Summary: <br> <a href="https://www.patreon.com/novelmarketing">A patron</a> of the Novel Marketing Show recently asked a great question we’re going to answer in this article. <br> <br> <br> <br> “How can I collaborate with other authors so we can help promote each other’s work?”<br> <br> <br> <br> But first, why is this something you should consider?<br> <br> <br> <br> Why work with other authors?<br> <br> <br> <br> Reason #1 Writing is the Opposite of a Zero-Sum Game<br> <br> <br> <br> Gambling is a zero-sum game. If I win chips, it means you lose chips. <br> <br> <br> <br> In the real world, most things involving money are not zero-sum. In almost every area, value can be created. For example, if I build a mansion next to your house, it makes your house more valuable. The total pie is bigger. <br> <br> <br> <br> Writing is the same. <br> <br> <br> <br> “When people love a book, they want to read more books like it, even if those books are by other authors.” <a href="https://ctt.ac/yUaxl" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Click to Tweet</a><br> <br> <br> <br> When you help fellow authors succeed, you help yourself succeed as well. As the old saying goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” <br> <br> <br> <br> Remember: Faster alone, further together. <br> <br> <br> <br> Your competition as an author is not other authors. Your competition is Netflix. <br> <br> <br> <br> Reason #2 Writing is Hard<br> <br> <br> <br> Non-writers don’t understand that you suffer when you kill off one of your characters, or even worse when you have to edit them out of your novel altogether. <br> <br> <br> <br> “Authors who “go alone” almost always give up before they reach the finish line.” <a href="https://ctt.ac/yw71e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Click to Tweet</a><br> <br> <br> <br> Reason #3 Publishing is Hard<br> <br> <br> <br> Finding an agent, a publisher, and a good book deal is hard. Indie publishing is the same amount of work. It’s simply a different path. There is so much to learn and many potential mistakes to make. <br> <br> <br> <br> If you are going alone, you won’t have the advantage of learning from someone else’s mistakes. You’ll have to learn by making the mistakes yourself. <br> <br> <br> <br> Reason #4 Marketing is Hard<br> <br> <br> <br> Promoting your book requires hard, ongoing work. Not only must you accomplish various marketing tasks, but you must also learn what works and what doesn’t for you and your book. <br> <br> <br> <br> Collaborating with other authors makes the writing, publishing, and marketing processes. Each stage becomes easier when authors collaborate. I have been working with bestselling authors for over a decade, and I can’t think of a single writer who made it to bestseller status without a community of other authors helping out.<br> <br> <br> <br> Now that you know you need to work with other authors let’s talk about how to work with other authors. <br> <br> <br> <br> There are three levels of author collaboration. <br> <br> <br> <br> Level 1: How to Connect with Other Authors <br> <br> <br> <br> At this first level of collaboration, the goal is to connect with other authors to learn from each other’s experiences and to encourage one another to go further. We recently released <a target="_blank" href="https://www.authormedia.com/217/" rel="noreferrer noopener">episode 217 about mentorship</a>, and we explored several types of level-one collaboration. <br> <br>
