The Author-izer

Posts Tagged ‘Ghostwriting’

Here’s what I’ve tagged for January 8th through January 17th:

• The Difference Between Ghostwriting and Developmental Editing | BLOG.POLISHEDPUBLISHINGGROUP.COM –
• 13 basic design concepts every copywriter should know –
• The Ghostwriter Agreement –
• Vervante – On Demand Publishing –

Here’s what I’ve tagged for December 20th through December 26th:

• Twenty-two helpful books for a self-publishing author –
• Dr. Archer’s Ghost Part 2: This gun for hire has only one bullet | Reporting on Health –
• Should Famous Authors Bother with Traditional Publishers? –

Here’s what I’ve tagged for December 11th through December 12th:

• Ghost blogging: Just don’t do it | NevilleHobson.com –
• How to write a book – the short honest truth « Scott Berkun –
• Why Agents May Be Opposed to Self-Publishing –

It’s a busy day in the writing world:

• The Copy Editor’s Lament: The Layoff Video – mediabistro.com: FishbowlLA –
• The Nation’s CEO Has a Ghost-Tweeter « Communication at Work –
• President Obama Admits That He’s Never Used Twitter, But Thinks The Chinese Should Be Able To –

Here’s what I’ve tagged for November 26th through December 3rd:

• Spudaroo.com: For resumes, web content, business plans, presentations and much more! –
• Literate people ‘should boycott books’, says Murdoch biographer | Books | guardian.co.uk –
• Practical SEO Copywriting – The eBook You’ll Use Every Day – Divine Write Copywriting –

It’s a busy day in the writing world:

• Ghostwriting and Shifting Values in Literacy – Deborah Brandt | University of Hawaii
• Eccolo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report –
• New study from Eccolo shows white papers still king of marketing collateral –
• New Pharma Guidelines: No Ghostwriting, More Public Info – Health Blog – WSJ –
• Giving Up the Ghost | Ditchwalk – Contends that ghostwriting is lying

Asked by Adam Fields on LinkedIn, August 9, 2009.

Real ghostwriting, as opposed to what self-publishing guru Dan Poynter calls “contract writing,” involves writing in another person’s “voice.”

To explain the distinction, contract writing is “Go write me an article/blog post/white paper on topic X, and give it to me when you’re finished.”

Ghostwriting means I sit down with the client and get to know him or her, the way s/he speaks and thinks, what really matters to him or her, why s/he wants to write a book, etc. Then I use materials such as recordings of the client’s speaking engagements, interviews, notes and other written materials the client has (from e-mail messages and blog posts to short articles), to help me build up the book.

Then we pass the manuscript back and forth to make corrections for accuracy of style, tone, fact, and grammar, and finally we have a book that’s a joint effort. The client’s name absolutely belongs on this book: it’s his or her ideas and expertise that the book contains.

My name could go on the book, or not. I certainly appreciate having an acknowledgment. But I get paid for the work I’ve done, and the author and publisher might not if the book doesn’t earn out its initial investment. The obscurity is worth it.

Randy Kemp posed that question on LinkedIn, or rather, he asked what advice to give someone who wanted to hire a ghostwriter. He included my public answer in his April 26th blog post, but I thought I should post it here, as well, and add some of my further contributions from our follow-up discussion.

There are a number of factors to take into consideration when hiring a ghostwriter. Budget is an important one, because if this is a major project, it’s going to involve considerable time and effort on the writer’s part. To know how much you can afford to spend, you need to know what the book (or other project) is worth to you in terms of expanded business opportunities, increased pay scale, etc. (Sad to say, it probably won’t earn you that much in royalties.)

Expect a good ghostwriter to cost you a substantial chunk of money. The least I’ve ever charged anyone for a full-length non-fiction book is about $7,000, and she did a great deal of the writing herself. We are talking about as much as 200 hours of work, after all. (That project, by contrast, came to about 70 hours.)

To get a sense of the range of rates for ghostwriting, you can look at the Editorial Freelancers Association’s listing for Developmental Editing (which is not the same thing, but sometimes comes close) and the “What to Pay” guidelines at Writers.ca. They give a range from $10,000 to $50,000 (Canadian, one presumes) for a book, or your entire advance plus 50% of the royalties. Rainbow Writing, by contrast, offers “highly affordable” ghostwriting at a standard rate of $5,000 for a 200-page manuscript (where a “page” is defined in the old-fashioned double-spaced typed fashion, or about 250 words). Five thousand is pretty much rock bottom. You might find someone cheaper than that on Elance, but I don’t think you’d want to hire them.

Now that I’ve gotten the sticker shock out of the way, let’s get to the important part. Of course a ghostwriter needs to be able to write well. Some people insist on hiring writers who have published their own books, or writers who are journalists. You should certainly be able to see samples of the ghost’s writing. But that much is true of any writer you hire.

If you want a ghostwriter—someone who can take the knowledge in your brain and the passion in your heart and distill it into words in your voice—then you need someone who has more than just writing skills.

You need someone you can develop an intimate personal relationship with, because the ghost is going to be getting inside your head. Rapport is critical.

You need someone who listens to you. Don’t be surprised if your ghost spends more time asking questions, recording, and taking notes than actually writing.

You need someone with a gift for mimicry, someone who writes in multiple styles and genres. Established authors with too strong a “voice” of their own are not always good at this.

You need someone who understands enough about publishing to be able to keep the purpose and audience of your book in mind, and help you refine and develop your ideas to achieve that goal.

So far as I know, ghostwriters don’t have a union or a professional association. We are, by our nature, anonymous. You can find us lurking in the acknowledgements pages of books when we don’t have “as told to” bylines, which we often don’t. (I’ve never asked for one, but then, I mainly write business books, not celebrity biographies.)

The best way to find a good one is probably to ask for a referral from another author. You can, of course, search LinkedIn and read recommendations here. Check out the books they’ve worked on. Read their blogs. Meet them (or have a video interview) and see if you click. Find out how they work and whether your subject is interesting to them. (The more interested they are, the better their writing will be.)

Then go on and enjoy a wonderful collaborative experience building something neither of you could have created alone.

These are my links for April 23rd through April 26th:

• US book sales outpacing UK | theBookseller.com -
• Exorcise the Ghost in Book Ghostwriting � Randy Lewis Kemp -
• Author Marketing Experts, Inc. � Powerful Podcasting -

These are my links for March 27th through April 21st:

• BBC NEWS | Politics | LGA banned words – full list –
• What I Wish I Had Known Before Writing My First Book – by Joanna Penn | The Creative Penn –
• Toward the end of paper | Michigan Today –
• Hardback slump drives fall in sales | theBookseller.com –
• Six Lessons From The Ghost Twittering Saga | davefleet.com –
• When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking – NYTimes.com –