Being a Co-Author for A Book

Cover Create Your Own Job Security Best

I am looking for women and teens to co-author a version of this book slanted towards different audiences.

Co-authorship can come about in a variety of ways. Perhaps you and your buddy have had an interesting adventure. and it seems appropriate that both of you should contribute to your travel book. Maybe your book-writing partner has some skills related to the topic that you do not. Perhaps you are so well known that you are sought out to contribute portions of a book. Any of these ways, and more, can open opportunities for co-authorship.

In the case of my soon to be published book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife, I wrote some autobiographical chapters based on my life experiences that related to the businesses, jobs and work that I had done throughout my life. These included selling peanuts out in front of a five and dime variety store to creating my own job and title at a multinational corporation to starting my own business. My late-life business is Hovey’s Knives of China, where I take inspiration from ancient bronze knives from 3,000 years ago and make cooking knives using modern steels in Central Georgia. These experiences and more are used in the book to detail how a person should start a variety of businesses throughout their lives with the ultimate objective of having a business already well started when the day comes between age 45 and 67 that the company you works for decides that you can be replaced by a younger, less expensive, worker from India or even by a robot. In the modern international gig economy, no one’s job is considered safe, unless it is one that the you start yourself.

I am a guy and quite naturally write from a guy’s perspective. Much of the content of my book would also be useful to women and teens who want to start their own business ventures. I have written 18 books on a variety of subjects including Geology, Architecture, Health, Hunting, Bow Fishing and Shooting. I could research and write a version of this book from a woman’s point of view. However, it would be a much stronger book if I had a lady who had been active in the business world rewrite parts of the book based on her own experiences and work-place challenges. Twelve chapters of of the book describe methods, such as how to copyright a logo, derive a name for a business, apply for a U.S patent that would remain unchanged. The chapters that the co-author would write would be a complete re-work of four chapters, a part of the Preface and a section of the back-cover material. In terms of words, out of a roughly 40,000 word book, her contribution would be about 14,000 words.

Working the time-table back from the desired release date, the co-author’s time line would be to have the book published a month before the release date. Allow two months for final editing and publishing, four months to write the book and one month to plan it. The entire co-authorship program would take eight months from initiation to completion. I can write a 40,000 word book in three months. I would expect co-authors to produce their 14,000 words in four months. If it takes longer, I need to find someone else. Book production is a business, and new titles must be presented in a timely manner if the effort is to be successful. Having a lonely author in their basement working on a manuscript for years does not work with non-fiction titles. You do the work, get it done and then move on to the next project.

How is this accomplished? The simple answer is that you write every, every, every day. Your goal is to put out x-number of pages each day. Maybe that number is only two. That can work. Some days you might do 10 or 15, but if you can write two pages of finished text a day, you can write a book. The real work of this writing business is in the re-writing. That is when the chapters are examined, repetitive words are removed, sections re-ordered, maybe new chapters added, all of the headings, subheadings got into their proper rankings, photographs obtained, permission slips gathered, etc. The entire book is printed out at several stages and gone over with a fine-toothed comb. Perhaps you even hire a professional editor to go through it, and maybe someone else to do the cover design with the costs of this work being split between the two authors.

A month before the official release dates you have books and pdf copies ready to send to reviewers and media people, and you and your co-author plan a pre-release media campaign trying to tell the world about your new book in as many ways as possible. A book, no matter how well written and published, will fail if it is not aggressively promoted. Books don’t sell books. Authors sell books. If you think otherwise, this is not a game that you should play. To be successful you not only must be able to write, you must also be able to give a compelling interview, write good ad copy, know how to get yourself across on TV and have sufficient confidence and passion to shill your title to a non-caring public. You have to demonstrate how your book is different from others covering the same subject, how it can help them solve real-world life problems, improve your readers’ lives and maybe even help them earn big returns on their investment of an small amount of money.

I am actively looking for co-authors for the woman’s version of the book, and I may have a suitable candidate. She is to let me know early next week. In the meantime, I am also looking for someone now in their 20s or early 30s to write a version of the book for teens. It could work where he, or she, describes his experiences on how he started his business/es and how his teen-aged children and/or young relatives are starting theirs. In short, “What a difference a decade makes.” I see that as a fun parent-child collaboration. I hope that someone takes me up on that one.

If you think that you would like to co-author either the woman’s or teen title, contact me below.