Last year, my partner Eve and I wrote a book. It’s quite a massive book, weighing in north of 150,000 words. In it you will find our thoughts, ideas and experiences with polyamory–a rather complex subject, as you might imagine. It took an incredible amount of effort to write. I’m very proud of what we created (and if you haven’t checked it out already, I recommend it. But of course, I might be biased.)
We’ve received a lot of feedback about the book. Not just on Amazon, though 80 five-star reviews is kind of nice, but from people who’ve told us things like “your book changed my life” and “your book saved my relationship.”
Which is awesome. I think we’ve accomplished something amazing.
And yet…
Since the book came out, there’s this thing that keeps happening. When people talk about it, as often as not they talk about “that book by Franklin Veaux.” Even though Eve’s voice and Eve’s ideas were absolutely essential to the book–in fact, it would not exist without her.
I started talking about the idea of writing a book in…oh, I don’t know, 2005 or so. I even went as far as to develop a content outline, a query letter, and a couple of sample chapters, which I shopped around to agents and publishers. Nobody was interested in it back then (though, ironically, I received a number of rejections that said, “We don’t want a polyamory how-to, but if you re-do it as a personal memoir we’d love to publish it. Hey, all you guys who wanted to publish a memoir but didn’t want to publish this book? Pthbth!)
That book, the one I wanted to write back then, was also called More Than Two.
The similarities between that book and the book Eve and I wrote end about there.
I dusted off the old content outline and query letter when we started this new writing venture, and we promptly junked all of it. The poly community has changed a lot in the last ten years. I have changed a lot in the last ten years.
But far more important than that, Eve thought the book needed a different focus, one less concerned with the specifics of polyamory and more focused on ethics, compassion, and the skills it takes to be a decent human being.
The book we wrote together is a lot more…well, human than the book I was going to write. There’s greater focus on self-work. There are personal stories in the book–mine, hers, and those of other people we talked to. (I have, in the past, written a great deal about my ideas about polyamory without talking about the personal experiences that led me there. Eve said she thought that was a weakness in my writing. I agree.) The book’s organization and arrangement are totally different.
And, ironically, the parts of the book that are most popular–the sections on ethics, communication, and self care, for example–are largely her creations. We each worked on every chapter of the book, but some chapters are more hers than mine, and some are more mine than hers. Much of the praise for the book focuses on the ideas she brought to it, even though people tend to edit her off the cover.
Co-creation is one of my love languages. When Eve came to me with the idea of working on a book together, I was absolutely delighted. We wrote it as co-equals. The book you read is not my ideas or my voice. It is our ideas and our voice. And it’s way, way better than the book I would have written alone.
To some extent, I suppose the fact that Eve tends to get edited off the cover, metaphorically speaking, is inevitable. When we started this journey, I was already more widely known than she was. My voice had greater reach.
But More Than Two is not my book. It’s our book. It’s totally reasonable that it annoys her when her contribution isn’t acknowledged, but it annoys me, too. I can’t take credit for it. It wouldn’t be what it is without her. And Eve deserves much greater recognition than she’s getting.
It’s totally not cool to have contributed to something awesome, and not be recognized for it. So Eve and I have created a new Twitter account, @mttbook, to be our social media contact for More Than Two. If you want to Tweet about the book, I urge you to use that Twitter account rather than mine.
Hello
as a woman often in the same situation as is Eve today, i appreciate your rectification. However, it would be useful for exactly that purpose of recognition, to address ‘her’ with her full name instead of just ‘Eve’?
Great book- but i give up on polyamory, to hard…..
have a good day, both of you
Belinda
What’s Eve’s full name? You scribbled it out and it doesn’t appear anywhere on this page!?!
Nice to read this clarification.
I second the other commenters in asking you to disclose Eve’s full name here. Also, if you both realized her contributions are the most appreciated by the audience, I suggest you both prepare a second edition where her name will be first, even if that is the only change. I have vast experience of working in teams and one of the most important decisions one has to take is whose name comes first.
(I don’t want to seem too harsh on you, Franklin. Although we don’t personally know each other, I totally believe you are a really decent person.)
I really appreciate this post; thank you, Franklin. I think I’ve tried to be cognizant of this when promoting the book to friends/acquaintances, but it honestly might have slipped past me. Thank you for the reminder to be more vigilant and give Eve all of the credit she deserves.
I’ll also throw in with the previous commenters and say that it might make good sense–and be somewhat consistent–to use Eve Rickert’s full name here in this post just to make sure she’s getting credit. Does it work if I repeat it a couple times here in the comments? Eve Rickert, Eve Rickert, Eve Rickert! 😉
Thank you for the reminder! I’ve been blogging about your book, and I’m going to go back and see how I’ve been referencing you and Eve.
For myself, I think it’s that your name is listed first, and my eyes sort rested on that. Which doesn’t make it OK, if I’ve been lazy about citing both of you; it’s just an explanation of where it came from.
But I’ll definitely be looking up my posts and amended any that miss Eve’s name!
I am glad you brought this up. It’s important that Eve get recognized for her contributions to the book and the larger project. I’ve often wondered why this blog is titled to be only Franklin’s blog, but still uses the same illustrations (and name) as the more than two book. People who visit your blog and purchase your book, may be confused by this. I also think it is problematic that Eve’s name is not included in terms of ownership of this blog. If you were using different graphics and names for the blog, I don’t think it would be as much of an issue. But in terms of branding, I think this is very confusing, and I can see where some people might get confused.
Hi Franklin,
I really appreciate this post. However, I think you need to mention the importance that gender plays into this equation. Women’s contributions are often dismissed. In your post it seems as if you approach this from more of a personal/individual view, i.e. I was more widely known, so my voice was louder. While this probably contributed, I think the overwhelmingly more powerful factor is structural and has to do with gender inequality. Women are often seen as background or story props. Most stories told in media are men’s stories, where they have complex emotions, character development, and NAMES. Women are sidekicks, props, plot twisters, and interchangeable leading them to be that nameless chick. I could continue on, but will stop myself. I commend you for this post, but in order for things to change the greater gender inequality must be addressed.
First of all, yes – Eve deserves to be acknowledged as a coauthor and not a sidekick.
As a reader, I think part of the issue is the presence of personal stories. Franklin the character looms large in this book, larger than Eve the character does. I searched my ebook and Franklin’s name appears far more, 165 to Eve’s 99 (and Celeste’s 74, which is important when you think of how much of this book talks about Franklin and Celeste’s relationship). The result is that Eve’s contribution to the work and the writing is less obvious to the reader even though she fully participated.