20 | The Writer • January 2020
They say two heads are better than one.
To wit: countless covers for picture book, middle
grade, and YA books carry the names of two
authors. A few have many more. For instance,
middle grade novel Best. Night. Ever.: A Story Told
From Seven Points of View has (you guessed it!)
seven coauthors.
Jen Malone, who served as coauthor and edi-
tor for Best. Night. Ever., says the book idea mate-
rialized when she and several of her critique
partners landed at the same imprint. They origi-
nally wanted to write an anthology, but middle
grade anthologies don’t sell very well. Instead,
“our editor liked the idea of it being a cohesive
novel,” Malone says. They agreed to a setting (a
school dance), and each coauthor wrote chapters
from a different character’s point of view.
While collaborative novels may present a
cohesive storyline to the reader, there’s often a lot
more happening behind the scenes before the
book gets into readers’ hands. Read on to see
how Malone and other coauthors generate ideas,
write and revise drafts, and market their books
collaboratively.
Why collaborate?
Malone, who’s separately coauthored middle
grade novels with Gail Nall and Kristine Asselin
in addition to Best. Night. Ever., says coauthor-
ing as an established author can effectively con-
nect each other’s fan bases. “The hope was that
our audiences for our individual books would
be introduced,” she says. “They might like how
this character is written and seek out that
author’s books.”
For Liz Garton Scanlon and Audrey Vernick, who were
brought together by the same literary agent, the motivations
are more artistic. Both have written books individually and
coauthored picture books together, most recently Five Min-
utes. Scanlon says writing with Vernick helps up her game.
“Each draft raises the bar so that as we pass them back and
forth and back and forth, we dig deeper, we get funnier,
more lyrical, more true and right,” she explains.
Scanlon notes that collaboration also offers her fresh per-
spectives, something she feels is important the longer you’re
in the industry. (Her first picture book published in 2004.) “It
is like getting an in-person audience with the muse,” she says.
Vernick says collaborations also better ensure that the
writing gets done. “When you have that accountability to a
writing collaborator, you don’t want want to let the other
person down,” she says. Collaborating can also play to each
author’s strengths. In writing Dear Substitute, their first pic-
ture book collaboration, “we came to a point where we said,
‘We need a poem here,’” Vernick recalls. “Who has that free-
dom to say, ‘Liz, write a poem about a turtle?’”
Friends and critique partners Madelyn Rosenberg and
Wendy Shang cowrote a middle grade novel as a way to stay
connected even when their lives got busy. “It seemed like the
next progression in our writing relationship and friendship,”
Shang says. “One day I said to her, ‘why don’t we get paid to
hang out?’” The result of that collaboration was This Is Just a
Te s t , followed by Not Your All-American Girl, a novel from
the perspective of This Is Just a Test’s protagonist’s sister,
coming out in summer 2020.
Collaborating on nonfiction research has its own perks.
“We each were going out and finding resources, and some-
times we would find something that the other person hadn’t
discovered,” says Sue Heavenrich, who coauthored the YA
nonfiction book Diet for a Changing Climate: Food For
Thought with Christy Mihaly. “We had two people looking
out for books, people to talk to, places to go visit, and pho-
tos that we wanted to look at.”
Despite the perks of collaboration, the biggest downside
is less money, since the coauthor royalties are split between
collaborators. For picture books, the royalties are already
split between author and illustrator. Then each agent takes
their cut, and the author royalties are split even further. “But
if that’s the trade-off for this really fruitful creative adven-
ture, it feels worth it to me,” Scanlon says.Choosing the right collaborator
Choosing the right collaborator is vital. “As long as this
book is going to be in print, we’re going to have a relation-
ship,” Laura Shovan says of Saadia Faruqi, her coauthor on
the middle grade novel A Place at the Table. “It’s a long-term
relationship when you have a book with somebody. Make
sure you like the person.”T