Episode 141 - The Value of Collaboration with Asa Maria Bradley
July 5, 2022
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This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Asa Maria Bradley discusses THE VALUE OF COLLABORATION. She talks about being an active member of the author community; bringing joy to promotion; collaboration and accountability; expanding your skill set; saving a friendship with a contract; and the power of validation.
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Bestselling Author Asa Maria Bradley grew up in Sweden surrounded by archaeology and history steeped in Norse mythology, which inspired her Viking Warriors and Norse Billionaire Shifters paranormal romance series. She also writes urban fantasy about empowered heroines who kick ass while saving the world. Her work has received the honors of a double nomination for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA contest, a Reviewers’ Choice Award nomination, a Holt Medallion win, and a Booksellers’ Best Award win. Asa came to the United States as a high school exchange student and now lives on a lake deep in the forest of the Pacific Northwest with a British husband and a rescue dog of an indeterminate breed. Sadly, neither obeys her commands.
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"Even if we are creatives, if we didn't need validation or income, then we would just write for ourselves. But we want our stories to be read by people, and we would like to also make some money out of it. And so being in a project where you are working with people whose writing you respect and whose business sense you respect, it is a huge validation that you are part of that project." —Asa Maria Bradley
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Links
Asa's Links:
https://www.asamariabradley.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AsaMariaBradley.Author/
https://twitter.com/AsaMariaBradley
https://www.instagram.com/asamariabradley/
https://www.pinterest.com/AsaMariaBradley/
https://www.youtube.com/user/AsaBradley
https://www.tiktok.com/@asamariabradleyauthor
Referenced in the interview:
Episode 121 - Story Structure and Character Motivation with Edwin Hill
Episode 014 - Collaborating on "Taking the Short Tack" with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://www.asamariabradley.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AsaMariaBradley.Author/
https://twitter.com/AsaMariaBradley
https://www.instagram.com/asamariabradley/
https://www.pinterest.com/AsaMariaBradley/
https://www.youtube.com/user/AsaBradley
https://www.tiktok.com/@asamariabradleyauthor
Referenced in the interview:
Episode 121 - Story Structure and Character Motivation with Edwin Hill
Episode 014 - Collaborating on "Taking the Short Tack" with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Asa Maria Bradley. Hey Asa, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Asa: Hi, Matty. I'm good. How are you?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, bestselling author Asa Maria Bradley grew up in Sweden surrounded by archeology and history steeped in Norse mythology, which inspired her Viking warriors and Norse billionaire shifter, paranormal romance series.
She also writes urban fantasy about empowered heroines who kick ass while saving the world. Her work has received the honors of a double nomination for the Romance Writers of America's RITA contest, a Reviewer's Choice award nomination, a Holt Medallion win, and the Booksellers' Best Award win.
[00:00:38] Matty: And Asa came to the United States as a high school exchange student, and now lives on a lake deep in the forest of the Pacific Northwest with a British husband and a rescue dog of an indeterminate breed and sadly, neither obeys or commands. Sounds typical.
[00:00:54] Asa: You might hear the rescue dog in the background because he's, I'm not sure if he's barking yet because I closed the door if he's barking for intruder alert, but...
[00:01:01] Matty: Yeah, I think we both, we were just saying before we started recording that we're both having dog noises and I think this must be, here we are still influenced by COVID restrictions, and, I think it's probably the first time in history that dog trainers have probably had to tell dog owners, let your dogs spend some time alone because otherwise they just get used to having you around all the time.
[00:01:22] Asa: This is true. This is true. Yeah. I get used to having him around all the time, too. It's hard to when I have to leave the house and actually go to my day job.
Yeah, it's a big difference. There have been some silver linings to the whole situation and spending more time with my dogs was definitely one of those silver linings.
Yes, and I heard that the rescue shelters have never had as many rescues as they've had during the pandemic because people, when they were home, they decided they could have pets, and they did have time for pets. So that's been another silver lining, yeah.
[00:01:49] Matty: That is a silver lining.
Today's Topic
[00:01:51] Matty: So, Asa is here today to talk about collaboration and we're going to be talking about a couple of the benefits that authors can get from collaboration, but before we dive into the details, Asa, I was wondering if you could just describe the types of collaborations you have done, and we'll use that as entree to our conversation.
Asa's Collaborations Yeah, I had a strange, not a strange, but I didn't plan to do a whole bunch of collaborations. It just happened during the pandemic and a little bit before is when it really started. And I think it was maybe because authors in general were missing other people. Even if we're solitary, when we're crafting our books, we're used to at least getting together maybe once or twice a year, going to conferences and things.
Or maybe I was just more open to saying yes to a lot of collaborations or maybe I just got invited to more collaboration. I'm not sure, but when I look back at my releases the last year and a half or so, most of them have been in different types of collaborations. It started with a friend of mine who used to live in the same city as I do, and now lives just one state over, Frank Zafiro, who is a retired police officer who writes crime fiction. And he edits a series for Down and Under Publishing, who does mostly crime fiction and thrillers mysteries. And it's basically like a TV series, but each novella that comes out is written by a different author, but we write about the same characters.
[00:03:14] Asa: And so I was invited to participate in season two. That came out 2020, so I was writing this in 2019, right before the pandemic at a writer retreat that I was at. And now I think season four just dropped, and it's now in Kindle Unlimited, so you can read the whole series if you want to.
And so that was the first time that I wrote with a series bible. So at first, I was worried that maybe I would feel constricted because since I write paranormal and urban fantasy, I'm used to being able to build this incredible, rich world where I can make up magic rules and things.
[00:03:46] Asa: But I found it really creatively inspiring, because we had free rein with those characters. The only thing that Frank did was, when he edited the series, he might ask you to change like one or two details to better fit with a story that came before it.
So it’s about a pair of grifters, and so that was fun too. So my characters, their motivation for doing the heist that they did in my book was that they needed to get money to get fake passports, to go and get a stash that they had in Mexico, stash of cash. And so Frank, basically the only edits I really had in terms of changing the story structure was changing the amount of money that was hidden in Mexico, because then you fit better with a different story that had come before me, where they, I don't know if they had been in Mexico, but they had a different heist who was that amount of money.
So that was really, that was really fun. And also, it's a little bit out of my genre, so that was a lot of fun too. Just waking up different creative muscles, I guess.
Why Seasons for Books?
You were talking in terms of seasons, I think. So that's interesting because it, of course, seasons you think of TV, but this was ebook or it was books. Why did they position it that way?
[00:04:54] Asa: Because Down and Under had already had some success with subscription model series. And I think this was, I'm not speaking for Frank, but I think this was the idea that he and Lance came up with together, in terms of deciding that if they made it a subscription model, you could subscribe and get like only the eBooks, you could buy the episode separately. But if you were a subscriber, then you got a bonus novella at the beginning and at the end. And then also you were notified, I think, about the collections that came out. So every season has two collections where you could get like the first half of the season and the second half of the season.
Now that it's in Kindle Unlimited, I don't know if they do the print collections anymore. They might do. When I was writing for the show, we were not in Kindle Unlimited, we were wide. But now that there's four seasons, it just seems like with such a like long, because every season is about six novellas plus one or two bonus novellas, and so there's quite a few episodes with Rachel and Sam, that's the two characters.
Series and Episodes vs Books and Chapters
[00:05:59] Matty: And how often were those episodes released?
So they came out once a month, so one season lasted six months, almost like a TV show. And so you would get a new episode every month, if you're a subscriber. And I think that's still true if you're a subscriber.
[00:06:16] Matty: That's so interesting. I've never heard of a set of content like that that's in read form but is being positioned in the same way that you would position TV series.
