The experiences you’ll only have with a human editor or ghostwriter

Working with AI on your book will enable you to polish your prose to a high sheen (just like all the other similar books). It will keep your work nice and neat and free from grammatical (if not factual) errors. It might even give you a new idea or two (new to you, that is — they might be stolen from somebody else).

But working with human beings has benefits you might not realize: growth, fulfillment, and joy.

These moments only happen with a collaborator who’s not a machine

Developmental editors are not perfect. Ghostwriters aren’t either. We’re human beings. We miss things. We have emotional reactions.

And we understand what you’re going through in ways that you’ll never get from a chatbot.

These are the moments you could be having when you hire an editor or ghost:

• The triumphal joy of working together to find the perfect, appropriate, catchy, original book title.
• The feeling of growth that comes from learning what was holding back your writing . . . and doing far better in the next draft (including when your editor tells you you’ve vastly improved).
• The relief you feel when you realize you’ve spent far too much time on the wrong idea, but your editor or ghostwriter is there to help you build back something so much better.
• The realization that your prose is much leaner and stronger without the extraneous words, phrases, sentences, and passages that your editor recommended deleting.
• The confidence that comes from knowing exactly when and how to use the first person in your book to take credit for your ideas, insights, and experiences.
• The aha moment of knowing that the parts of the book that the editor or ghostwriter liked best are practically ready-made for book promotion activities.
• The extreme feeling of competence that comes from changing things in early chapters because you and your editor or ghostwriter know they’ll perfectly set up the later chapters.
• The triumphal moment when your editor says you’re wrong, but you figure out how to strengthen your argument and prove you were right all along.
• The emotional maturity of laughing at your own mistakes that your editor gently but sarcastically pointed.
• The recognition of the most fascinating parts of your own story as skillfully told by the ghostwriter.
• The certain knowledge that the best bits built in collaboration with an editorial professional are exactly the parts of the book that readers will like best.
• The smug satisfaction of knowing that the final draft of the manuscript has been tucked together so nicely and smartly that there are hardly any errors for the copy editor to find.

That’s what you really get with an editor or ghostwriter

Speaking for all of us editors and ghostwriters, we enjoy those moments as much as you do. It’s why we love working with you and your original ideas.

We’re not trying to make you conform to some averaged-together ideal of what a book is supposed to be.

We’re trying to identify what makes you and your insights truly original, and to make sure your book does justice to those insights.

We’re more expensive than a large language model. The best of us are a lot more expensive.

But we care, and we’re the first human beings examining your prose and your ideas who do.

Talk to other authors. The ones who worked with AI are now frustrated and anxious. The ones who worked with human editorial professionals are confident and excited.

Why do you think that is?