promote yourself and what your organization offers, when you should be putting reader’s needs first. You may be inclined to write things first, when you should be planning first. You want to write what you know, which may not be what your reader needs to hear. You may have a tendency to keep adding material when it’s best to keep things short. And you may put off writing to a time too close to the manuscript deadline, using up the time you need for rewriting and revision.

My advice to authors is simple to describe and hard to execute: listen to all your collaborators and editors and address their concerns if possible, but remain true to what you believe. And serve readers above all else. If you keep these principles in mind, you’ll be best positioned to benefit from a set of collaborators and partners, biases and all.

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