[00:06:25] Asa: Yeah, yeah, and it was interesting because around the same time, I started writing for serial apps, I started putting my books up on Radish. And then I also got invited to write for Story, which is another serial app. And they use the same language. It's a season and episode as opposed to a book and chapters. A series is like a TV show and then each book is a season, and each chapter is an episode. Yeah, it's really interesting, and just to give a shout out, I had to change my mind set a little bit.
Episodical Writing Mindset
[00:06:55] Asa: There's a writer, a romance writer who writes really great paranormal romance. Her name is Ines Johnson, and she comes from TV show writing as a background. And so chatting with her and talking with her about how to write episodical is really helpful in terms of even just if you're writing a book, because the idea of how a TV show has to end, is it makes you write really good end of chapter hooks. And she has a YouTube channel, if you want to go check out, she has some free seminars on her YouTube channel for how to get into this mindset.
And the other thing I never thought about is that, if you're writing for TV versus writing for movie scripts, or if you're writing for network television versus writing for like a streaming service, not only do you have to put a hook at the end of each episode to get people to come back, if you're writing for network television, you have to put a hook before each commercial break to make sure that people come back. And it's a really good way of thinking about pacing. And if you're writing any kind of thriller action or that kind of stuff. She's done really good research; she's taught me a lot about episodical writing.
[00:08:05] Matty: That is just reminding me of an episode I did with Edwin Hill, which was episode 121, "Story Structure and Character Motivation," And we talked, as I love to do a lot, about analogies between movies. We were talking for a while about The Wizard of Oz and how story structure plays out there. But it was interesting because part of our conversation was that the same way that traditionally TV shows were broken up is very equivalent to how stories are broken up, the structure that he uses for stories. So if people are intrigued by that, they can go back to episode 121. I had done a lot of story structure studying from script writers, I think we all know Save the Cat, and I feel like, that's a really good way of structurally looking at like how story structure works. But I hadn't thought about episodes before quite that way. Yeah, it's very interesting how it can enrich and teach you things about your own storytelling, when you're writing books. Yeah.
How Did She Find Out About the Series Opportunity?
[00:09:00] Matty: So we don't venture too far away from the collaboration theme, I'm also curious, can you expand a little bit on how you found out about this opportunity for this series? Did you reach out, did they reach out to you? How did that work?
Asa: Frank and I are friends and he had finished season one. And I think that he decided that he was going to invite writers outside of his immediate circle, and also wanting to get maybe a little bit more women writers into the series. And so he asked me, would you want to write for this? And I was like, yes, that sounds great, because it's a collaboration. I like working with Frank. And so that's how that came up.
Author Co-op
[00:09:39] Asa: And then other collaborations that I did, was I was in the "1001 Dark Nights," which is a big, almost like an author co-op but it's led by Jillian Greenfield Stein and Liz Berry. But they put out a short story challenge. And so for that one, I basically submitted, that was like something I found out on social media, and I submitted my short story and ended up being one of the finalists that were part of the anthology. And so for that one, it was the same thing.
Again, that was a little bit different in that it was a collaboration and there were many different authors involved, but in terms of the production of the stories or what you wrote, you weren't really part of that. You were just like writing your own story, a short story that you submitted. And then the collaboration came afterwards when it came to the marketing of the anthology, which was free for three months. And then all the story rights came back to the authors.
But once we turned in our stories and we knew who else were finalists and we're going to be part of the anthology, of course, we made a Facebook group because that's what authors do. And then they were this incredible, yay, we're all together and this is amazing and we're climbing in the Amazon charts. And so it was this like collaborative cheerleading, really fun opportunity to network with other authors and other projects came out of that. I think we did a round-robin newsletter exchange where we were giving away each other's books to our newsletter subscribers and those kinds of things. So that collaboration was just something I saw an announcement of.
And the other one that’s also a collection that's coming out now on May 10th, which is an urban fantasy and paranormal romance collection, where 20 writers are writing together and we're just basically writing in terms of, it has to be urban fantasy, it has to be paranormal, but you can write a series starter, writing your own world for your episode. Gina Kincaid and CD Gorri is organizing that.
[00:11:36] Asa: That was the same thing. There was a callout in one of the author groups that I would like to on Facebook where I think Gina was posting and saying, we're going to put this collection together. It cost this much money to put in the pot for marketing. Do you want to be a part of it?
Her Own Collaboration
And so it's been really interesting because I took everything that I learned from these collaborations and then decided to spearhead my own collaboration. So last December I invited some people that I've read and people that I know I would like to work with. And we put a collection together where we were very focused on paranormal romance, and they were all Shifters. And so that came out early December, we called it "Shifters in Mistletoe." And those stories have just reverted back to the authors and those are also novellas.
[00:12:23] Asa: And so I think it's been fun to write shorter than I normally do, and then really fun to do these different types of collaborations where sometimes I'm not at all in charge, which I really like when somebody else organizes my life for me and just tells me, turn this in at this time, and here are the different things that you need to do. And that has been really great. And then learning things as I'm organizing things has also been really great where I organized the collection that came out.
Yeah, so playing with all these different things, and I think once you've done one, you become more aware of other people that are doing collaborations. And I had seen shout outs for collaborations. I was invited to one collaboration, and then I knew that a friend, Avery Flynn was starting up a really interesting experimental sort of collaboration where she's doing the same idea of subscription model, but she's running it through a Patreon instead.
[00:13:17] Asa: So she's combining the idea of subscriptions with the idea of, in the romance world, where we have the category romance, the idea of Harlequin novels, where you are, I don't want to say in the olden days piece, it's still around, but people would subscribe to a particular genre and a particular trope and they would get four shorter works, not quite novellas, but four shorter works per month, because they were subscribers. And they would all be either like romantic suspense or paranormal or mystery or whatever, but they would all be romance-centric. And she's running on that model and running it through the Patreon instead. So I had heard that she was doing that. Another friend was talking about it, and so I contacted her and asked, hey, can I please be a part of this?
Being an Active Member of the Author Community
And so the opportunities I think are there, if you look for them. And sometimes you might have to compete against other people to get into a collaboration. And sometimes, it's just a matter of do need another person? I'm here, I'm willing, I can write for you. And so that's how the opportunities have been coming up.
[00:14:18] Matty: Yeah, I've spoken in one form or another about collaborations or coauthoring or things like that with a number of guests. And it does seem like it's a big plug for getting out there and being active in the author community, because many of those opportunities seem to be exactly what you're saying, kind of word of mouth or you're chatting with someone on a Zoom meeting or something like that. So, yeah, that's great advice that backs up what other guests have said as well.
[00:14:41] Asa: Yeah, and networking is so weird because you know that you need to network, but networking for the sake of networking, almost never works, especially if you are like uncomfortable being, because I'm a bit of an extroverted introvert. Like I like being around people, but it doesn't energize me, it drains me. So then I have to go away and be by myself. But I think a lot of times, it's the hallway conversation that we used to have at conferences when we could go to conferences. And now we slowly start being able to do that again.
Those kind of hallway conversations, or like the conversation in the bar where an amazing opportunity just happened to be mentioned and all of a sudden, you're part of something great. That is now happening in other places, but those places are on social media or in Zoom calls. And they're still happening, you just have to look for them a little bit more, which it's both good and bad, I guess. We don't have to leave our house and we can still have those amazing, great conversations, but on the other hand, we never leave our house, yeah.
[00:15:36] Matty: Yeah. It does seem like the trick is that it's harder to have those serendipitous unplanned encounters. Planned encounters are easier, but the serendipitous, unplanned encounters, you can't orchestrate them because then they're planned.
