Networking as Caring

I'm realizing more and more the power of networking for selling books. It especially hit home to me this weekend.

I attended a Webinar Thursday night by book marketing guru Brian Jud on Networking. I didn't set out to have a networking weekend, but it certainly turned out that way. Perhaps I was just more aware of what was going on because of the seminar.

Friday night, Cherie and I traveled an hour north to the little town of Dalton, to celebrate a friend's college graduation. We weren't going to network; we were simply honoring a friend. When we got there, we weren't "working the room;" we were trying to spend time with as many people as we could. Someone introduced us to a person who was filling the pulpit for their church. I'd wanted to meet the fellow, since I'd heard that we had some things in common. I think we were a good contact for him since he was toying with getting more into writing. Then he introduced his girlfriend. I politely asked what she did and she responded,

"I work at Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters in PR."

"Funny thing," I said. "I've been thinking that Wal-Mart might like to carry my new book on finances, especially since I mention Sam Walton (Wal-Mart's founder) in the book in some very positive ways (good PR for Wal-Mart)."

She went on to explain to me how to get in touch with the people that make those buying decisions for Wal-Mart, encouraged me to speak to the manager of my local Wal-Mart, and gave me other invaluable, insider tips. She gave me her card and I filed it away in my new networking notebook. "What an incredible contact!" I told Cherie afterwards. "What if Wal-Mart decided to carry my book!

Saturday afternoon I took Paul and David (my middle school twins) to Trade-N-Play, where they trade video games. I always chat with the owner and ask him questions, because he's simply a nice guy and has great wisdom about business and life. I mentioned my latest book on finances for young people and he was thrilled!

"Sure, I'd love to take a look at it and consider selling it in my store," he responded. He was full of stories about his concerns about people overspending and ruining their financial lives. His young associate heard our excitement and wanted to know if he could get a copy to review as well.

If he takes it and it sells well, isn't it possible that the entire chain would consider carrying it?

Today, Sunday, Cherie reconnected with a college buddy at church, who had a friend with her. I asked the friend what she did, and she responded that she was entering the art department at KSU. I asked if she liked to doodle and draw cartoon characters, since I was considering a short cartoon series to go along with my book. She did that type drawing and was thrilled at the prospect. We traded cards.

Now these are three remarkable contacts made in three days by a guy who doesn't get out much, since I care for my ailing dad and 102-year-old granny. Any one of these contacts could easily lead to significant book sales. It caused me to reflect on the power and principles of networking. Some stray thoughts:

#1 - Always, always carry business cards and a pen. I didn't have a card in Dalton. Fortunately, others were better networkers than me, offering their cards. You never know who you'll run across.

#2 - Never forget that some of your greatest contacts are neighbors down the street, people sitting next to you at church, the person pumping iron next to you in the gym, the teen taking your order at Arby's. You don't have to hop a flight to the convention in LA to start networking. It's a lot cheaper to welcome your new neighbor with a batch of peanut butter cookies.

#3 - Always take a genuine interest in other people. I didn't go to any of these meetings to get something. I didn't meet them in order to see if they had something to offer. I went to Dalton to honor a friend. I went to Trade-N-Play to be with my kids. I went to church to worship God.

#4 - Get used to asking simple questions of people, like

• "What do you do for a living?"
• "What do you do for fun?"

After they respond, ask them more about these areas of interest, like:

• What fascinates you about that job or activity?
• How long have you been doing that?
  

As simple as this seems, very few people do it. Very, very few ask me about my work and interests. Consumed with their own world and concerns, they can't seem to take an interest in other people's world and concern. And they miss out on so much fun in the process!

Don't feign friendship to make a contact. People can smell a selfish phony a mile away. I really care about those people. That's why I ask about their lives rather than spout off about my own life.

Genuine caring sprinkles pixie-dust on casual conversations, transforming them into into something magical. Fascinating things bubble up - connections I never imagined, ideas that that change my course, services I was looking for.

I read a marketing professional lately who stated something like, "Networking is simply a new term for an old practice that we used to call caring."

Well put.

As we care enough to find out about other people's interests and find ways to serve them, we find the ideas and connections we need to move forward with our own interests. Sounds strikingly similar to "give and you shall receive," a biblical concept that proves its worth anew in each generation.

