How to manage a book project with many diverse contributors

Life is simple is you write a nonfiction book all on your own. There’s nobody to check with and nobody to slow you down.

But for books that make an impact, it’s usually a team effort. I just turned in a manuscript to a publisher for a book project that included a ghostwriter (me), an author (the client), a communications (PR) person, a project manager, two executive assistants, a survey expert, two researchers, two graphic designers, and several subject-matter experts. And that doesn’t even count the publisher’s developmental editor and copy editor and the publicity firm that will help launch the book.

That might sound like a prescription for chaos. And it could be, except that every one of those people had a specific role and was excellent at contributing in that role. We also carefully designed the collaboration for maximum efficiency.

Here’s some lessons I’ve learned by working in such a complex project.

Determine which team members will drive the project

While everyone contributed, it soon became clear that two of us were driving the project. The author, who was the CEO of the organization, was in charge of the vision for the whole project. I was the primary writer and the book expert, so I led the process planning. This dynamic worked effectively throughout the whole project. It helped that I was completely bought into the author’s vision, and he was respectful of my publishing and book experience.

Keep the planning team small

We kicked off the project with an in-person meeting a year ago. The purpose of that meeting was to decide the title and subtitle, nail down the main idea, and get the table of contents settled. That took most of a day.

In addition to settling the content and process, this enabled the team to better understand all of our roles — including mine, as an outside contributor.

Devise an efficient process for creation and review

Our process was typical for a book of this kind. We built each chapter in four steps: 1) define the idea and discuss elements of that idea, 2) conduct research to build case studies and other content, 3) draft a chapter, and 4) have contributors review and comment on the chapter, and on each others’ comments. (We accomplished that last step with Microsoft Word 365, which works similarly to Google Docs.)

Each chapter had one writer (me) and four reviewers (the author, the survey expert, the project manager, and the PR expert, who was also the primary keeper of the author’s “voice”). That might sound unmanageable, but in fact it worked extremely well. The author reviewed the chapter from the perspective of “Does this say what I want it to say?”, while the others reviewed it based on their unique expertise. I created a fat outline once the research was done; the team typically approved this rapidly with useful suggestions and comments. I then completed a draft. The team then reviewed it concurrently over the course of four or five days. We’d then meet and review and collectively solve whatever problems the team had identified.

This collaboration design functioned well for several reasons:

1. Each chapter had a specific goal and set of content that we’d agreed upon earlier.
2. Everyone contributed to the ideas and research before the writing began.
3. I made sure that there was sufficient time for review before our collective meeting.
4. All the reviewers completed their work in the required amount of time, making those reviews a priority.
5. Everyone stayed in their lanes. The survey expert wasn’t making edits based on chapter structure, and the PR expert wasn’t identifying statistical problems.
6. We all deferred to the author. There was no power struggle; by definition, if he wanted things a certain way, he won the argument. That said, he was open to suggestions based on logic and facts.

Limit the roles of outside contributors

It became clear early on that we needed help from researchers; fortunately, the organization had some on staff. We needed help from the designers to create graphics. And at various points in the manuscript, there were other experts whose opinions became important.

But these experts were satellites outside the main process. For example, we’d delegate a task to the researchers, then take the results of what they found and use it, but they weren’t brought into the draft reviews. Similarly, we assigned the graphic designers specific graphical tasks to accomplish, and then we integrated their work into the manuscript. The additional experts were given drafts to review with specific instructions, and then we integrated their reviews into the normal process.

In that way, we could take advantage of the additional resources and expertise without disrupting the process or creating additional points of view that had to be collectively satisfied.

Schedule long-lead-time resources ahead of time

It would be nice if you could plan a book project one task at a time. But some things take longer and as a result, you need to be sure to line them up ahead of time to avoid busting the schedule.

Such long-lead-time issues include survey design, fielding, and analysis; design and execution of graphics; lining up expert interviews; and brainstorms that require the attendance of very busy people. On this project, we made sure to anticipate the timing required to line up such resources before they were needed.

Concentrate first on making progress, then on fit-and-finish

We created several drafts of the first chapter as a test. This enabled us to settle some global issues about the manuscript before plowing ahead with other chapters.

But once we got rolling, I convinced the team that it was better to write chapter after chapter rather than backtrack and fix problems that the team had identified in earlier chapters. This demanded trust: the team had to trust that I’d eventually handle all the issues they’d raised when I revised the chapters.

Once the bulk of the book had been drafted, I went back over the chapters from beginning to end with the wisdom that came from all that work together. This way, each chapter other than Chapter 1 was drafted once and revised once, rather than just moving forward in fits and starts in a chaotic process.

Once all the chapters were complete and rewritten, we had a list of items to complete before the book could be considered “done.” These included terminological consistency double-checking all statistics, maintaining consistent graphics treatments, and carefully tracking footnotes including appropriate source formats.

The result was an extremely clean manuscript that everyone had reviewed and signed off on.

Manage the publisher throughout

The project manager kept the publisher apprised of our progress, sharing sample content and maintaining communication about deadlines, covers, publication dates, and the like.

One way to manage the publisher on a project like this is to turn in a clean, high-quality manuscript. This assures that once the book is turned it, it’s likely to move smoothly through the publishing process. As you can imagine, if you disappoint the publisher or deliver sloppy or incomplete work, the project becomes far more complex.

The larger the team, the more essential discipline becomes

Teams that consist of a pair of coauthors and an editor can get away with a little sloppiness. Everyone reviews each others’ work and somehow it all gets done.

But larger teams inevitably take more time to complete a book, even though each team member was added to make things more efficient. The more team members there are, the more communications overhead there is.

The solution to this problem is the discipline that comes from experience. This means everyone has to embrace some key principles:

• Start with a clear shared vision; stick with it if possible. If it needs to change, get everyone bought in on the change.
• Be clear about who is in charge of the vision and who is in charge of the process.
• Turn the table of contents into a project plan. (Chapter 7 of my book explains this in detail.)
• Use email to ask questions and settle simple issues. Commit to answering questions in email quickly. (I recognize that other organizations may use tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams for this purpose; what matters is the commitment to ask questions clearly and answer them quickly.)
• Use a regular meeting cadence to raise and settle more complex issues.
• Use a shared resource with content that everyone can see and work on simultaneously, such as Google Docs or Microsoft SharePoint.
• Track what stage each chapter is at and how long it will take to move it to the next stage.
• Be disciplined about tracking sources to give appropriate credit and avoid inadvertent plagiarism.
• Manage outside resources like researchers and graphic designers in a way that takes advantage of their talents without entangling them in key processes.
• Make time for a final pass to get everything in perfect shape before handing it in to the publisher.

Writers and editors are known as creative contributors. They are. But creative doesn’t have to mean chaotic. Only with a disciplined process can a large team work together to create a book that makes a difference.