[00:15:50] Asa: Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:51] Matty: It sounds as if, when we talked originally about the topic of collaboration and we had mutually proposed some aspects of that that were benefiting you, but I'm realizing that there are a couple of other aspects. So I'm thinking that the benefits of collaboration could be personal and creative, which I think is more of what we were originally thinking of.
[00:16:13] Matty: There's the marketing aspect, which I think is probably clear, like you get in an anthology with other writers, and you cross-promote, you share readers' interests, or you get in a series like you were talking about and you benefit from the whole pool of readers that those authors are bringing to hopefully cross-promote.
The Financial Side
[00:16:32] Matty: But before we get more deeply into the creative and personal side, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to the financial side. For example, you were saying that one of the collaborations you were involved in was free for a time to readers and then the rights reverted to the authors. And you also had mentioned that there was one where you had to pay a little bit of money in to cover the marketing costs. So is there ever a financial benefit or is it always personal creative or marketing-oriented?
Yes, there's definitely financial benefits. So with the Down and Out collaboration, we are on a regular royalty model. So when people now, when it's in KU and it's page reads, I get the royalties from the page reads of my novella. And when the collections sell, it's split three ways between the authors, or royalties are split three ways of the author. So that's more like a traditional publisher royalty model.
For the 1001 Dark Nights, 1001 Dark Nights is like a powerhouse in the romance community. They also now have a publishing arm called The Blue Box. They've published a couple different authors, but one of the ones that has been, like gangbuster success is Jennifer Armentrout's fantasy series that came out that hit just about all the lists except for New York Times.
[00:17:51] Asa: Which is strange because technically, she should have, but New York Times decided that Blue Box was too new of a publishing company. But the politics aside, and so that one is hard to measure return on investment because there were no financial gains, but on the other hand, my story and my name went out in newsletters too, instead of my newsletter, which is close to 10K, it went out to like thousands and thousands beyond that in terms of all the other authors that were there. Plus, 1001 Dark Nights putting up a big marketing push behind it.
So that was, my investment was writing a short story and then getting an incredible return on investment in terms of marketing dollars that I didn't spend, that went out.
And then in terms of the collaboration that I organized last December, I think we figured out how much it would cost per author for the cover artist for our cover, for running some Facebook ads, and then if we got a BookBub feature deal and some other like paid newsletters. And then we each paid into that pot, so there was eight of us. And so I think we put in maybe $200 each, and that covered all of that advertisement cost that we were doing.
[00:19:10] Asa: And in that case, there was an immediate return on investment, because we had a collaboration of authors that were pushing the book up the lists, in terms of the rankings on Amazon, and so we saw more sales and then we saw sell-through from the story that we had in the collection, and to other books in our series. So that was very satisfying.
And then because it was a new release, we wrote brand new content for the collection. That meant that each author, when we claimed it on BookBub, once the book was under our author name, the people that follow every one of those authors got a new release alert.
Bringing Joy to Promotion
[00:19:48] Asa: And so that's another really cool feature that BookBub has now, where if you sign up for the new release alert, it takes all of the followers of the entire group of authors, get rid of duplicates and then charge you for its unique follower for a new release alert. But it only works if you are publishing new content. So that was really great.
And right now I'm in a first in series, where a bunch of authors have bundled together the first book in series and put a collection together, and we're just putting that up for free on all the retailers. And that one, for example, we couldn't qualify for any alert for BookBub because it's content that has already been published. Yeah, so there are different ways of getting sort of monetary compensation.
I think for the most part, it is a way of being able to do cross-promotion. And cross-promotion, any kind of promotion only works if you really believe in your project. And so if you're having fun while you're writing the story and you're getting a more of a creative spark from collaborating with other writers, the promotion becomes easier too, because you're kind of sharing the burden. And I feel like I'm more enthusiastic about the promotion because I've read the other people's stories. And so it's almost like when you hand sell somebody's author's book that you're just absolutely part of their fandom where you're just like, oh, this favorite author came out with another story. And in this case, one of your favorite authors came out with another story, or a new author they haven't read before wrote this incredible story that you read. And so you're talking about it, but hey, just as a bonus, your story happens to be in this really great collection that you love as well.
And it has been really good. It's really reinvigorated my joy for writing. And I don't know that I've ever had joy for promotion, but there is more happiness in my promotion than there's been before. So it's been overall really creatively, and just in terms of coming out of the pandemic funk, it's been a really fun process.
Collaboration and Accountability
One of the benefits that you had mentioned was, it gave you the creative spark, you needed to enjoy writing again. Was there a specific part of the collaboration process you can point to that led to that benefit for you? Yeah, I think one is of course, accountability. The fact that now you have a deadline, and if you're putting out your own book, yes, you have a deadline and you have a deadline to your editor. But if you mess up that deadline, then you get dropped from your editor's schedule and your book doesn't come out.
[00:22:46] Asa: So there is accountability. If you mess up, the cost is to you and your series and maybe your relationship with your editor, and maybe you have to go to Amazon jail if you miss a pre-order, but it's all like you and your business. But if you are missing deadlines in a collaboration, then it becomes a bigger thing.
And so at least for me, it was not more pressure, but I was better at keeping myself on track. And then, if Gina is listening to this, then she will laugh because I was actually very late turning in my story to our collaboration, because as a side note, I ended up having a horrible sinus infection and ended up in the hospital twice, right before I was supposed to deliver the story. So she graciously gave me an extra couple of days to finish so I could turn it in.
So another lesson, don't wait until the last minute, which I know no author is going to ever listen to because we all wait until the last minute before we turn things in. That seems to be when all the creative juices all of a sudden start flowing and all the plot problems we've had unraveled themselves. And now we just have to write as fast as possible to get the words on the page. But yeah, so that was definitely a big benefit, that accountability.
And then I had a really bad case of pandemic slump. I've been having a really hard time writing. And so switching to writing shorter works, and then having the collaboration and the contact with other authors and having people that I was basically in contact with every day in terms of not really commiserating, but in terms of, we're working on this together, we're in this together. So the Midnight Magic, the collection that's coming out on May 10th, Gina and CD are extremely professional in how they run that collaboration. They have done a bunch of them before. And it is like a powerhouse.
Expanding Your Skill Set
[00:24:41] Asa: Like when you get accepted into the collaboration, you are also assigned a task list. So people get task lists according to what their strengths are. So some people make graphics, some people are writing Facebook copies. Some people are finding bloggers to collaborate with, some people are setting up Facebook reader group takeovers.
And so it's almost like you're all of a sudden having this publicity marketing company behind you. And in addition, you're learning about all these different skills, because maybe it wasn't something that was like in your skill wheelhouse, but now somebody else is showing you like, here's what makes really great Facebook copy. Here's what makes really great Twitter copy. Here's how you put together this design for a marketing graphic. This is why we need countdowns. And so I've learned a lot too in terms of what works marketing-wise. But not so much what doesn't, but what produces better results, and so that has been a really interesting learning experience too.
So I feel like in addition to getting more work out there, which is always good for an author, it's almost like I've leveled up in terms of promotion. And it's not as painful as it used to be, because I've been shown shortcuts for how to do it. And we’re doing it as a group project, as opposed to your having to do it on your own. And for those that hate group projects, this is a group project where everybody is working. It's not that group project that you were used to in school, where one person did all the work and then everybody took the credit.