How I Plan to Earn $2000 More with my Writing this Year

I plan to save $1500. That's it.

No, the difference in numbers isn't a typo. Let me explain.

Money management gurus drive home the need to curtail spending. They often put it this way:

"A dollar saved equals two dollars earned."

Here's their angle: If you want to net $1 more through writing this year, you can do it in one of two ways:

#1: Earn an extra $2. If you're in a higher tax bracket, half of those earnings will disappear in the form of taxes, leaving you with your $1.

#2: Save $1. You keep it all. The IRS doesn't tax savings.

Now I'm not in a high tax bracket, so let's imagine that for me, $1500 saved equals $2000 earned.

The amazing thing is that the way I'm saving won't hurt me at all. It's not like I'm committing to eat Ramen Noodles for the rest of the year, or cutting my marketing budget. I simply compared prices on some of my services and winged better deals.

My primary savings came from changing my merchant account (the company that processes my credit cards for online purchases of my writing.) Cherie had been complaining for some time that too much of our earnings were being eaten up by our merchant account. I'd always respond, "Well, you know we compared before we got the service several years ago. I guess it just costs a lot."

But when they said they decided to charge us $40 more per month (ostensibly in order to serve us better!), I fired up my calculator and began asking around about the top merchant services. One ministry said they had changed merchants every two years, because companies would advertise a killer rate, inching up to an exorbitant rate before you knew what had hit you. He ended up with PayPal. I'm making the change, which should save me about $1200 per year. (Before the increase, they were charging us over six times the amount that PayPal charges for the same service!)

I've also found that you can bargain with Internet Service Providers. Mine was charging me about $70 per month for DSL wireless (allowing me about five computers to access). I got an advertisement in the mail that said I could get a competing service for about $45 per month. But I didn't want to go through the hassle of changing (change e-mail addresses, etc.). So I called my provider and said, "I like you guys, but your competitor is offering me the same service for $45 per month."

"We can beat that," he said. So immediately I began saving another $300 per year.

In my book on personal finance, I quote the CEO of Wherehouse Music as saying,

"Manage costs, not revenue. And remember that there is no such thing as a fixed cost."

Cutting costs frees up writers to take the assignments and write the books we're passionate about, rather than having to always go for the best paying. Extend this to paying less for houses, cars, etc., and you'll be that much closer to making a decent living from your writing.

On Writers and Their Websites

As a writer, I own and operate several Websites. It's one of the best things I've ever done, since now I have over 1000 individuals visiting my sites each day. The sites give me both income and busy places to tell people about my books. Two of my sites are www.jstevemiller.com and www.character-education.info .

If you're into writing for the long-haul, you'll probably find yourself needing an author site, a site for one of your books, a site on the topic of your books, and sites for other purposes. Over 10+ years of working with Websites, I've learned a few things. For one, many people spend way too much for their sites. Here are a few tips on where to find a place to build your site (Web Hosts).

I'm recommending that you set up your sites as cheaply as possible. (If you're independently wealthy, read no further. Just find a top-notch Web designer and shell out the bucks. But even then, I'd comparison shop, or you won't be wealthy for long!) I'll start with the most cheap (free) and move all the way to less cheap (about $5.00 per month).

1) You can get a free site through Google with no ads on it, and it might be just fine if all you want is an online brochure to direct people to on your business card. (Search "google g-mail." and sign up for a free g-mail account. Now, look at your g-mail account information and click on the "google pages" link.)

But Google Pages is new and has its limitations. As I write, people are having problems connecting their custom Web address (url) to it, so that I don't think you could have www.mynewbook.com (substitute your book name or author name or the topic of your site) as your Web address. I'd want my own distinct Web address so that people can find me easier. It also looks more professional.

Also, you may have trouble expanding if you want to do e-commerce (sell stuff to people using credit cards) or databases.

But if all you need is a cheap, online brochure (you can make it very professional if you like), this is one way to go. It's got online tools to help you build a simple site, so that you don't have to learn a daunting program like DreamWeaver.

2) You can get a free site through places like www.tripod.com, but they'll feature ads on your site. If you don't mind having ads, then Tripod might be a good choice. They've been offering sites longer than Google and have more helpful tools.

