So you’re taking the initiative, stepping up to lead, and decided to publish a collaborative book. Huge congrats to you! This is a great way to build your credibility, exposure and build your list.

Well, it is, if you create a great book. But how do you know who to accept, who to reject and how to do it without burning bridges?

That’s the question Julie Lewin from http://www.julielewin.com/ asked and I answer in this short video.

I share the 3 potential objectives for a collaborative book and your author rejection strategy that differs for each one. Get this wrong and you can do more harm to your brand than good.

I’d love to hear your experience, ideas and questions.

Tell me what you think below.

Cheers

Janet

P.S. You can check out a few of my latest collaborative books here:

http://romanceyourtribe.com/the-book/ryt-book-series

http://www.thepowerof100book.com

Transcript

 

Hello and welcome Janet Beckers here with your Wonderful Web TV tip of the week.

Today I’ve got a question from one of our members, Julie Lewin. Now Julie, I’m just reading here, says I have an opportunity to initiate a collaborative book. Good on you Julie. When you did your books, did you accept everyone who wanted to participate? This is a really, really good question. Now, I’ve created quite a few collaborative books now over the years and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned some really good lessons from doing it.

When it comes to accepting everybody, in short, the answer is no. I do not accept everybody. Let’s rewind that back and see how this applies to your collaborative book or any collaborative project actually for that matter. Now, you’ve got to be very, very clear on what are your objectives for doing this. Now, if you are creating a collaborative book where the whole idea is to establish you as an expert with other experts. In that case, you have to be very very careful who you handpick to take part in that book that they have got the credibility and that by you having them in the book that is actually going to make you look better. So for that case, absolutely you do not accept everybody. In fact you handpick and invite them.

Now, what if it’s not necessarily as establishing you in a small niche of elite people? You might be using this primarily as a list-building book, and I’ve done a few of those. Now in that case, you want to make sure that people who contribute are going to promote for you; that they’re going to spread the words, so do they have the ability to do that or they can be enough of them that collectively they can do that and importantly, are the people that they’re going to promote it to, are they going to be your profitable avatar? If you’re going to be building a list you want to build a list with people who will gonna be paying customers, not just build list. Otherwise, it’s a waste of your time. So, be very clear on that on one of the criteria.

If you’re doing this as a way of building trust and a sense of community a way of romancing your tribe then its a different thing, then you’re going to be opening up to everyone in your community and helping them to be able to contribute. Does that mean that if somebody contributes something that’s pretty crappy or if they contribute something that is just light and selling it doesn’t really fit in the book, do you accept them? Absolutely not. It is an insult to all the other people who were in the book and it makes you look pretty ordinary.