[00:26:10] Matty: Well, it's a good illustration of the fact that if someone is pursuing the opportunity for collaboration or they're approached, that on the surface, it might seem like almost no work. Someone might approach you and say, I'm coordinating a first in series eBook bundle, would you be interested in participating in providing us with the ability to include your book? You might think, oh, this is perfect. Zero work on my part, but it's never zero work on your part.
[00:26:36] Asa: No.
Lay Out the Expectations Clearly Upfront
[00:26:36] Matty: And even when, it sounds like at least the collaboration you're talking about, it was very clearly laid out upfront what everybody's responsibilities were going to be. But I think even if it's not, it's either because the person is planning on doing it all themselves, but you're probably going to want to help them out or they're disorganized. And they don't realize that all the people who are participating are going to need to pitch in one way or the other. And so having some insight into those other tasks, that other time investment that comes along with it is really valuable.
Yeah, I think that lessons learned from some other collaborations a few years ago that did not pan out quite as good as we had hoped. I now know that you do want all of those expectations clearly upfront. And if you are the organizer of the collaboration, you definitely want to make sure there's a contract in place where you are stating, both in terms of what the writers can expect and for how long you keep their rights and all of that stuff, but also so that the writers understand, okay, everybody has to pull their load. We're doing this together.
[00:27:41] Asa: I mean, I know that there are collaborations where the expectation is that everybody puts money in and then you hire an assistant to do most of the administrative work and most of the marketing and so forth, and that you are only maybe responsible for posting in your newsletter. And if that's the kind of collaboration that works best for you, then make sure that the contract says that is the workload you have to carry. Versus if you maybe don't have the cash to put in, but you're willing to put in the hours, then make sure that's the expectation upfront as well.
So, I think there's a collaboration for everybody out there, but whatever the collaboration is, those expectations should definitely be stated upfront because otherwise it turns into a disaster.
Make Sure You Get Along with Your Coauthor
[00:28:25] Matty: Yeah, I think that the other thing to factor in is how much personal interaction you're going to have to have with these people. And if it's a lot, then are they people you want to have that interaction with? So if it is one of these things where someone's saying, give us the rights to include your book and give us the money to help fund an assistant, and that's it, then you don't really need to get along with the other people who are involved.
But if you're coauthoring a book, then my advice would be, you better like the person before you get into it, or that's going to be a long, long and unpleasant process for everybody.
I have never coauthored a book. I'm not sure that I would work well in that model, because I am both the control freak and the slacker. Which is a really bad combination where I'm constantly procrastinating and constantly doing things last minute, yet I want to control every detail of the project. And so it's much better for me to work in the model that I'm in now where I have a piece to provide that is collaborative, like that is sort of to the co-op. So for Midnight Magic, I'm doing a lot of the graphics, the marketing graphics, I'm not a cover designer. And same thing for the Happily Ever After collection which is the project that Avery Flynn is spearheading. And then the other part is just me being responsible for turning my story in on time and making sure it's edited professionally before I turn it in.
So if you had to do a lot of collaboration together, then just make sure that you're working with people that you like and respect in terms of their work, which we do have to do some collaboration of the Happily Ever After collection, because the group of people that are doing graphics, I think there's seven or eight of us, we had a quick Zoom meeting, where we decided who does what and how do we divide it up.
[00:30:03] Asa: And we have a color scheme, a branding kit, basically that we're working with. And that was also run very professionally, and somebody took leadership, but also everybody in there is extremely professional. So that is going to work out great, I think.
But that is definitely something to keep in mind, who are you working with, and do they know how to run a project? Because otherwise, you might not turn out great. Yeah.
Saving a Friendship with a Contract
[00:30:27] Asa: But I think that, I think there should be a contract in place, no matter what you do, even if it's your best friend that you're co-authoring your book with. It's always best to have a contract.
[00:30:36] Matty: Yeah. So my co-authoring experience was with Mark Lefebvre on Taking the Short Tack, and
I think it was in, this is way back in episode 14, "Collaborating on Taking the Short Tack" with Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and I think we talked about it in that the idea that, some people feel uncomfortable asking somebody they know personally to sign a contract. And I'm cribbing this from someone else, I wish I could remember who I borrowed this line from, that a contract doesn't show that you distrust a person, a contract is to demonstrate that you do trust them and want to do business with them. So I think if you can approach it that way, that's more comfortable.
[00:31:13] Asa: And it is a hard thing I think in the author business, that we are authors and so we're creatives and we create friendships with other authors. But whenever you are working with other authors and whenever you're doing the publishing side, you have to have a business relationship. And sometimes the lines between the business relationship and the friendship can be really blurred. And so if you're in traditional publishing, then your agents take care of the the business part, and you don't have to worry about it as much. So I started out writing for a traditional publisher, and so it was nice in that I only dealt with my editor for the collaborative side, and my agent had to be like the bad cop whenever there was problems.
But now if you are an independent publisher, you have to wear both of those hats and it can become really uncomfortable. And so that way, if there's a contract in place, it's almost like you're not preparing for bad things to happen, it's actually more that you are preventing those disagreements from happening because expectations were communicated upfront. And so a contract is more likely to save a friendship than it is to ruin a friendship, I think.
[00:32:22] Matty: Yeah, and it's just a record. I know there have been several times when, during the course of working on "Taking the Short Tack" with Mark, where we would both say, what did we agree to do about audio? And then we'd have something to go back. Oh, oh, now I remember. So yeah, it's a record. It's not a weapon, it's a record.
[00:32:39] Asa: Yes. Yes, it is. Exactly. Yeah.
How Collaboration Validated and Inspired Her Work
[00:32:42] Matty: So I wanted to just hit as a way of wrapping up our conversation, one of the benefits that you gained from collaboration was that it validated and inspired your work. And I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.
[00:32:54] Asa: Yeah, so I work full-time as a college instructor, and I write, and I had started doing this thing where I was basically working two full-time jobs. And was approaching burnout very quickly, and I think sliding way into burnout as well. So I was in this slump already before the pandemic hit, where I was not feeling as great about writing as I had been, it wasn't sparking that joy creatively, which is why I got into writing in the first place.
The Power of Validation
And so for me, it was both a way of getting that creative spark that we've talked about. But the fact that other writers want to work with you, and if in the case of where I was submitting work and getting accepted, that validation of sort of like, yes, we think your writing is good enough to be part of our collection. That can also really help.
[00:33:46] Asa: I think that even if we are creatives, if we didn't need validation or income, then we would just write for ourselves. But we want our stories to be read by people, and we would like to also make some money out of it. And so being in a project where you are working with people whose writing you respect and whose business sense you respect, it is a huge validation that you are part of that project. And so that was another big part that worked for me, where I was like, hey, maybe I don't suck, right? Because these people are going to let me be in the collaboration. And these people think that my story is going to add value to this project, and they think that I am adding value by sharing the work of the publicity.
And so yeah, I felt like that was a very big part of it too. It's almost like I feel like it's an author co-op. I know that in traditional publishing, if you have your publishers, marketing and publicity behind you, there are people that know how to do that, that put that sort of marketing machine behind you because they think that your work is worthy and that your work is going to do well on the market.
So if you're an indy author, we don't maybe have that as much. You could hire your own publicist and so forth, and I'm not really sure that everybody that works in a traditional publisher really believes super strongly in every book they put out, but I'm trying to go with this analogy. So that working with the people that are willing to put, not just their story together with yours, but they're also willing to put their energy and their time into a project that you're part of. That was kind of like a huge validation.
[00:35:26] Asa: And it just made me feel like, because a lot of these people were people that I've looked up to, people's whose stories I really like and people's whose books I just automatically buy. And it has been a really rich reward on all fronts in terms of working with other people. I highly recommend it. And the nice thing about the author community is you can find that collaboration model that works for you. If you're not comfortable co-authoring, then do something like a collection or something like an episode in a series that's already existing. They're definitely out there.