3) Going to paid servers, there are lots of great, cheap options. A good place to find reviews of servers and comparisons of prices and features is www.cnet.com . (Click "web hosting" on their left menu.) I pay $5.00 per month for each of my sites, which have tons of people coming to them and hundreds of pages of materials. I'm probably using less than 5% of the space I could be using.

I'm considering www.godaddy.com for a new site I want to build, primarily because they have a very cute Indy race driver on their home page. Besides this nice feature, they've got 24/7 support, lots of space, lots of free ad-ons (blog, etc.). Domains are cheap through them (c. $9.99 and under per year) and Web space is under $5 per month. I'll also compare www.hostgator.com , but their alligator picture isn't nearly as cute as the racing chick.

I think both of these hosts give you tools to easily build a simple site using templates and their own tools, so that you don't have to invest in software like Macromedia DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression Web, which are getting more complicated to use because of stuff like Cascading Style Sheets (don't even ask!)

If you decide later to get fancy with the site, like adding e-commerce or databases, these sites support this stuff and you can continue moving forward.

These servers often have stock images you can use. But I absolutely love www.istockphoto.com . Offering over 3 million images (and growing wildly!), easy to search and only $1 per small photo (you don't need huge images for the Web), I always find what I need. Don't copy people's images from the Web (like searching Google Images and randomly copying). People who do this are partly responsible for "starving artists' syndrome." Feed good photographers by purchasing their pics.

If you just need a simple site with attractive information about your books and services, don't spend big bucks. Fool around with some of these inexpensive options. If you need help, enlist your children or a college student studying Web design who desperately needs some experience on his/her resume. If it still doesn't look as professional as you'd like, offer a graphic designer who does good work (look at her portfolio on the Web) and works out of her home (low overhead) a couple of hundred dollars to "take what I've got and make it look more professional."

Recovering from English 101 Trauma

Think back to your early English and Writing Classes. How have those experiences shaped your writer image? Maybe more than you think.

So Cherie and I were listening to some tapes on writing by seasoned writers Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg. One of them described a former student who was perhaps the best writer she had ever taught. Yet, the student couldn't believe that she was actually a good writer. Why? Because her English teachers in high school commented solely on grammatical errors.

Imagined example: she pours her heart into a story and eagerly awaits a morsel of praise from her teacher. Instead, she sees, scrawled in red, "You still don't understand the proper usage of the semicolon."

OK. Useful point. But beyond the semicolon travesty, was the paper interesting, funny, creative, heart-felt? In the final analysis, aren't those aspects more predictive of a great writer than proper semicolon placement? Why then aren't those aspects more often pointed out and rewarded?

I suppose it's easier and more objective to count up the grammatical mistakes, subtract from 100 and assign a grade. But editors can provide semi-colon assistance. And no acquisitions editor ever, in the history of publishing, excitedly presented a manuscript to her superiors with the glowing remark, "this author's semicolon placement is unsurpassed."

I typically hated writing in school. It was all about not making mistakes; seldom, if ever, about being funny or informative (did I use that semicolon correctly?). So let's try to get over the damage done to our writing esteem by the grammar police.

Some of the most creative and entertaining writing I see these days are in newspaper vents, unedited blogs, and informal movie and book reviews. I applaud their daring. Writing with no editor is akin to streaking - running with no clothes. Scary, but strangely freeing.

Go ahead. Blog, e-mail, write movie reviews on Amazon, express your opinions, just for the fun of writing. Let the grammar police cringe, grind their teeth and rail against the rampant unprofessionalism. I'm just excited that so many people are writing their thoughts, their jokes, their stories, their passions.

Secrets of Millionaire Authors

"How can I make enough money with my writing that I can dump the 8:00 to 5:00 job and write full-time?" That's a much-asked question among those of us who are seriously addicted to writing.

So Cherie and I listened to a free telephone seminar by Steve Harrison on the topic, "What Millionaire Authors Do That Others Don't." He wasn't talking about the Stephen Kings, who write a popular book, which gives him a fan base to write more popular books. He was talking about nonfiction writers who pull in millions with their marketing savvy.

98% of all books won't sell 50,000 copies in their lifetime. What do the 2% do differently? Traditional thinking says that they simply wrote better books, or wrote to a greater niche. Harrison says that sure, you've got to write a good book. But it's much more than that.

