The fundamental truth about working on a book with a writing professional

You are an expert on your topic and your ideas. I will never know as much about your topic as you do.

I am expert on nonfiction books. You hired me because I know more about books than you do.

This is the basis of our collaboration. It’s our greatest strength. It’s also our greatest challenge.

Here’s what will happen

You and I will talk — a lot. If you’re hiring me as an editor, you’ll write something and share it with me. If you’re hiring me as a writer, I’ll write something and share it with you.

It’s at that point that the disagreements will begin.

I will look at what you write and think, “They really don’t know how books work.”

You will look at what I write and think, “He really doesn’t know how this topic works.”

I will have to learn a lot more about how you talk about your topic and your ideas, read more of your source materials, and understand how my naive understanding is wrong . . . and how to deliver a deeper understanding.

You will have to learn how titles work, how chapters work, how case studies work, how to cite sources, how to create narratives, how to create drama, and even what is and isn’t possible with words, sentences, paragraphs, and graphics.

If you can’t explain yourself, your topic, and your idea to me clearly, we will fail. It will be frustrating, but remember, your audience is likely as ignorant about the topic as I am. If you can’t explain it to me, how can I explain it to them?

If I can’t explain why some ways to write work and others don’t, we will fail. It will be frustrating, but audiences have expectations and different writing methods generate different reactions in those audiences. If I can’t explain those expectations, methods, and reasons to you, we’ll never reach a meeting of minds.

Reacting to each other’s text and comments is the fastest way to achieve a meeting of the minds. Talk is just talk. But when I understand what I got wrong, and you understand what you got wrong, we’ll be well on our way to getting everything right.

When my experience and yours begin to mesh, it will be glorious. The results will delight you and your readers. It will be as rewarding to create as it is to read.

If my experience and yours never mesh, we’ll likely have to part ways. You might find somebody else who can help you write your book. But what you come up with won’t match my ideas of what a book is supposed to be. Perhaps that will define a new way to write a book, but perhaps you’ll just be spitting in the wind, which rarely ends well.

There will always be points on which we disagree, even after our experiences have synced up. I’ll give on things I’m sure are wrong. You’ll compromise on things you wish could be different. But if things are working, these unresolvable differences will be few, and won’t be noticeable to readers.

About this work

You’ll pay me to get to the meeting of the minds.

It might seem unfair to pay me for time spent that doesn’t yield publishable results (yet), only a shared understanding of what we’re doing. Shouldn’t that be free?

You’ll pay for a treatment — a North Star for the book — that you’ll never publish. I’ll draft or edit the same text three times, probably at a reduced rate, to get to a more productive relationship. It’s a discovery process for both of us. And you will pay me to achieve a meeting of the minds. It’s usually worth it — for both of us.

If you hired me, you had faith in my abilities. If I agreed to work with you, I had faith in your ideas. So we’ll get there — and the time we spend getting there will pay off.

Disagreements are hard on people, but I’ll approach them with empathy, logic, humor, and a little bit of sarcasm. (One client said I have “crusty compassion” — I’ll take that to heart.) If you approach our challenge the same way, we’ll get to an effective and productive place — and without hating each other.

I won’t be mean. You shouldn’t either. Because there’s no amount you can pay to get me to put up with that.

I look forward to working with you. Because if we do it right, it’s going to be a blast — and we’ll give birth to a book together.