[00:35:59] Matty: That's great. Well, Asa, thank you so much. I appreciate that you shared such a balanced view of collaboration that included some red flags and also included a description of the benefits that you just wrapped up with.
[00:36:10] Asa: Thank you so much for having me on, I really enjoy your podcast. So this is also like a fan girl moment where I get to talk to you personally, because you know, I talk to you in my car, but you don't hear me, so this is really good too.
[00:36:22] Matty: Yeah, that's so cool. That's so much fun to hear. Talk about validation. That's a lovely, lovely thing to hear. Thank you. So please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:36:33] Asa: Okay. I am Asa Maria Bradley, and you can find me all over social media and if you go to my website, AsaMariaBradley.com, all of those buttons are there.
[00:36:44] Matty: Excellent. Thank you so much, Asa!
[00:36:46] Asa: Thank you.
[00:00:05] Asa: Hi, Matty. I'm good. How are you?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, bestselling author Asa Maria Bradley grew up in Sweden surrounded by archeology and history steeped in Norse mythology, which inspired her Viking warriors and Norse billionaire shifter, paranormal romance series.
She also writes urban fantasy about empowered heroines who kick ass while saving the world. Her work has received the honors of a double nomination for the Romance Writers of America's RITA contest, a Reviewer's Choice award nomination, a Holt Medallion win, and the Booksellers' Best Award win.
[00:00:38] Matty: And Asa came to the United States as a high school exchange student, and now lives on a lake deep in the forest of the Pacific Northwest with a British husband and a rescue dog of an indeterminate breed and sadly, neither obeys or commands. Sounds typical.
[00:00:54] Asa: You might hear the rescue dog in the background because he's, I'm not sure if he's barking yet because I closed the door if he's barking for intruder alert, but...
[00:01:01] Matty: Yeah, I think we both, we were just saying before we started recording that we're both having dog noises and I think this must be, here we are still influenced by COVID restrictions, and, I think it's probably the first time in history that dog trainers have probably had to tell dog owners, let your dogs spend some time alone because otherwise they just get used to having you around all the time.
[00:01:22] Asa: This is true. This is true. Yeah. I get used to having him around all the time, too. It's hard to when I have to leave the house and actually go to my day job.
Yeah, it's a big difference. There have been some silver linings to the whole situation and spending more time with my dogs was definitely one of those silver linings.
Yes, and I heard that the rescue shelters have never had as many rescues as they've had during the pandemic because people, when they were home, they decided they could have pets, and they did have time for pets. So that's been another silver lining, yeah.
[00:01:49] Matty: That is a silver lining.
Today's Topic
[00:01:51] Matty: So, Asa is here today to talk about collaboration and we're going to be talking about a couple of the benefits that authors can get from collaboration, but before we dive into the details, Asa, I was wondering if you could just describe the types of collaborations you have done, and we'll use that as entree to our conversation.
Asa's Collaborations Yeah, I had a strange, not a strange, but I didn't plan to do a whole bunch of collaborations. It just happened during the pandemic and a little bit before is when it really started. And I think it was maybe because authors in general were missing other people. Even if we're solitary, when we're crafting our books, we're used to at least getting together maybe once or twice a year, going to conferences and things.
Or maybe I was just more open to saying yes to a lot of collaborations or maybe I just got invited to more collaboration. I'm not sure, but when I look back at my releases the last year and a half or so, most of them have been in different types of collaborations. It started with a friend of mine who used to live in the same city as I do, and now lives just one state over, Frank Zafiro, who is a retired police officer who writes crime fiction. And he edits a series for Down and Under Publishing, who does mostly crime fiction and thrillers mysteries. And it's basically like a TV series, but each novella that comes out is written by a different author, but we write about the same characters.
[00:03:14] Asa: And so I was invited to participate in season two. That came out 2020, so I was writing this in 2019, right before the pandemic at a writer retreat that I was at. And now I think season four just dropped, and it's now in Kindle Unlimited, so you can read the whole series if you want to.
And so that was the first time that I wrote with a series bible. So at first, I was worried that maybe I would feel constricted because since I write paranormal and urban fantasy, I'm used to being able to build this incredible, rich world where I can make up magic rules and things.
[00:03:46] Asa: But I found it really creatively inspiring, because we had free rein with those characters. The only thing that Frank did was, when he edited the series, he might ask you to change like one or two details to better fit with a story that came before it.
So it’s about a pair of grifters, and so that was fun too. So my characters, their motivation for doing the heist that they did in my book was that they needed to get money to get fake passports, to go and get a stash that they had in Mexico, stash of cash. And so Frank, basically the only edits I really had in terms of changing the story structure was changing the amount of money that was hidden in Mexico, because then you fit better with a different story that had come before me, where they, I don't know if they had been in Mexico, but they had a different heist who was that amount of money.
So that was really, that was really fun. And also, it's a little bit out of my genre, so that was a lot of fun too. Just waking up different creative muscles, I guess.
Why Seasons for Books?
You were talking in terms of seasons, I think. So that's interesting because it, of course, seasons you think of TV, but this was ebook or it was books. Why did they position it that way?
[00:04:54] Asa: Because Down and Under had already had some success with subscription model series. And I think this was, I'm not speaking for Frank, but I think this was the idea that he and Lance came up with together, in terms of deciding that if they made it a subscription model, you could subscribe and get like only the eBooks, you could buy the episode separately. But if you were a subscriber, then you got a bonus novella at the beginning and at the end. And then also you were notified, I think, about the collections that came out. So every season has two collections where you could get like the first half of the season and the second half of the season.
Now that it's in Kindle Unlimited, I don't know if they do the print collections anymore. They might do. When I was writing for the show, we were not in Kindle Unlimited, we were wide. But now that there's four seasons, it just seems like with such a like long, because every season is about six novellas plus one or two bonus novellas, and so there's quite a few episodes with Rachel and Sam, that's the two characters.
Series and Episodes vs Books and Chapters
[00:05:59] Matty: And how often were those episodes released?
So they came out once a month, so one season lasted six months, almost like a TV show. And so you would get a new episode every month, if you're a subscriber. And I think that's still true if you're a subscriber.
[00:06:16] Matty: That's so interesting. I've never heard of a set of content like that that's in read form but is being positioned in the same way that you would position TV series.
[00:06:25] Asa: Yeah, yeah, and it was interesting because around the same time, I started writing for serial apps, I started putting my books up on Radish. And then I also got invited to write for Story, which is another serial app. And they use the same language. It's a season and episode as opposed to a book and chapters. A series is like a TV show and then each book is a season, and each chapter is an episode. Yeah, it's really interesting, and just to give a shout out, I had to change my mind set a little bit.
Episodical Writing Mindset
[00:06:55] Asa: There's a writer, a romance writer who writes really great paranormal romance. Her name is Ines Johnson, and she comes from TV show writing as a background. And so chatting with her and talking with her about how to write episodical is really helpful in terms of even just if you're writing a book, because the idea of how a TV show has to end, is it makes you write really good end of chapter hooks. And she has a YouTube channel, if you want to go check out, she has some free seminars on her YouTube channel for how to get into this mindset.
And the other thing I never thought about is that, if you're writing for TV versus writing for movie scripts, or if you're writing for network television versus writing for like a streaming service, not only do you have to put a hook at the end of each episode to get people to come back, if you're writing for network television, you have to put a hook before each commercial break to make sure that people come back. And it's a really good way of thinking about pacing. And if you're writing any kind of thriller action or that kind of stuff. She's done really good research; she's taught me a lot about episodical writing.