Harrison comes with credentials. He interviews successful authors and has helped in the promotion of very successful books, such as Rich Dad Poor Dad and Chicken Soup.

Here are my takeaways from Harrison:

1. Plan on spending time and effort marketing. One successful author said, "My job is promoting. I just happen to write books."

2. Use your book to sell other goods and services. Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, once held up his book and asked what it was. Most see it as a book. He sees it as a brochure to sell his board game and seminars. In your book, offer seminars, audio seminars, a personal coaching program, etc. The successful fitness book, Body for Life, sells his supplements, a company which he later sold for millions.

J. Conrad Levinson, the author of Guerrilla Marketing, says that he made $9 million off his book. But the great portion of that came from seminars, not book sales, for which he made only $35,000.

Millionaire authors seem to have an "unfair advantage." They can lose money in special promotion book sales because they're making money selling other items. Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) will do a seminar with a part of the price of the seminar being for the seminar leaders to purchase copies of his book for attendees through the local bookstore. In this way, the book stays on bestseller lists.

When they buy the book, what else can they buy? That's where the money is.

3. Use your book to build your contact/e-mail list. "You're in the business of building a list, a fan base." Once you have a list of people who love your products, you can keep meeting their needs through new products.

Once, his brother Bill needed to buy a new car. Rather than pull from his savings, he said, "Let's do what we're telling others to do." So he came up with a new product and sent out a post card and e-mail to his list and received $83,000 within a few weeks.

So put an order form in the back of your book. Offer an incentive to get back in touch. The goal is to get their contact information.

4. Discover ways to sell in bulk. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, first published The Purpose-Driven Church. This built a base of ministers and churches who respected him. When he did The Purpose-Driven Life, he could suggest that churches buy a copy for every attendee and have a campaign called "Forty Days of Purpose," or something like that.

Could you sell to a pharmaceutical company, or businesses, or other groups?

5. Use articles, blogs, Websites, teleseminars, promote to other lists, etc.

Your goal is to sell outside of the bookstore. Find non-traditional outlets.

6. Poor authors do everything alone. Pull a team of people around you: publicists, bloggers, Web Designers, etc.

7. Focus on the critical things you can do now.

F - focused plan - "What can I do in the next 90 days?"
A - a lot more exposure - TV, radio, etc.
M - models that are proven to work. There are right ways to do press releases, right ways to contact radio, etc.
E - Execute!

My Reflections on This Seminar

• This is excellent material. Keep doing free webinars and reading books on book marketing. Every time I learn a lot of new stuff. It's not just about writing; it's about learning how to market. There's a ton of information that I need to know. I'll be learning it the rest of my life.
  
• This seminar turns a lot of traditional thinking on its head. In order to get a publisher, I've had to think of marketing solely in terms of "How can I sell more books?" This seminar forces me to think, "How can I sell more products with my books?"
  
• I need to brainstorm what "products" I should push. Perhaps I'm ultimately trying to get people and schools to sign up for my character education materials. But maybe there's also a follow-up product, like an e-book on teaching your children about finance or "Putting it All Together," or something that convinces them to give me their e-mail address for a newsletter or something.
  
• If Levinson truly made only $35,000 off the sale of his best-selling book, then truly, in general, the way to make money in books is through spin-offs.
  
• Compare this to the Damn! Why Didn't I Write That?! book, where he simply studies the niches, writes to the niches, and makes a decent living solely through the sale of his books. I didn't get the impression that he was running around doing seminars to promote his books, or was selling books to promote his seminars. I think we can take elements of both approaches. We need to decide what we want to do with our lives. If we want to be running around the globe doing seminars, that's one kind of life. Doing occasional seminars is another. Researching and writing a sharp, helpful newsletter each month is another life. Writing lots of books to niches is another. But I think they are all possible lives that we could choose to live.
  

Chapter 12: No platform? Then don't give up!

Rejection as a Standard Part of the Business

One chapter in "Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul" is entitled:

"No One Faces Rejection More than an Author."

Most would-be authors don't understand this. If you write for personal pleasure, just enjoy the experience. If you decide to seek publication, brace yourself for rejection after rejection. This should come as good news to those who've already tried to get published and gotten slapped down at every turn. It doesn't mean you're a bad writer. It just means you're in the writing business.

