Coauthoring a e-book is usually a problem. Whereas the authors share a standard aim, every might need a special writing type, voice, and writing cadence, in addition to particular methods of organizing a chapter. Most of those variations are simply remedied by way of an preliminary digital session the place the authors agree on a constant type, format, voice, and so forth, with occasional follow-on digital periods to make sure consistency. Nonetheless, in our expertise, this isn’t sufficient.
Between the three of us, we’ve coauthored 5 extremely profitable technical books through the years. This weblog put up is about three strategies which have helped us overcome a few of the challenges of coauthoring, with a specific emphasis on some of the helpful strategies: the in-person expertise.
Create a Narrative Arc
Everybody loves an excellent story. Tales seize our consideration for one purpose: They’ve a strong narrative arc, a literary time period for the trail a narrative follows. It’s what offers any story a transparent starting, center, and finish.
A great story begins out with exposition to set the scene, introduce the characters, and talk the stakes. As time progresses, the strain will increase, conflicts come up, and the story turns into extra advanced. Lastly, the climax of the story unfolds, resulting in the decision and ending. That is how nice books are written—together with technical ones.
The very first thing we do in any e-book venture with O’Reilly is to collectively set up the narrative arc. This enables us to concentrate on telling a narrative about our topic.
Contain Your Editor
We attribute a lot of our success to closely involving our editor within the whole writing course of. We’ve discovered that having our editor perceive our narrative arc and our type and voice decisions pays off in spades. Your editor isn’t there simply to revise your grammar: They information you thru the writing course of, educating you higher writing abilities alongside the way in which and guaranteeing consistency all through the e-book.
We embody our editor in our weekly assembly calls and our fixed textual content and electronic mail exchanges. She primarily capabilities as an extra coauthor and provides an incredible quantity to the general completed product. Make no mistake—the editor makes all of the distinction on the earth, not solely to the completed product however to the general writing expertise.
For every e-book, we create a shared Google spreadsheet that helps all of us (together with our editor) stay organized. It’s our supply of reality for which chapters every creator will draft, full with every chapter’s deadlines and present standing. It additionally consists of room for brief notes on every chapter. It’s all the time open throughout our weekly conferences.
Meet in Individual
Whereas the primary two suggestions assist coauthors keep organized and targeted on a standard aim, by far essentially the most priceless approach we use is periodically assembly in particular person. We meet a minimum of twice per e-book, typically extra if we are able to prepare it logistically. Earlier than every assembly, all of us contribute to an agenda, itemizing issues we’re fighting or wish to focus on. We meet over a protracted weekend, beginning Friday afternoon and going by way of Sunday. We ensure to take breaks and have enjoyable too: We exit to a pleasant dinner every night time and play board video games nicely into the night.
This may not appear needed, given the convenience of digital conferences, however the outcomes of those in-person conferences have been staggering. We rotate the placement of the assembly between coauthors’ homes to ease journey prices. Though scheduling and touring to in-person conferences might be costly and logistically difficult, each time we’ve achieved it, we’ve come away with new concepts and recent power. We’re satisfied none of those artistic concepts would have emerged with out face-to-face dialogue. There’s one thing about discussing the e-book in-person that brings new concepts and insights to gentle. Every time we meet in particular person, we uncover a special approach or facet of the e-book we’re engaged on.
Listed below are some examples of how our in-person conferences have considerably influenced our books:
- Once we have been planning the primary version of Fundamentals of Software program Structure, we determined to create comparability charts score the professionals and cons of every of the architectural types we have been writing about, however struggled with getting the granularity proper. After a lot frustration, we determined to fulfill in particular person and dedicate the time to the comparability charts, ensuing within the remaining model of the well-known star-rating charts discovered within the e-book. It was this expertise that satisfied us that in-person conferences are a useful a part of the success of a coauthored e-book.
- Whereas writing Software program Structure: The Laborious Components, we discovered ourselves fighting easy methods to contextualize every chapter’s subject. Once we met in particular person, we got here up with the concept of beginning every chapter with dialogue displaying a fictional staff present process a big migration from a monolithic system to a distributed one.
- When writing Head First Software program Structure, certainly one of us was fighting a very troublesome chapter. After quite a few digital conferences filled with recommendations and three revisions of the chapter, it nonetheless wasn’t fairly proper. It wasn’t till our in-person assembly that all of us noticed it—the chapter was actually the other way up. We inverted the chapter to construct as much as the massive image moderately than beginning with the massive image, and the chapter grew to become one of many best-written ones within the e-book.
- We’re at the moment writing a e-book referred to as Software program Structure Patterns, Antipatterns, and Pitfalls. We created a template for all the things we needed every sample to cowl, but it surely didn’t fairly work for the chapters on antipatterns and pitfalls. Via all our weekly digital calls and quite a few aspect emails and texts, we merely couldn’t appear to get it proper—one thing was lacking. It wasn’t till our first in-person assembly that we discovered the answer: altering the generic part heading “Context” to a chapter-specific query that will get proper on the level of the chapter and gives context for the antipattern.
Nonetheless, that wasn’t the magical piece. As soon as all of us noticed how nicely this labored for the antipatterns and pitfalls, we determined to make use of this system for all the chapters. Now every chapter of the e-book begins with a motivating query for why this sample, contextualizing it for each the creator and reader and making the desk of contents extra helpful. We’re assured this easy piece of brilliance would by no means have occurred by way of digital conferences.
- At that very same assembly, we additionally labored on our different present venture, Structure as Code. We modified the order of the chapters to suit a greater narrative arc on account of an intensive in-person gathering. With out being in particular person and seeing the general e-book stream collectively, the narrative arc would probably not have modified to the brand new and improved one.
Should you’re coauthoring a e-book, we extremely advocate having a minimum of one in-person gathering, if logistics permit. The success of our books must be testimony sufficient that this system works.
