This post is part of a series about writing with a co-author. To read all my advice about the full process of collaborative writing (including stories and bonus chapters not found here on the blog), read my book, In It Together, a guide to writing with a co-writer without losing your mind.
Now that your book is revised, it’s time to start preparing it for publication. At this stage, you’ll have to make final decisions about how you’re going to publish the book. Hopefully you discussed some of your intentions when you created your contract, but if you left some of the decisions for later, it’s now time to commit.
Both traditional and indie publishing are valid choices. Both require a tremendous amount of work by the author and neither offers any guarantee of success. There are authors finding success in indie and in traditional publishing, and also many who are finding success doing both. As you look at your publishing options, therefore, it’s not so much a question of which one is better. You want to consider instead which is a better fit for you and your partner.
If you’re in a tiered partnership, the senior partner may be the one making these decisions. In an equal partnership, you’ll have to decide together what publishing path you’d like to pursue. This is one area where it’s important to make sure your goals are aligned: what do you each want out of your publishing path, and what do you think is the best way to get there? Be sure to communicate not just about your preferences, but about the why behind them. If you have different visions of your path as a collaborative team, you’re going to need to work out a shared vision before you can proceed.
Let’s talk about some of the challenges partners are likely to encounter as they choose between different publishing options.
Yes, You Can Try Both
So often in the industry we talk about traditional and indie publishing as if they are rival sports teams, but you don’t have to pick a side if you don’t want to. The most common approach I have used with both my collaborative and single author books is to try both. I send the first book of almost every series I write to my agent, and he shops the book in New York. While it’s on submission, I work on other projects. I might also prepare to publish independently by doing prep work on (or even writing) some sequels.
If the book doesn’t sell to a traditional publisher, I move forward with independent publishing. (No, this doesn’t mean the book wasn’t “good enough.” There are plenty of excellent books failing to find a home in traditional publishing for one reason or another.) I love indie publishing because it lets me move forward and find an audience for my work regardless of whether it fits what a publisher is looking for. I love to work with traditional publishers because of what they can offer in terms of production services and potential bookstore placement. Many paths to publication are viable and valid, and there’s no shame in pursuing one or all of them. The most important thing, as usual, is that you and your partner agree on your path and feel comfortable with it.
Working with an Agent
If part of your team publishing plan involves traditional publishing, you will probably want to seek representation from a literary agent. As of this writing there are still a few places you can submit your work unagented, but those are dwindling and the biggest markets all require agented submissions.
If one or both of you already have a literary agent, you’ll have to decide (and inquire about) whether one or both of them will represent your joint work. It’s possible to have the book submitted by both your agents together if they are amenable to that arrangement—in that situation one of them would do the literal submission of the book, but they would each represent their own client separately and take a commission from that client’s share of any proceeds.
Alternatively, one agent could represent both authors, with the other author’s agent agreeing not to be the agent of record on that particular project. In this case, only the agent submitting the book would receive a commission, likely from both author’s earnings. Both of these solutions obviously require the enthusiastic consent of both agents; you need to ask your agent what they’re comfortable with and be respectful of their answer, even if it isn’t what you want to hear, just as you are with all your business partners.
If only one of you is currently signed with a literary agent, that author could ask their agent if they are willing to represent your project on behalf of both partners. The agent might sign the unagented co-author as a client, or they might not, depending on the agent’s preferences. I’ve worked under both circumstances, and both worked out fine. If either of you is agented, you will want to keep your agent apprised of what’s happening at every stage, and also ensure that you’re following the terms of your contract. It’s always good to pull that agency contract out and read it again, and then ask questions if you have them.
If neither of you have a literary agent and you want to submit the book to traditional publishers, you’ll need to query the book. I often get questions from authors at the querying stage about whether they should query individually or as a partnership, and I always advise honesty. Will some agents decline your project because they’re leery of collaboration? Maybe! But if that’s the case, they aren’t the agent for your project anyway, so an attempt to obfuscate the situation in the hopes of signing with them are a waste of everyone’s time.
It’s fairly easy to adapt the standard query format to introduce yourselves as a team of authors. Use language that communicates your pride in your partnership and the unique influence it has on your work. When you give your credentials, you can offer a separate sentence or two for each of you listing your previous publications and any other relevant experience. Querying is tough at any stage, but enjoy the fact that there are two of you to share the work, and know that the right agent for your project isn’t going to turn you down simply because you’re working together.
Working With a Publisher
Your relationship to a traditional publisher may vary based on the nature of your partnership. When I wrote the Skyward Flight novellas with Brandon, my contract was with his company, Dragonsteel, while Dragonsteel’s contract was with the publisher. This meant that I had almost no contact with the publisher, even though I wrote the books that they published.