All writers, but particularly early writers, face rejection as a way of life. Even seasoned, successful writers understand that they'll have to submit articles and books to several publishers before finding a home for them.

May I put it bluntly? If you can't take getting hit in the face, don't become a boxer. If you can't take getting wet, don't become a swimmer. If you can't take rejection, don't become a writer.

Easing the Pain of Rejection

Many aspiring authors are unnecessarily devastated by rejection. Rejections wouldn't hurt so badly if writers simply understood the way things work in the publishing industry. Normally, publishers hand out a standard rejection letter rather than tell you why they're turning you down. The uninitiated misconstrue the rejection letter to mean, "your writing is not good enough for publication." Bad assumption. Let's look at common reasons that great manuscripts get rejected.

• The publisher had a bad experience with a book on your topic. One publisher told me this recently. They hadn't had much success with financial books, so they didn't want to try another one. (The only reason I get specific reasons for rejections is that my agent has relationships with these people and goes back to ask them.) This didn't reflect at all upon my writing.
  
• The publisher doesn't sell successfully to the age-group you're targeting. Again, another reason that I was rejected by another publisher.
  
• The publisher already has another book on the topic and doesn't want to publish competition for the other author. This makes sense. I heard this from a publisher concerning my music book.
  
• The acquisitions editor has a firm deadline the week your manuscript lands on her table. On Friday, her boss demands: "These twenty proposals have been sitting on your table for days. Go through them and see if any have potential before our 3:00 editor's meeting." She gets several calls from important authors and gets behind even further, so that at 2:00 she has to either frantically narrow things down or risk being labeled a slacker by the big cheese.
  
  She throws out five proposals because they each have a misspelled word, eight because she doesn't readily understand the market, and disses your manuscript because it's in pica font, which was the font of her last recommendation - the one that the big cheese shot down. She rejects all pica font these days. It's a bad omen. Do you think things like this really happen at publishing houses? Hint: They're human institutions.
  
• The editor doesn't appreciate your style. He may have a more literary bent or a more homey bent than you. He may like more big words, more smaller words, more analogies or quotes or description or dialogue. He may like animal stories better than people stories, talking animals better than mute animals, wild animals better than domestic animals. Well, you get the picture. So much judgment on writing is simply a matter of taste.
  
• The manuscript simply doesn't meet their current needs. I know that it sounds like the trite rejection letter, but often that's literally the entire problem. Their board demanded last year that they limit their novels to 10% of the books they publish in any given year. They just met the 10% quota for next year and aren't currently looking at any more novels. Once they read far enough in your query to realize it's a novel, they put it in the reject pile. They don't have time to explain this to everyone who submits a novel, so they get the standard rejection letter.
  
• The acquisitions editor doesn't get it. I understood that style of music was a growing issue in the church because of my work with teens. If the editor hadn't worked with teens or been raising a teen in the late 1980's and the early 1990's, she might not sense the urgency of the topic. Publishing houses are staffed by people with limited experience and limited knowledge and limited interests. It's no surprise that they don't understand why a niche of southern farmers are waiting anxiously to read your illustrated history of Boll Weevils.
  

My point? Many factors go into a publisher's decision-making process that have nothing to do with the quality of your manuscript. So don't expect the first publisher, or even the first twenty, to take your manuscript. Politely ask each rejector for a reason, so that you may learn something to improve future submissions. See below for how many rejections some of the most successful books had to endure.

Publishers' Dilemmas

It's not easy being an acquisitions editor. There's no objective formula for spotting a best-selling book. Therefore, choosing from among several well-written manuscripts is often more art than science. That's why well over 100 publishers rejected the original "Chicken Soup" manuscript. In their professional opinion, books of short stories simply didn't sell. Now they're kicking themselves.

In part, here's the publishers' dilemma: On the one hand, they want a book that's unique - not something that's already been done over and over. On the other hand, they want proof that this unique book will sell - although nothing quite like it has been published before. So how can they know if books like these will sell?

They also have a bias toward published authors, knowing that they are gathering followings. Yet, they have to pay published authors more. Wouldn't it be great to find that new author who turns out to be a best-seller, with your publishing house getting a higher percentage of the royalties? As the one who "found" the new author, you'd be a hero! So, do you stay with the safe, reliable, published authors, or take a risk on a new author?

Again, you can see why publishers may not see the genius of your manuscript.

