How Authors Can Use Collaboration to Boost Their Platforms
A rising tide lifts all ships. Use collaboration with others to boost your own visibility, while creating valuable connections.
Building a writing career should not be done alone.
I think this is one of the biggest mistakes new writers make—a mistake I made for years, always trying to hustle and do things all by myself just because it was all about my vision. But constantly doing things I’m not good at and constantly trying to live outside of my “zone of genius” is draining. It doesn’t work.
I’m in like four million Christian writing Facebook groups, so you'd think us Christian writers would be more connected and collaborating more with all these opportunities to connect. But for some reason, it’s not happening enough. Facebook groups and similar communities can be too focused on promoting our own stuff when we should spend a lot more time lifting up and promoting others. The Golden Rule applies here: if you want people to be a raving fan of your work, be a raving fan of other people's work.
So I want to give some ideas on how writers can use collaboration with others to kickstart their careers, build audiences, and create successful products. Please feel free to comment or add other kinds of collaborative partnership ideas where we can create a mutually beneficial system to help other writers. A rising tide raises all ships, after all.
1. Accountability Groups
Accountability groups involve you as an author teaming up with other creatives where you help each other set goals, check in on each other, and maybe study something together. Accountability groups keep you on track and provide some external motivation to accomplish tasks. These groups can be free with your friends or professionally organized by others.
There are so many different ways to do this, some paid, some not. Some have strict standards, others have lax rules. It all depends on what you want.
2. Collaborative Presses
I can't find many examples of these, but I have a friend, Brannon Hollingsworth who co-runs a fiction publishing company with three or four others (check out this podcast episode of Creatively Christian where he talks about the set-up along with his partners). Together, they trade off editing each other's works, marketing, formatting, etc. They don't necessarily have to pay anyone because all work is done within the press. They have a partnership agreement to support each other's works and have a kind of profit-sharing model where you get paid a percentage of sales on the finished product based on how many jobs for the particular work you did.
This model would have some upfront costs to create a website and get a business license, but since you save money on labor costs and people only get paid when books sell, it’s rather cost-effective to run. One bonus: your self-published works look more professional because they have a publishing company behind them that also will have its own marketing channel. My recommendation would be to collaborate with a few others who write in a similar genre—be a specialist and not a generalist in order to attract the right kinds of readers and build the right audience who will want to buy their next book.
3. Collaborative Audience Platforms
One of the best ways to build an audience is to borrow one. What if you borrowed your friends' audiences and they borrowed yours? This could look like newsletter swaps or shout-outs on socials, but I think authors who don't have huge audiences should take it a step further. Build a shared platform around a topic or genre where the founding authors get to promote their stuff, but you also highlight other people’s works. Audiences around a topic are more likely to be found in search engines and are more likely to get people to join since it's not just one random person's name behind it.
Facebook groups are the easiest examples. Team up with some authors who write in your genre or on your topic and create a group with them. Then try to attract readers of that genre or topic to the space. I know there are groups for Christian Science Fiction readers, for instance. Though you could niche down even more. What if you have a group for Christian Science Fiction Books with Female Leads? It’s up to you what might be too narrow, but remember, “the riches are in the niches.” No need to create these niche spaces by yourself—team up with others.
You can also create a topic-based social media account, a book news and discussion website, an email newsletter, a book review site, a live YouTube discussion show, a genre-based podcast, an online forum, etc. Personally, I’d say get a website and get email subscribers regardless of what platform you build on because you never know if the social media group will be removed or downplayed in the algorithm or something like that. Get a site as a “home base.” All of these are platforms where you and some others could build a shared audience to more easily promote your stuff to people truly interested in that type of content.
4. Co-authoring
The last thing on the list is simply creating a project together. This could be an anthology of short stories, a novel, a whole series, or even a book bundle. When you promote the work, you are also promoting other people. Each person’s existing audience gets a glimpse of a new author. Plus, co-authoring can get your work done faster and out to the market sooner.
I do want to add that anthologies don't typically sell well, so if this is your route, I would sell them cheaply and use them mainly for getting your name in front of a cold audience (an audience that has never heard of you). It's probably best to use these collaborations to lead people to a newsletter or another platform rather than using them to actually make money.
Conclusion
Collaboration is a powerful tool for authors to elevate their platforms and reach new heights of creativity and success. Through accountability groups, collaborative presses, multi-author audience platforms, and co-authoring ventures, writers can harness the collective energy of their peers and tap into a wider audience. By fostering these collaborative connections, authors not only expand their reach but also enrich their own creative journeys. It’s crystal clear that with collaboration, authors can achieve more than they ever could alone, forging a future where words come together to create something truly extraordinary.
So those are my main ideas for how authors can use collaboration.
Can you come up with more collaboration ideas for writers? Tell us in the comments!