[00:08:05] Matty: That is just reminding me of an episode I did with Edwin Hill, which was episode 121, "Story Structure and Character Motivation," And we talked, as I love to do a lot, about analogies between movies. We were talking for a while about The Wizard of Oz and how story structure plays out there. But it was interesting because part of our conversation was that the same way that traditionally TV shows were broken up is very equivalent to how stories are broken up, the structure that he uses for stories. So if people are intrigued by that, they can go back to episode 121. I had done a lot of story structure studying from script writers, I think we all know Save the Cat, and I feel like, that's a really good way of structurally looking at like how story structure works. But I hadn't thought about episodes before quite that way. Yeah, it's very interesting how it can enrich and teach you things about your own storytelling, when you're writing books. Yeah.
How Did She Find Out About the Series Opportunity?
[00:09:00] Matty: So we don't venture too far away from the collaboration theme, I'm also curious, can you expand a little bit on how you found out about this opportunity for this series? Did you reach out, did they reach out to you? How did that work?
Asa: Frank and I are friends and he had finished season one. And I think that he decided that he was going to invite writers outside of his immediate circle, and also wanting to get maybe a little bit more women writers into the series. And so he asked me, would you want to write for this? And I was like, yes, that sounds great, because it's a collaboration. I like working with Frank. And so that's how that came up.
Author Co-op
[00:09:39] Asa: And then other collaborations that I did, was I was in the "1001 Dark Nights," which is a big, almost like an author co-op but it's led by Jillian Greenfield Stein and Liz Berry. But they put out a short story challenge. And so for that one, I basically submitted, that was like something I found out on social media, and I submitted my short story and ended up being one of the finalists that were part of the anthology. And so for that one, it was the same thing.
Again, that was a little bit different in that it was a collaboration and there were many different authors involved, but in terms of the production of the stories or what you wrote, you weren't really part of that. You were just like writing your own story, a short story that you submitted. And then the collaboration came afterwards when it came to the marketing of the anthology, which was free for three months. And then all the story rights came back to the authors.
But once we turned in our stories and we knew who else were finalists and we're going to be part of the anthology, of course, we made a Facebook group because that's what authors do. And then they were this incredible, yay, we're all together and this is amazing and we're climbing in the Amazon charts. And so it was this like collaborative cheerleading, really fun opportunity to network with other authors and other projects came out of that. I think we did a round-robin newsletter exchange where we were giving away each other's books to our newsletter subscribers and those kinds of things. So that collaboration was just something I saw an announcement of.
And the other one that’s also a collection that's coming out now on May 10th, which is an urban fantasy and paranormal romance collection, where 20 writers are writing together and we're just basically writing in terms of, it has to be urban fantasy, it has to be paranormal, but you can write a series starter, writing your own world for your episode. Gina Kincaid and CD Gorri is organizing that.
[00:11:36] Asa: That was the same thing. There was a callout in one of the author groups that I would like to on Facebook where I think Gina was posting and saying, we're going to put this collection together. It cost this much money to put in the pot for marketing. Do you want to be a part of it?
Her Own Collaboration
And so it's been really interesting because I took everything that I learned from these collaborations and then decided to spearhead my own collaboration. So last December I invited some people that I've read and people that I know I would like to work with. And we put a collection together where we were very focused on paranormal romance, and they were all Shifters. And so that came out early December, we called it "Shifters in Mistletoe." And those stories have just reverted back to the authors and those are also novellas.
[00:12:23] Asa: And so I think it's been fun to write shorter than I normally do, and then really fun to do these different types of collaborations where sometimes I'm not at all in charge, which I really like when somebody else organizes my life for me and just tells me, turn this in at this time, and here are the different things that you need to do. And that has been really great. And then learning things as I'm organizing things has also been really great where I organized the collection that came out.
Yeah, so playing with all these different things, and I think once you've done one, you become more aware of other people that are doing collaborations. And I had seen shout outs for collaborations. I was invited to one collaboration, and then I knew that a friend, Avery Flynn was starting up a really interesting experimental sort of collaboration where she's doing the same idea of subscription model, but she's running it through a Patreon instead.
[00:13:17] Asa: So she's combining the idea of subscriptions with the idea of, in the romance world, where we have the category romance, the idea of Harlequin novels, where you are, I don't want to say in the olden days piece, it's still around, but people would subscribe to a particular genre and a particular trope and they would get four shorter works, not quite novellas, but four shorter works per month, because they were subscribers. And they would all be either like romantic suspense or paranormal or mystery or whatever, but they would all be romance-centric. And she's running on that model and running it through the Patreon instead. So I had heard that she was doing that. Another friend was talking about it, and so I contacted her and asked, hey, can I please be a part of this?
Being an Active Member of the Author Community
And so the opportunities I think are there, if you look for them. And sometimes you might have to compete against other people to get into a collaboration. And sometimes, it's just a matter of do need another person? I'm here, I'm willing, I can write for you. And so that's how the opportunities have been coming up.
[00:14:18] Matty: Yeah, I've spoken in one form or another about collaborations or coauthoring or things like that with a number of guests. And it does seem like it's a big plug for getting out there and being active in the author community, because many of those opportunities seem to be exactly what you're saying, kind of word of mouth or you're chatting with someone on a Zoom meeting or something like that. So, yeah, that's great advice that backs up what other guests have said as well.
[00:14:41] Asa: Yeah, and networking is so weird because you know that you need to network, but networking for the sake of networking, almost never works, especially if you are like uncomfortable being, because I'm a bit of an extroverted introvert. Like I like being around people, but it doesn't energize me, it drains me. So then I have to go away and be by myself. But I think a lot of times, it's the hallway conversation that we used to have at conferences when we could go to conferences. And now we slowly start being able to do that again.
Those kind of hallway conversations, or like the conversation in the bar where an amazing opportunity just happened to be mentioned and all of a sudden, you're part of something great. That is now happening in other places, but those places are on social media or in Zoom calls. And they're still happening, you just have to look for them a little bit more, which it's both good and bad, I guess. We don't have to leave our house and we can still have those amazing, great conversations, but on the other hand, we never leave our house, yeah.
[00:15:36] Matty: Yeah. It does seem like the trick is that it's harder to have those serendipitous unplanned encounters. Planned encounters are easier, but the serendipitous, unplanned encounters, you can't orchestrate them because then they're planned.
[00:15:50] Asa: Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:51] Matty: It sounds as if, when we talked originally about the topic of collaboration and we had mutually proposed some aspects of that that were benefiting you, but I'm realizing that there are a couple of other aspects. So I'm thinking that the benefits of collaboration could be personal and creative, which I think is more of what we were originally thinking of.
[00:16:13] Matty: There's the marketing aspect, which I think is probably clear, like you get in an anthology with other writers, and you cross-promote, you share readers' interests, or you get in a series like you were talking about and you benefit from the whole pool of readers that those authors are bringing to hopefully cross-promote.
The Financial Side
[00:16:32] Matty: But before we get more deeply into the creative and personal side, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to the financial side. For example, you were saying that one of the collaborations you were involved in was free for a time to readers and then the rights reverted to the authors. And you also had mentioned that there was one where you had to pay a little bit of money in to cover the marketing costs. So is there ever a financial benefit or is it always personal creative or marketing-oriented?
Yes, there's definitely financial benefits. So with the Down and Out collaboration, we are on a regular royalty model. So when people now, when it's in KU and it's page reads, I get the royalties from the page reads of my novella. And when the collections sell, it's split three ways between the authors, or royalties are split three ways of the author. So that's more like a traditional publisher royalty model.
