The book collaborators’ pledge

We all know that coauthors — or authors and their ghostwriters — need a close relationship. Here’s are the qualities that make that relationship work, starting with trust.

Trust is the foundation of an authoring collaboration

Trust is the unshakable foundation of every book collaboration relationship.

That is true regardless of whether you’re talking about two coauthors, or an author working with a ghostwriter. Here’s what that trust looks like: You decide everything together. Title, audience, ideas, terminology, what research to conduct, how the chapters will flow together, how each chapter will flow, how close it is to done, and so on.

Crucially, this does not require that you share the same opinion on everything. Coauthors disagree. Authors disagree with ghostwriters. This is not just healthy, it is essential, because a diversity of viewpoints makes a book stronger.

It also does not require equality. Often one author is more important than the other, and the secondary author will eventually defer to the primary author’s judgment. And in a ghostwriting relationship, the ghostwriter works for the author, which requires accepting the author’s judgment.

What it means is that the authoring collaborators hassle out the issues, come to a resolution, and then present a united front. No outsider can ever cause one collaborator to betray the trust of the other. That includes people like agents,publishers, bosses, and spouses. From the perspective of those outside the book, the collaborating authors appear united and inseparable; lobbying one cannot succeed unless the other is persuaded as well.

If you’re a parent, this may sound familiar. Parents disagree all the time, but in a healthy family, children learn that you can’t play one parent against the other. A family where children can ally with one parent against the other is dysfunctional. So is a coauthoring relationship where editors can play one collaborator against the other.

Wrestling with ideas and writing is hard work. If that work includes politics, scheming, and distrust, the difficulty of the work is massively multiplied. Worse yet, the work ceases to be fun and becomes super stressful. That’s no way to write a book.

The authoring collaborators’ pledge

If you and a coauthor are working together or you’re working in a ghostwriting relationship, you should agree to the following:

1. Our mutual trust is more important than anything else about the book.
2. We will decide major issues together. This includes publishing model, publication date, title, cover credit, cover design, audience, and table of contents.
3. We will document what we decide in writing in a shared space. If anything we’ve previously agreed on needs to change, we will work together on how best to change it.
4. We will keep our disagreements between us. Once we settle an issue, from the perspective of those outside the book, it will remain settled. No one else interacting with or working with the book will be able to exploit our disagreement.
5. We will agree on a process for collaboration, including who does research, who drafts chapters, who gathers outside reviews, who does rewrites, and so on. If we need to change that process, we’ll discuss it before changing it.
6. Because it’s more efficient, one collaborator may do a particular part of the work. For example, one collaborator may be the primary writer. But that collaborator must present the results of their work to the other collaborator before it goes out for review by others.
7. No collaborator will make changes in content without informing and securing agreement from the other.
8. In public and with other people, we will express gratitude for each other’s contributions.

What this means

If you examine the pledge, you can see a few principles behind it.

Collaborators must be enthusiastic about the book. It’s hard to do this work if you’re not excited.

Collaborators must not just trust, but like each other. It’s hard to collaborate effectively with someone you resent.

Work spent on defining process is equally important to work on the book. You need rules and procedures to work together effectively. This is not a free-for-all or a mosh pit.

Even in an unequal relationship, such as a ghostwriting relationship, the more powerful collaborator should not treat the other as a slave, servant, or employee. Nobody wants to work for someone who makes arbitrary decisions and violates trust. If you want your collaborator to feel some ownership, you must grant them some ownership.

When this works, it’s the most glorious thing in the world. When it doesn’t, it’s hell.

So put in the effort to get it right.