Teamwork Is Heartwork

A book publisher answers the question: What makes a good publisher-author partnership?

Newly signed authors to my presses often ask me a variation of the question: What makes a good publisher-author partnership?  

I love this because it’s different than the question of what contributes to an author’s success, some of which is within authors’ control and some of which is decidedly not: the resonance of the book/story; the success of the author’s publicity campaign; luck and timing.

A good partnership with anyone on your publishing team starts with how you show up, and the very best authors to work with are those who act like they’re part of the team, rather than the star player. The truth is, as the author, you are the star player—but book publishing is a team sport. We’ve all been inspired by those athletes who make their team shine, those athletes who, in their winning moments, acknowledge the efforts of their teammates and their support staff. We’re inspired by them because they give voice to what’s true—that they couldn’t have done it alone, and they wouldn’t be where they are if it weren’t for the people around them.

By contrast, we all know the athlete who thinks it’s all about them. Jamie Tartt epitomized this personality type in the Ted Lasso Apple TV series—though the part of the joy of that show was to watch how Tartt’s character started to see this tendency and had a transformation as the series carried on. My son’s favorite soccer players are Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, but he loves Messi more—because he’s humble and generous to others, as opposed to Ronaldo, who needs to make sure you know he's the best.

Working with authors is a lot like working with pro athletes. There are those authors whose success goes to their heads, or whose ambitions for success result in them treating others poorly. There are those who, in the wake of enormous success, remain humble and relatable and grateful for every opportunity that comes their way. As a publisher, I often feel like I have a front-row seat in an advanced psychology class. You can glean a lot about a person by how they behave when so much hope, expectation, and ego-gratification is on the line.

Book publishing is a space where very few authors are satisfied by their sales, their publicity, their successes. It’s easy to fall short because authors always set the bar too high. Most debut authors set their sales expectations at 10,000 copies. Why? I have no idea (and I’ve written about this before in the context of trying to support authors to set expectations). But if I had a dollar for every author who told me they were going to sell 10,000 copies, I’d take myself out to a very fancy dinner in San Francisco.

So, to the question of what makes a good partnership (which extends to an author’s whole team—publisher, publicist, production and editorial, sales force), I offer up the following:

1. Consider what it takes to sell books, and that every single person who’s working on your behalf is a valuable part of the bigger picture. This is important within a publishing house because authors don’t often meet or know the people behind the scenes—designer, copy editor or proofreader, sales force. Write every email like everyone involved is going to read it, and keep in mind that how you interact with the team at your publishing house has an immediate reverberating effect on how that team talks about you to their sales force. Author personality and agreeability, or lack thereof, makes its way to the people responsible for getting books into sales channels.

2. Thank the people who are working with you. A little goes a long way. Just an occasional email letting people know that you appreciate all they’re doing on your behalf, or on behalf of your book, is an amazing gesture that too few authors do.

3. Resist the need to take credit. Maybe you are the reason you got a publicity hit or an opportunity, but when this happens, it’s a win for the team, not just a win for you as the author. I’ve seen so many authors over the years point out to their publicists that they were the reason x, y, or z happened, that it was their connection, their work. Unless the publicist is claiming credit for something they didn’t do that necessitates a callout, this kind of credit-claiming is never helpful, and undermines the hard work of publicity. (And, by the way, publicity is a thankless job, so publicists should be high on the list of those you thank more often than not.)

4. Ask questions before airing frustrations or lobbing accusations. Authors get frustrated, I know. So do publishing teams. But I love an author who leads with curiosity. An agent friend recently told me she’s starting to hate her work because her clients get mad at her when their books don’t sell, lamenting, “When they get rejected, I’m getting rejected, too.” Book publishing is a complicated and archaic business, and authors get frustrated by things their publishers can’t change—like returns and hurt books; bookstores not ordering their books; sales falling short of expectations; and much more. Understanding the limitations of the industry supports the aforementioned team mentality. Agents and publishers and publicists are on your side; a team wants nothing more than to see its authors succeed. Keeping that in mind at the start of every interaction will serve authors well.

5. Yes, it’s business, but publishing is relational. Because of the nature of modern book publishing, authors are now paying for a lot of things—paying to publish; paying for their publicist; paying coaches; paying marketing people; paying for advertising; and more. Not always, but often enough that it bears mentioning, authors I work with approach their relationships with the people they hire as transactional when really it’s quite personal. The people working on your book are co-creating with you, representing and selling a piece of your heartwork. So avoid reminding people that you’re paying them. They know. Instead, lead with your heart, and work on the presumption that your team cares about your book.

---

And look, none of this suggests you won’t sometimes need to have a hard conversation or hold people accountable. Sometimes authors find themselves in relationships with less-than-ideal partners, with publicists who ghost them, in situations they need to extract themselves from. But more often than not, authors should anticipate having good, responsible, hard-working people showing up to work for them and work for their books. I know from deep experience that those authors who come into the experience of book publishing with this orientation will have a more fulfilling experience, and probably sell more books.