For the 1001 Dark Nights, 1001 Dark Nights is like a powerhouse in the romance community. They also now have a publishing arm called The Blue Box. They've published a couple different authors, but one of the ones that has been, like gangbuster success is Jennifer Armentrout's fantasy series that came out that hit just about all the lists except for New York Times.
[00:17:51] Asa: Which is strange because technically, she should have, but New York Times decided that Blue Box was too new of a publishing company. But the politics aside, and so that one is hard to measure return on investment because there were no financial gains, but on the other hand, my story and my name went out in newsletters too, instead of my newsletter, which is close to 10K, it went out to like thousands and thousands beyond that in terms of all the other authors that were there. Plus, 1001 Dark Nights putting up a big marketing push behind it.
So that was, my investment was writing a short story and then getting an incredible return on investment in terms of marketing dollars that I didn't spend, that went out.
And then in terms of the collaboration that I organized last December, I think we figured out how much it would cost per author for the cover artist for our cover, for running some Facebook ads, and then if we got a BookBub feature deal and some other like paid newsletters. And then we each paid into that pot, so there was eight of us. And so I think we put in maybe $200 each, and that covered all of that advertisement cost that we were doing.
[00:19:10] Asa: And in that case, there was an immediate return on investment, because we had a collaboration of authors that were pushing the book up the lists, in terms of the rankings on Amazon, and so we saw more sales and then we saw sell-through from the story that we had in the collection, and to other books in our series. So that was very satisfying.
And then because it was a new release, we wrote brand new content for the collection. That meant that each author, when we claimed it on BookBub, once the book was under our author name, the people that follow every one of those authors got a new release alert.
Bringing Joy to Promotion
[00:19:48] Asa: And so that's another really cool feature that BookBub has now, where if you sign up for the new release alert, it takes all of the followers of the entire group of authors, get rid of duplicates and then charge you for its unique follower for a new release alert. But it only works if you are publishing new content. So that was really great.
And right now I'm in a first in series, where a bunch of authors have bundled together the first book in series and put a collection together, and we're just putting that up for free on all the retailers. And that one, for example, we couldn't qualify for any alert for BookBub because it's content that has already been published. Yeah, so there are different ways of getting sort of monetary compensation.
I think for the most part, it is a way of being able to do cross-promotion. And cross-promotion, any kind of promotion only works if you really believe in your project. And so if you're having fun while you're writing the story and you're getting a more of a creative spark from collaborating with other writers, the promotion becomes easier too, because you're kind of sharing the burden. And I feel like I'm more enthusiastic about the promotion because I've read the other people's stories. And so it's almost like when you hand sell somebody's author's book that you're just absolutely part of their fandom where you're just like, oh, this favorite author came out with another story. And in this case, one of your favorite authors came out with another story, or a new author they haven't read before wrote this incredible story that you read. And so you're talking about it, but hey, just as a bonus, your story happens to be in this really great collection that you love as well.
And it has been really good. It's really reinvigorated my joy for writing. And I don't know that I've ever had joy for promotion, but there is more happiness in my promotion than there's been before. So it's been overall really creatively, and just in terms of coming out of the pandemic funk, it's been a really fun process.
Collaboration and Accountability
One of the benefits that you had mentioned was, it gave you the creative spark, you needed to enjoy writing again. Was there a specific part of the collaboration process you can point to that led to that benefit for you? Yeah, I think one is of course, accountability. The fact that now you have a deadline, and if you're putting out your own book, yes, you have a deadline and you have a deadline to your editor. But if you mess up that deadline, then you get dropped from your editor's schedule and your book doesn't come out.
[00:22:46] Asa: So there is accountability. If you mess up, the cost is to you and your series and maybe your relationship with your editor, and maybe you have to go to Amazon jail if you miss a pre-order, but it's all like you and your business. But if you are missing deadlines in a collaboration, then it becomes a bigger thing.
And so at least for me, it was not more pressure, but I was better at keeping myself on track. And then, if Gina is listening to this, then she will laugh because I was actually very late turning in my story to our collaboration, because as a side note, I ended up having a horrible sinus infection and ended up in the hospital twice, right before I was supposed to deliver the story. So she graciously gave me an extra couple of days to finish so I could turn it in.
So another lesson, don't wait until the last minute, which I know no author is going to ever listen to because we all wait until the last minute before we turn things in. That seems to be when all the creative juices all of a sudden start flowing and all the plot problems we've had unraveled themselves. And now we just have to write as fast as possible to get the words on the page. But yeah, so that was definitely a big benefit, that accountability.
And then I had a really bad case of pandemic slump. I've been having a really hard time writing. And so switching to writing shorter works, and then having the collaboration and the contact with other authors and having people that I was basically in contact with every day in terms of not really commiserating, but in terms of, we're working on this together, we're in this together. So the Midnight Magic, the collection that's coming out on May 10th, Gina and CD are extremely professional in how they run that collaboration. They have done a bunch of them before. And it is like a powerhouse.
Expanding Your Skill Set
[00:24:41] Asa: Like when you get accepted into the collaboration, you are also assigned a task list. So people get task lists according to what their strengths are. So some people make graphics, some people are writing Facebook copies. Some people are finding bloggers to collaborate with, some people are setting up Facebook reader group takeovers.
And so it's almost like you're all of a sudden having this publicity marketing company behind you. And in addition, you're learning about all these different skills, because maybe it wasn't something that was like in your skill wheelhouse, but now somebody else is showing you like, here's what makes really great Facebook copy. Here's what makes really great Twitter copy. Here's how you put together this design for a marketing graphic. This is why we need countdowns. And so I've learned a lot too in terms of what works marketing-wise. But not so much what doesn't, but what produces better results, and so that has been a really interesting learning experience too.
So I feel like in addition to getting more work out there, which is always good for an author, it's almost like I've leveled up in terms of promotion. And it's not as painful as it used to be, because I've been shown shortcuts for how to do it. And we’re doing it as a group project, as opposed to your having to do it on your own. And for those that hate group projects, this is a group project where everybody is working. It's not that group project that you were used to in school, where one person did all the work and then everybody took the credit.
[00:26:10] Matty: Well, it's a good illustration of the fact that if someone is pursuing the opportunity for collaboration or they're approached, that on the surface, it might seem like almost no work. Someone might approach you and say, I'm coordinating a first in series eBook bundle, would you be interested in participating in providing us with the ability to include your book? You might think, oh, this is perfect. Zero work on my part, but it's never zero work on your part.
[00:26:36] Asa: No.
Lay Out the Expectations Clearly Upfront
[00:26:36] Matty: And even when, it sounds like at least the collaboration you're talking about, it was very clearly laid out upfront what everybody's responsibilities were going to be. But I think even if it's not, it's either because the person is planning on doing it all themselves, but you're probably going to want to help them out or they're disorganized. And they don't realize that all the people who are participating are going to need to pitch in one way or the other. And so having some insight into those other tasks, that other time investment that comes along with it is really valuable.
Yeah, I think that lessons learned from some other collaborations a few years ago that did not pan out quite as good as we had hoped. I now know that you do want all of those expectations clearly upfront. And if you are the organizer of the collaboration, you definitely want to make sure there's a contract in place where you are stating, both in terms of what the writers can expect and for how long you keep their rights and all of that stuff, but also so that the writers understand, okay, everybody has to pull their load. We're doing this together.
