You need someone to tell you your baby is ugly.

Here’s what I thought the weirdest part of being a collaborative writer would be. It would be the first time in my nearly 50-years on this Earth I’d have clients.?You know what they say about old dogs.

As a journalist and then an entrepreneur, I’ve never really been in the client business. I’ve been more in the kicking down doors and demanding things business.?(If you missed Season One of Sarah Lacy when I was a journalist, here was a recent reminder. I don't usually do podcasts, because I don't really have anything to promote, but I made an exception last week. My kids were like "Whoa, you used to be like this all the time? No wonder we had armed guards!")

Only. . . . I realized today on a call with a potential new client, I’m still not really in the client business.?

Bear with me, that head f*ck of a sentence will make sense a moment. (I hope)?

YES. I pitch clients, close clients, invoice clients, and I am paid by clients. But I don't really work for those clients.

This despite the fact that clients ultimately have to be pleased with my work, and I take very, very, VERY seriously anyone trusting me with bringing their voice to the page and anyone paying me anything, no matter how wealthy they are.?

I don't want to give the impression that I am dismissive of or disrespectful to clients. There are collaborative writers who have a lot of success and confuse themselves with the talent, who talk down to authors. That is not me, and that pisses me off when I hear about it. I always want to remind authors that the rest of us– writers, publicists, agents, editors– are all interchangeable. They are the ones who are not when it comes to their book, no matter how right we may think we are.

Rather . . . this is what I mean when I say I am not in the client business. Here's what I found myself saying to a potential client yesterday, and I only realized how true it was as I said it:

“People hire me because I’m honest with the type of people who a lot of people have a hard time being honest with. That comes from having been a journalist for so long. When I was a journalist, my job was to serve the reader. And now, my job is still really to serve the reader.?

“And that’s why I’m different from other collaborative writers. I’m not trying to make you happy, even though you are paying me and you have veto power over anything I write, unlike when I was a journalist. But I’m still not here to tell you what you want to hear. And I am still really focused on serving the reader. Because that is what serves you. That’s what gets you a great book that has an impact and achieves everything you want. I have to serve them to serve you.”

There are so many people who do not want that. They want to pay you to write something that flatters them. That is their "why." That is the legacy they want to leave on the shelf. Which is fine. But that book won't get published unless you are the 1% of the world successful. And even then, it won't sell. And if it does, no one will actually read it.

And even in those cases, I have no interest in writing it. Which is fine, because plenty of other people will happily take your money and write that.

There's been a lot of press about the surging ghost and collaborative writing market and six and seven figure incomes with it. And YAY because writers need more ways to make money, especially in an incoming age of AI. But a lot of it is driven by celebrity and Real Housewife memoirs. That's not my job. Nor is writing the business equivalent of that book.

I only get to work on a few books a year, I (fortunately) have a lot of people who'd like to work with me, and I am way too old and way too good at what I do to waste time collaborating on anything that isn't going to be meaningful to the world and readers.

Why you rule isn't that.

So how is this insight about my career useful for you??

Whether you pay someone or not, you need someone who will serve this role as you develop your book. You need to explicitly give them permission to do this. Someone who isn’t afraid to be honest with you. Someone who is serving the reader, not you. Because you are you. And your partner and best friend love you. So you are all conflicted out of that role. And way too close to the situation.?

And can I tell you? It would be really nice if it were your agent or your editor who did that (should you be lucky enough to get both.) Often it is. But it isn’t always. How and why is that possible??? Don’t they want the best for you????

I’ll take a stab at answering that, but I don’t actually know, because they should be the ones to do this.?

Both of them have so many authors for one thing. Think of editors as being like VCs or board members. They cannot come in and run your company. They can be coaches at best. But it’s your company.?And when it becomes too much of a mess, a lot of times they are gonna throw their hands up, chalk this one up to a lost cause, and zone out on their phones instead. They are not all in on your company the way you are.

Editors are a bit the same. They have so many books on their plate. This is your book, not theirs. They can probably make it about 20% better than whatever you turned in. But that’s about it. So if you filed at 80% good book; great. If you filed a 40% good book. They aren’t gonna have the bandwidth to “fix” it.?

This is even more the case if you are a very successful, wealthy business person who is likely to buy a bunch of copies, get friends and friends’ companies to buy a bunch of copies, can snap your fingers and get press, and easily get speaking gigs to push books.?

They don’t need the book to be great. They don't need it to sell at retail. They just need your name on it, and your ego and wallet will do the rest. So if that's their best chance to recoup costs, the last thing they wanna do is piss you off at this point by being honest with you. ?

They don’t need to serve the reader. It’s better for them to serve you if they think the book isn’t easily fixable.?

Maybe this is too cynical of me. But whatever the motivations, this kind of thing happens more than you'd expect, and I'm always mystified by it.

A few years ago, a senior executive I knew got a GIGANTIC deal. They were really excited to write a great book. And everyone thought the book was a disappointment when it came in. It was clear it was not going to sell, but no one said anything or did anything. Everyone just nodded and smiled, acting super pleased. And the book was a colossal disappointment sales wise. The poor author was left wondering what the hell happened.

Huge advance and everyone said it was great. . . what went so wrong??

It seemed so unnecessary and cruel to me. This person could have written a great book. It was clearly a concept the publisher believed in enough to write that big of a check. They had a top agent and paid an extremely expensive collaborative writer. They had one of the best editors in New York publishing. And there were seven figures of costs on the line. But somehow no one felt it was worth it to give them the honest feedback, roll up the sleeves, re-do it, and deliver a better book.

This was years ago, and I’m still so confused why none of the people making money off this person’s deal thought it was their job to be honest and tell them the baby was ugly.?

Which leads me back to my point: I only serve you by serving the reader.?We are all only in this business because of readers. If we keep them front and center, we still can't control anything. But at least we have a better shot of delivering a good book that means something to someone.

I hate– HATE– giving someone negative feedback on a book, by the way. I find it extraordinarily painful. It makes me feel physically ill. Because I know how personal it feels. It’s like telling someone their baby is ugly.?

But the problem is, the New York Times will tell you your baby is ugly. It's going to be much better coming from me when we still have time to fix it.

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