Collaborate to Create
Why coauthoring nonfiction is a pro strategy worth considering.
[This article originally appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Writer's Digest magazine.]
Several years ago, we were in New York, teaching at the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference. One evening over dinner, our conversation turned to how we had landed speaking gigs, the tactics we had used to negotiate our agreements, and the best—and the worst—practices we had seen when it came to engaging audiences. By the time dessert arrived, we realized we had more than just a shared set of stories. We had the foundation for a book.
That effort produced From Page to Platform: How to Succeed as an Author Speaker, our first coauthored nonfiction book. We realized we had stumbled upon a professional strategy worth sharing with other authors: coauthoring nonfiction as a business choice that can elevate your author career. The result of that realization was another joint project: Collaborate to Create: A Guide to Coauthoring Nonfiction.
In this article, we’ll walk you through why coauthoring nonfiction deserves a place in your professional toolkit, what it requires of you and your collaborator, and the first steps to take if you want to explore collaboration.
The Professional Benefits of Coauthoring
When you coauthor a book, you’re not just doubling the bylines—you’re multiplying the opportunities.
Deepening and Expanding Knowledge
Writing about a subject with a partner forces you to articulate what you know, absorb what they know, and combine those insights into something neither of you could have produced alone. When Matty coauthored The Podcast Guest Playbook: Turning Conversations Into Connections and Community with her other coauthoring partner, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, she had plenty of experience with podcasts as both a host and guest, but Mark was able to bring a perspective on how podcast guest best practices could be applied to radio and television interviews.
Expanding Audience Reach and Income
Each author brings a readership, platform, and network. A coauthored book allows you to introduce your work to your partner’s audience while giving them the same access to yours. This can be especially beneficial if each author has an active presence on different platforms; for example, Michael has an enthusiastic following on YouTube, while Matty has a podcast with a wide reach. These outlets cater to exactly the audience we want to reach with our books—authors interested in the business side of writing and publishing—and a larger audience equals more earning opportunities for the book.
Pursuing Opportunities Beyond One Book
Perhaps most importantly, a successful coauthoring partnership builds a professional relationship that can extend far beyond one book. If you’ve developed a good working relationship with your collaborator (more on that below), every coauthored book opens additional opportunities.
Michael has appeared on Matty’s “The Indy Author Podcast” more frequently than any other guest, and many of his topics are tied to his own nonfiction books for writers. We’ve both added to our multiple streams of income by partnering on workshops addressing topics related to indie publishing and by giving talks on the subject of our coauthored works. These opportunities lead to expanded visibility for both of us: a virtuous cycle.
Approach collaboration not just as a way to publish one book, but as a way to build an ecosystem of professional opportunities.
The Realities and Requirements
Coauthoring isn’t for everyone—or for every project. It’s a creative marriage, and like any partnership, it requires effort, compromise, and commitment.
Vulnerability and Trust
Writing is intimate. Coauthoring means letting someone else see your messy drafts, comment on them, and sometimes suggest leaving cherished material on the cutting room floor. You may be insistent about a particular topic that your coauthor sees as unnecessary. Even for this article, some discussion was needed to finalize the points we would cover. It is critical that you learn how to receive (and give) feedback so that you can resolve disagreements when they arise. A successful collaboration means choosing a partner you respect and trust.
Shared Responsibility
Both authors must pull their weight across not just writing, but editing, production, marketing, and promotion. Because a book’s creation and ongoing care can stretch over years, there will inevitably be times when one partner carries more of the load, leaving one person feeling overburdened and the other uneasy. The key is to plan responsibilities so that, across the life of the project, the workload balances out and each author’s contributions feel equitable.
Ceding Control
For indie authors especially, this may be the hardest adjustment. You’ll need to share decision-making about covers, pricing, distribution, and even social media tone. We encountered this while working on From Page to Platform. Michael wasn’t convinced about the need to include a chapter on author readings. Matty was hesitant to add her voice to a strong recommendation that the author on the road should always purchase travel insurance (not because she didn’t think it was a good idea, but because she didn’t always do it herself).
These were easily addressed by having Matty write the chapter on author readings and having the section on travel insurance tagged as a specific recommendation from Michael. But these conversations were only easy because we already had a collegial relationship established. If you can’t imagine compromising on even such fairly minor decisions, collaboration may be a struggle.
Mindset Check
If these scenarios resonate with you ...
- I’m motivated by deadlines.
- I enjoy brainstorming with fellow creators.
- I’m happy to share the spotlight.
- There is rarely a hill I’m willing to die on.
