When pitching yourself as a ghostwriter, you may worry most that you won’t get the job. But perhaps you should worry more about what happens if you succeed. At the start of ghostwriting projects, everyone is smiling and optimistic. It’s no fun to think about what might go wrong. But unless you protect yourself, you…
Any nonfiction book with more than one contributor needs a carefully designed collaboration process. Not all tools are appropriate for all authors. So before you begin, plan how you’re going to move from ideation to research to drafts to completion and how everyone will contribute or approve content all along the way. To demonstrate how…
Ghostwriting is a misnomer. Because most ghostwriters do more than write. If you hire a ghostwriter, which of the following do you want them to do? Ghostwriting jobs that are just writing are easier If you bring an idea, and organization, and proof points to your ghostwriter, all they have to do is write. That…
A friend reached out for advice yesterday. “How much should I charge to ghostwrite a business book?” he asked. I was surprised, because I knew he hadn’t written a book before. My first thought was, “You’re still a rookie author. So you and your potential client are going to be doing some very expensive learning…
When it comes to hiring a writer to write a book that you don’t have the time or skill to write yourself, how hard could that writing job actually be? The writer doesn’t even have to come up with anything original, since it’s somebody else’s content. Why should that be expensive? Well, consider a few…
Even if you hire a ghostwriter to write a book for you, you’ll still need to put in plenty of time on the book. You can outsource the writing, but it’s still a collaboration. And your involvement, more than anything else, determines the speed of the project. I have ghostwritten two books. The cost was…
“What’s your process for ghostwriting a book?” This is a simple question with 31 million possible answers. It all depends on how the author (client) and the ghost writer plan to work together. Here’s a set of questions that the writer and the author/client should agree on before you get started. These apply to nonfiction…
If you are a ghostwriting a book, must it reflect the voice of the author for whom you’re writing it? I first encountered this question in a PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) conference talk by Blythe Campbell. Blythe speaks and writes eloquently about how public relations professionals need to listen to and understand their…
Ghostwriting is full of potential pitfalls. Asking two questions can help you avoid them and get your pricing and process right. What you will read in this post is based on my own experience ghostwriting two nonfiction books and many proposals, and from war stories from other ghostwriters. The two questions you must answer before…