In an equal partnership, you may work much more closely with your editor. You’ll have to decide as a partnership if one person will be the liaison with the publisher, or if you will both be involved in all communications. Regardless of what you decide, you’ll need to discuss communications with the publisher amongst yourselves before responding to the publisher (or your agent) about various publishing decisions. Your publisher doesn’t need to know when you disagree; go ahead and have your disagreement, pull out your communication skills, come to a consensus, and then present your decision to the publisher as if your argument never took place. This will help you to seem professional and united, even if your partnership (like most) can be messy behind the scenes.
Going Indie
If you’re interested in indie publishing, you have different set of challenges to contend with. You’ll have to decide how you’re going to publish the book—and on whose accounts—and how you will manage royalties.
Splitting Royalties at the Source
As of this writing, it’s not possible for two unincorporated writers to share a Kindle Direct Publishing account or split royalties through books published directly on Amazon. Hopefully that will change in the future, but currently, the most common way to have your royalties split at distribution and sent to each of you separately is to publish the books through another service like Draft2Digital, which takes a percentage of your total sales in addition to the percentage taken by Amazon or other publishing markets. This cuts down on your take home royalties, and also limits the options you can choose when going direct to Amazon. As of this writing, for example, it’s not possible to enroll the book in Kindle Unlimited through Draft2Digital, so if KU is part of your business model, this isn’t a good option for you.
If you have an agent, you can inquire if your agency has an ebook publishing program. Some agencies will publish client books under their own retailer accounts and then split royalties and send them on. The downside of this is you lose some control over your accounts (not getting select your own settings, see your royalties in real time, and having to communicate with the agency any time you want to set the book on sale). It will also probably mean you’re paying your agent their commission on your indie book income, which may or may not be worth it to you, depending on your situation. But if your agency is willing to split the money and send it on to you individually, this will save you some accounting work in the long run.
The Royalty Model
Another option is for one of you to publish the book on their personal vendor account and then pay royalties to the other. The disadvantage of this system is that it puts a paperwork burden on one partner—they will have to not only track sales and payments (which Amazon and other retailers do not make an easy task with their sometimes-convoluted reporting, especially when exchange rates are involved), but also have to provide reports and 1099s (in the US) to the other partner for tax purposes.
The partner taking on this burden is committing to do this paperwork forever—as long as that book is earning more than ten dollars in royalties in a given year, the forms will have to be filed. If any royalties are earned during the year, they will have to be tracked and paid on schedule. In fact, even if this partner dies, the work may then fall to their heirs. This is a significant commitment, and you’ll have to decide if you’re really okay with doing it. If neither of you are, then you’ll have to choose another option.
Under this model, you’ll also have to negotiate who will pay for any expenses your book incurs. Who is going to pay for cover or for editing? What about advertising? How will you track that money, and will it be reimbursed from royalties? If you do intend to reimburse expenses, that will add another layer of paperwork to consider, and is something that should be laid out in a contract or in a contract addendum.
LLCs and other Business Structures
You can open a new KDP account if you have a separate tax number for your business. Amazon will close your account if they find out you’ve made a duplicate as an individual, but a new tax number makes you a new entity, which is therefore entitled to its own account. This means forming a legal partnership (an LLC or equivalent if you are located outside the United States), which makes you not just collaboration partners, but now legal business partners.
This is another layer of commitment, and should be taken with another layer of seriousness. Instead of adding a paperwork burden to one partner, if you incorporate as a partnership you will add a paperwork burden to both of you. Taxes will need to be filed for the business and individual income reports will also have to be generated for each partner to use in preparing their individual income taxes. All income and expenses will have to be carefully tracked.
There are a few benefits to doing this extra work, however. If you incorporate, you can open a bank account as a partnership, making it easier to track your income and expenses. You can then pay yourselves in disbursements rather than royalties—in my partnerships that function this way, we choose a bank account threshold with the amount of cash we need to keep in the business for monthly and yearly expenses. When income pushes the account above that threshhold, we cut ourselves checks for the excess in equal amounts. This is nice because it means we never have to negotiate who will pay for what—the expenses all come out of our business account, and we don’t make money unless the business is making enough to cover all of its expenses first.
But this does mean that you are legally entangled with your business partner for tax purposes, and sharing bank accounts requires an additional layer of financial trust. It might be a better fit for partners who write series together, as it’s a lot of commitment for only one or two books. Make sure you’re really okay with this level of entanglement before you form a business with your partner. Consider how you will feel if the partnership fails or your partner leaves the business and you become responsible for managing or closing down the business accounts alone.
Whatever path you choose, producing your book is going to be every bit as much of a challenge as writing it and revising it. Once you’ve made these business decisions and you have a revised manuscript in hand, you’re ready to move on to the important business of production, which will involve, as always, more compromise and coordination.