Great Books That Were Repeatly Rejected (Or, Embarrassing Moments in the Acquisitions Department)

Yesterday I read a wonderful chapter in Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul, listing authors who were rejected repeatedly by publishers. Here are a few.

• Louis L'Amour, with over 200 million of his 100 western novels in print, suffered 350 rejections before a publisher first took a chance on him.
• Dr. Seuss' first manuscript, And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was jilted by twenty-seven publishers.
  
• Jack London, author of 22 books, including Call of the Wild, was initially rejected 600 times.
  
• Best-selling author John Grisham (over 60 million of his novels in print), was originally rejected by thirty agents and fifteen publishers.
  
• Mary Higgins Clark (over 30 million copies in print) was passed over by publishers forty times.
  
• Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous among his 45 books) was told, in a rejection letter from the San Francisco Examiner, "I'm sorry , Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."
• Alex Haley (Roots and The Autobiography of Malcomb X) received a rejection slip every week for four years as a young writer.
  
• The "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series grew to thirty-two books and has been translated into thirty-one languages and sold over 53 million copies. But if it weren't for Canfield and Hansen's ability to handle rejection, the first book would have never made it to publication. It was rejected by 123 publishers. The major New York publishers said that "Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories." Nobody indeed.
  
  These are not oddities in the publishing world - the few writing geniuses who somehow got slighted in a normally stellar selection process. Canfield, Hansen and Gardner list twenty nine great authors who suffered rejection after rejection. My impression is that their experience is more the rule than the exception.
  
  An interesting test of the publishing industry demonstrates the difficulty of recognizing greatness in writing. Eight years prior, Jerzy Kosinski won the National Book Award for his novel Steps. Someone wanted to change his name and title and resubmit it. He sent it out to thirteen agents and fourteen publishers. "They all rejected it, including Random House, which had published it."
  
  So today someone is pronouncing your first manuscript "unsellable." Cool! Now you've got something in common with the greatest of writers. Just make sure you share their persistence as well.
  
  
  

Chapter 11: No Platform? Then consider sharing someone else's platform by co-authoring

Before I acquired a publisher for my book on music, a high-profile author urged me to co-author the book with him. "If we publish it together," he said, "you'll get a much wider reading."

I agreed that simply by putting his name on the cover, I'd have a much broader appeal and gain a much broader reading. It was a hard decision. Maybe I should have gone that route. But I didn't. Today I'm happy with my decision. Here's why:

#1 - I thought credit should be given where credit was due. I felt that if the book cover read:

The Contemporary Christian Music Debate

By Big Name
With Steve Miller

the average reader would think, "So 'Big Name' did the research and wrote the book. Miller must be a professional writer who tidied things up a bit to get it ready for publication." I didn't think that was giving me proper credit.

#2 - It seemed unethical. I'd already researched and written the entire book. So what was "Big Name" going to do - write a forward and add a few of his own insights to several of the chapters? I know that insiders to the publishing industry would say, "Everybody knows what's going on here. The no-name author doesn't have the platform, so he writes the book, then we have the big- name guy give enough input to justify putting both of your names on it."

Of course, that's not the only way co-authoring works. Often it's truly a collaboration from start to finish. On the other end of the spectrum lie those books that just have a rubber stamp put on them by the high profile author. In my case, I didn't think it was legit to come across to the general public like someone else had written the book when I'd done it myself.

#3 - Co-authoring might hurt my chances for future book deals. Write the book myself and I'm truly a "published author" the next time I go knocking on publishers' doors. If I were "just a co-author," would they take the time to find out if I had actually written the book or not? Even if they knew I was the primary writer, wouldn't they wonder if it would have ever sold without the high profile "co-author?" I believe that leaving it in my name helped to establish me as an author in my own right.

On the other hand, other book projects aren't like mine. Co-authoring may be the best way to go in many cases.

#1 - By collaborating from start to finish with an established author, you might come out with a better product.

#2 - Even if your co-author isn't a big name author, if the person has fascinating experience in the field or a strong platform, you stand to gain by working together.

#3 - You're more likely to get a publisher, who knows that "Big Name" or "Big Platform" has a following who will buy the book.

#4 - You'll probably sell more books, which impacts more readers (isn't that what you're trying to do?) than selling no books or few books under your own name.