[00:27:41] Asa: I mean, I know that there are collaborations where the expectation is that everybody puts money in and then you hire an assistant to do most of the administrative work and most of the marketing and so forth, and that you are only maybe responsible for posting in your newsletter. And if that's the kind of collaboration that works best for you, then make sure that the contract says that is the workload you have to carry. Versus if you maybe don't have the cash to put in, but you're willing to put in the hours, then make sure that's the expectation upfront as well.
So, I think there's a collaboration for everybody out there, but whatever the collaboration is, those expectations should definitely be stated upfront because otherwise it turns into a disaster.
Make Sure You Get Along with Your Coauthor
[00:28:25] Matty: Yeah, I think that the other thing to factor in is how much personal interaction you're going to have to have with these people. And if it's a lot, then are they people you want to have that interaction with? So if it is one of these things where someone's saying, give us the rights to include your book and give us the money to help fund an assistant, and that's it, then you don't really need to get along with the other people who are involved.
But if you're coauthoring a book, then my advice would be, you better like the person before you get into it, or that's going to be a long, long and unpleasant process for everybody.
I have never coauthored a book. I'm not sure that I would work well in that model, because I am both the control freak and the slacker. Which is a really bad combination where I'm constantly procrastinating and constantly doing things last minute, yet I want to control every detail of the project. And so it's much better for me to work in the model that I'm in now where I have a piece to provide that is collaborative, like that is sort of to the co-op. So for Midnight Magic, I'm doing a lot of the graphics, the marketing graphics, I'm not a cover designer. And same thing for the Happily Ever After collection which is the project that Avery Flynn is spearheading. And then the other part is just me being responsible for turning my story in on time and making sure it's edited professionally before I turn it in.
So if you had to do a lot of collaboration together, then just make sure that you're working with people that you like and respect in terms of their work, which we do have to do some collaboration of the Happily Ever After collection, because the group of people that are doing graphics, I think there's seven or eight of us, we had a quick Zoom meeting, where we decided who does what and how do we divide it up.
[00:30:03] Asa: And we have a color scheme, a branding kit, basically that we're working with. And that was also run very professionally, and somebody took leadership, but also everybody in there is extremely professional. So that is going to work out great, I think.
But that is definitely something to keep in mind, who are you working with, and do they know how to run a project? Because otherwise, you might not turn out great. Yeah.
Saving a Friendship with a Contract
[00:30:27] Asa: But I think that, I think there should be a contract in place, no matter what you do, even if it's your best friend that you're co-authoring your book with. It's always best to have a contract.
[00:30:36] Matty: Yeah. So my co-authoring experience was with Mark Lefebvre on Taking the Short Tack, and
I think it was in, this is way back in episode 14, "Collaborating on Taking the Short Tack" with Mark Leslie Lefebvre, and I think we talked about it in that the idea that, some people feel uncomfortable asking somebody they know personally to sign a contract. And I'm cribbing this from someone else, I wish I could remember who I borrowed this line from, that a contract doesn't show that you distrust a person, a contract is to demonstrate that you do trust them and want to do business with them. So I think if you can approach it that way, that's more comfortable.
[00:31:13] Asa: And it is a hard thing I think in the author business, that we are authors and so we're creatives and we create friendships with other authors. But whenever you are working with other authors and whenever you're doing the publishing side, you have to have a business relationship. And sometimes the lines between the business relationship and the friendship can be really blurred. And so if you're in traditional publishing, then your agents take care of the the business part, and you don't have to worry about it as much. So I started out writing for a traditional publisher, and so it was nice in that I only dealt with my editor for the collaborative side, and my agent had to be like the bad cop whenever there was problems.
But now if you are an independent publisher, you have to wear both of those hats and it can become really uncomfortable. And so that way, if there's a contract in place, it's almost like you're not preparing for bad things to happen, it's actually more that you are preventing those disagreements from happening because expectations were communicated upfront. And so a contract is more likely to save a friendship than it is to ruin a friendship, I think.
[00:32:22] Matty: Yeah, and it's just a record. I know there have been several times when, during the course of working on "Taking the Short Tack" with Mark, where we would both say, what did we agree to do about audio? And then we'd have something to go back. Oh, oh, now I remember. So yeah, it's a record. It's not a weapon, it's a record.
[00:32:39] Asa: Yes. Yes, it is. Exactly. Yeah.
How Collaboration Validated and Inspired Her Work
[00:32:42] Matty: So I wanted to just hit as a way of wrapping up our conversation, one of the benefits that you gained from collaboration was that it validated and inspired your work. And I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.
[00:32:54] Asa: Yeah, so I work full-time as a college instructor, and I write, and I had started doing this thing where I was basically working two full-time jobs. And was approaching burnout very quickly, and I think sliding way into burnout as well. So I was in this slump already before the pandemic hit, where I was not feeling as great about writing as I had been, it wasn't sparking that joy creatively, which is why I got into writing in the first place.
The Power of Validation
And so for me, it was both a way of getting that creative spark that we've talked about. But the fact that other writers want to work with you, and if in the case of where I was submitting work and getting accepted, that validation of sort of like, yes, we think your writing is good enough to be part of our collection. That can also really help.
[00:33:46] Asa: I think that even if we are creatives, if we didn't need validation or income, then we would just write for ourselves. But we want our stories to be read by people, and we would like to also make some money out of it. And so being in a project where you are working with people whose writing you respect and whose business sense you respect, it is a huge validation that you are part of that project. And so that was another big part that worked for me, where I was like, hey, maybe I don't suck, right? Because these people are going to let me be in the collaboration. And these people think that my story is going to add value to this project, and they think that I am adding value by sharing the work of the publicity.
And so yeah, I felt like that was a very big part of it too. It's almost like I feel like it's an author co-op. I know that in traditional publishing, if you have your publishers, marketing and publicity behind you, there are people that know how to do that, that put that sort of marketing machine behind you because they think that your work is worthy and that your work is going to do well on the market.
So if you're an indy author, we don't maybe have that as much. You could hire your own publicist and so forth, and I'm not really sure that everybody that works in a traditional publisher really believes super strongly in every book they put out, but I'm trying to go with this analogy. So that working with the people that are willing to put, not just their story together with yours, but they're also willing to put their energy and their time into a project that you're part of. That was kind of like a huge validation.
[00:35:26] Asa: And it just made me feel like, because a lot of these people were people that I've looked up to, people's whose stories I really like and people's whose books I just automatically buy. And it has been a really rich reward on all fronts in terms of working with other people. I highly recommend it. And the nice thing about the author community is you can find that collaboration model that works for you. If you're not comfortable co-authoring, then do something like a collection or something like an episode in a series that's already existing. They're definitely out there.
[00:35:59] Matty: That's great. Well, Asa, thank you so much. I appreciate that you shared such a balanced view of collaboration that included some red flags and also included a description of the benefits that you just wrapped up with.
[00:36:10] Asa: Thank you so much for having me on, I really enjoy your podcast. So this is also like a fan girl moment where I get to talk to you personally, because you know, I talk to you in my car, but you don't hear me, so this is really good too.
[00:36:22] Matty: Yeah, that's so cool. That's so much fun to hear. Talk about validation. That's a lovely, lovely thing to hear. Thank you. So please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:36:33] Asa: Okay. I am Asa Maria Bradley, and you can find me all over social media and if you go to my website, AsaMariaBradley.com, all of those buttons are there.
[00:36:44] Matty: Excellent. Thank you so much, Asa!
[00:36:46] Asa: Thank you.
A question for you ...
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Asa! Have you collaborated on projects with other authors and, if yes, what was your experience? If you haven’t done a collaboration yet, has Asa convinced you to look for those opportunities—or to take action to make them happen?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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