Jill here! How I’ve missed you all. I got to meet a few of you at a conference last week, and it was so great to hear about your writing and the impact this little blog has made on your lives. *beams like a proud mama*

Today I want to tell you the story of my new book The Me You See, which came out on August 3. This book is different from most of my other books because it was a write-for-hire project.

A write-for-hire project is when a publisher hires an author to write something. It’s as simple as that. It’s a job. A gig. A one-and-done situation. It’s similar to how cover artists are hired to design a cover. They do the job and that’s that. The person who hired them now owns that cover. With write-for-hire, the publisher who hired the author owns that book. Forever. They purchase all rights. The author doesn’t get that story back. The author doesn’t own the characters and can’t write more stories about them. If the author created a town or mythical world, they don’t own that either and also can’t write about those things. They created them for that work-for-hire job, and all rights belong to the publisher.

That might sound sad to you, but to do work-for-hire projects, authors sign contracts that spell all this out up front. It’s not a surprise. Why would an author do it, then? For the paycheck. Work-for-hire can pay fairly well. Authors are usually paid a flat fee with no royalties, though sometimes royalty or bonus clauses are added should the book sell over a certain number of copies, say 20,000 or something significant.

My Work-For-Hire Story

In early 2019, I had just been accepted to grad school to earn my teaching credential. It was a 20-month master’s degree program at Washington State University that also included a year of student teaching. I would not be able to substitute teach during that time, which was how I was supplementing my writing income at that time, and I was a little worried how our family was going to pay the bills while I was in school.

I then saw a call for young adult writers for a work-for-hire project. I’d never written for hire before, but as I looked into the opportunity, it seemed perfect for my situation. I started emailing with the editor, who eventually told me that the publisher was Focus on the Family. They wanted to publish a series for teen girls that was similar to the one they put out in the 90s but relevant for today’s readers. They wanted the authors to work as a team to create the overall story and characters, then each author would write one POV character. They also wanted each book to deal with an issue facing teens today. The books were supposed to be 50,000 words long. True to Jill Williamson form, my book came in over 70,000 words. *guilty grin* Thankfully, Focus approved a higher word count, asking me to just keep it at 70K or below. I think I got it down to 67k in the end.

Once all four authors had signed on, our editor, Lissa Halls Johnson, began scheduling meetings in Zoom where we worked together to create the series. We invented the town of Riverbend, Indiana and the high school our characters attended. Then we worked on creating our characters. Lissa wanted authentic characters, and one of her assignments for us was to list some of the struggles each of us authors had when we were teens. (That’s where my character, Izzy, got her boy crazy nature. And also her “I’m not smart about boys” decisions. *blushes*) We talked about our characters in our Zoom meetings, and we worked hard to make sure these four girls were different from one another. Several times we had to tweak our characters to keep them from being too alike. For example, early on we had too many characters who were only children. I remember volunteering to give Izzy a bigger family. She has two brothers and a sister. Lissa also wanted us to work hard to make our characters authentic by continually checking in with the teens in our lives. My daughter was fifteen at the time, and she became a large inspiration for Izzy’s character. My daughter (Kaitlyn) is the happiest girl I know. She is obsessed with drama and musicals. She wears wacky leggings. She loves to bake and give her friends presents (not cupcakes, though). She also loves stuffed animals and Marvel movies. All of these traits I gave to Izzy.

Once we had nailed down our characters, we took turns hashing out our plots on Zoom. The girls would meet in drama class in the first book and become friends. We needed to know each others’ stories because our characters lived through those events, and that would be relevant when we wrote our own books. We chose the order for the books. (Mine is book three.) We chose the issues for our books. I ended up with the cell phone trouble issue. (Challenge accepted!) Then we also each needed to write a synopsis for our book. Lissa sent all four synopses over to Focus for approval. Some changes were requested, but once our stories were approved, we started writing.

We also needed to be able to write each other’s character into our books and get their descriptions, behavior, and dialogue right. I remember emailing or texting the other authors to ask things like: “How would Tessa say this?” or “How would Amelia respond if Izzy said this?” It was an interesting experience.

I originally thought I’d get to write the book in the summer before I started full-time grad school that fall, but that didn’t end up happening. The project took a lot longer than any of us anticipated to complete. Most of that was just waiting for the official green light from the publisher. Once we got going, things moved along fairly quickly. This meant I had to write the book while taking a full load of grad school classes. That was a challenge, though I was able to write a big chunk of the book over winter break. Once I turned in the book, I had to wait for my edits. Since mine was the third book in the series, I had been able to learn from the two authors before me about things Focus wanted adjusted. I made those types of adjustments as I wrote my first draft, so by the time I got my edits, they were not too extensive. I was able to complete those over spring break, and that was that!

One of the last things we had to do was brainstorm titles for the series and for our individual books. Lissa and the publisher eventually chose Riverbend Friends for the series. I had a terrible time titling my book. Focus wanted the titles to be a phrase that spoke to the character’s journey in her book. I brainstormed long lists of titles in many different emails to Lissa, and The Me You See was finally chosen. Whew!

The Me You See

Some things that publishers have asked me to do in the past, I didn’t have to do for this book. Like writing the back cover blurb. I don’t know if Lissa did that or someone else at Focus, but I know it wasn’t me! Here is the blurb for The Me You See:

Winter break is usually Izzy’s favorite time of year, but this year all it does is make her feel lonely. She adores her brother Sebastian, but she’s stuck at home taking care of him ALL. THE. TIME. And her squad―her friends from Drama I―are too busy with their own exciting plans to get together with her. So of course her phone is her lifeline!

Izzy creates and posts videos of her amazing, to-die-for cupcake creations on her Instagram account. AND she stays connected with her squad. At least she would . . . if any of them bothered to text her back. Seriously, how hard is it to text back? But then school starts up again and Zac, the dreamy senior she’s been crushing on for months, starts texting her. But her friends are less than thrilled. If they could only see Zac like she does―he’s really a great guy! Then everything would be perfect.

Even though my story’s issue was a challenging one to write, I had a lot of fun creating Izzy and her family. Like I said, mine is book three in the series, and while there are four books that do go in a chronological order, they can also stand alone on their own. It’s a little like the Nancy Drew series in that if you picked up book 1, book 14, or book 48, each one is always going to describe Nancy and her dad, the housekeeper, Ned, Bess, and George. So you can read the series in order, or you can pick up any of them and enjoy the stories. I don’t know if Focus will want to continue the series, but I wouldn’t be sad to have the chance to write more stories about Izzy.

Learn more about the books:

Click here for a link to the series page on Goodreads.

You can add The Me You See to your Goodreads TBR by clicking here.

If you’d like a copy, you can purchase signed copies of this paperback from me in my author store or buy the book online.

Jill’s Author Store
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
ChristianBook.com

What do you think?

Would you ever consider a write-for-hire project? It’s just as much work (and sometimes more) than writing a book for yourself, since you have to work with others up front to nail down the story, though that can potentially alleviate the need for extensive editing later on. And it is nice to get a paycheck for a book and not have to stress about how well it sells or even help promote it. Since it’s the publisher’s book, those are the publisher’s concerns.

Would you take a job like this? Remember, you could always write under a penname. Or, like this post with Jill Osborne, a write-for-hire job could look a lot more like ghostwriting. I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Share in the comments.

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.