... then coauthoring will likely be a natural fit for you.
If these scenarios resonate with you ...
- I value flexibility of schedule.
- I have clear ideas of what I want to create and how.
- I enjoy holding an audience’s attention.
- I stick to my guns.
... then coauthoring may be more of a challenge for you—but not an insurmountable one! Your success will be determined by the foundation you lay for a collaboration.
Finding and Exploring Opportunities
Coauthoring partnerships often begin with a conversation: at a conference, in a podcast interview, or even at a dinner table. To increase your chances of finding the right partner, you need to be active and visible in your professional communities.
Sometimes the best collaborator is the most unexpected one. If you’re just starting on your author journey, you might want to look for someone who has published more books, but the best collaborator might be someone who has never published a book but has an immense wealth of direct experience in the topic area that will make your writing more informed.
Once you’ve identified a potential partner, the next step is due diligence:
- Professional Standing: Research their reputation and track record. Your name will be connected with your collaborator’s; you want to make sure this connection is beneficial for both of you.
- Previous Work: If they have published previously, assess the quality of the work. Are the ideas presented clearly and compellingly? Is the tone—for example, more conversational or more academic—similar to yours?(If not, are you both willing to flex into a different tone?) If the books are self-published, are they attractively formatted and free of typos?
- Topic Knowledge: You should both have some understanding of the topic to be addressed, but complementary skills can be as valuable as overlapping ones. This was the case in Matty’s collaboration with Mark Leslie Lefebvre in Taking the Short Tack: Creating Income and Connecting With Readers Using Short Fiction, where she relied on Mark’s knowledge of the traditional short fiction market.
- Goals and Compatibility: Discuss your reader goals, professional ambitions, and even personal motivations. Is one of you more interested in income whereas the other wants to use the book as a “calling card” to land speaking engagements? Is one focused on the time around the book’s launch while the other is looking for long-term benefits? Misalignment here can sink a project before it starts.
Consider testing the waters with a small project—a joint article, a podcast episode, or a presentation. Collaboration is easier to evaluate in practice than in theory.
Aligning on Expectations
If the initial conversations go well, it’s time to move from whether to how. Talk through the following with your potential collaborator to ensure alignment.
- Content Scope: Will the book be a high-level overview or a deep dive into the topic? Will the ideal reader be a novice or an expert in the topic? What transformation do you want readers to experience?
- Roles and Responsibilities: How will you divide the tasks? Based on expertise and interest—e.g., one handles publishing logistics, and the other manages advertising strategy? Will one collaborator be primarily responsible for drafting content while the other is primarily responsible for editing? Clear divisions minimize confusion.
- Logistics: Agree on how you’ll track tasks and deadlines. A spreadsheet? A project management app? Even more importantly, decide how you will handle the actual creation of the content. If you will be drafting simultaneously, agree on a platform that supports this, such as Google Docs. If you will be passing a master manuscript back and forth, make sure you have a bulletproof means of knowing who holds the master at any point in time. Don’t leave this to chance—mismanaged logistics can derail even the best collaborations.
- Costs and Royalties: Discuss upfront how you’ll handle editing, cover design, ISBNs, and promotion costs. Decide on a royalty split—we recommend 50/50 unless there are compelling reasons based on differencesin contribution to the book or project. Don’t quibble over percentage points. And whenever possible, use services like Draft2Digital that automate the royalty splitting process; an administrative chore that seems manageable during the first year will get tedious by the second.
- Intellectual Property and Rights: Copyright ownership is separate from royalty percentages. Remember, copyright in the United States lasts for an author’s life plus 70 years, and similar laws apply in other markets, so you (and your heirs) will be partners in the project for a long time. Decide how you’ll handle derivative works, translations, or adaptations if opportunities arise.
- Legal Agreements: Capture your alignment in writing. A contract doesn’t signal distrust; it signals professionalism. Think of it as a roadmap for your shared journey, something that serves as a convenient reminder of your agreements, not as a threat to hold over your coauthor’s head. Contracts don’t need to be complicated; our coauthoring contracts are just a few pages long.
To “write like a pro” means more than polishing your sentences. It means approaching your author career as a business, making strategic decisions that maximize both creative output and professional impact.
Coauthoring nonfiction is one of those decisions. Done right, it deepens your expertise, broadens your reach, diversifies your income, and builds relationships that sustain you well beyond a single project.
If you’re ready to explore collaboration, start by asking yourself: What kind of professional partner would I be—and what kind of partner am I looking for? Answer honestly, and you may find that the path to your next professional level isn’t solo at all—it’s side by side with a coauthor.
