How does ghostwriting work?

Who this is for: For anyone thinking about a book with a ghostwriter who wants to know what the work looks like.

In short: a ghostwriter plans your book with you, interviews you, writes it in your voice and revises it with your comments. Each writer here sets their own stages and dates in the contract. In my process, that’s an hour of interviews per chapter, each chapter back within two weeks for your comments, and about five months in all.

I developed my process decades ago when a client referred me to a self-made tech billionaire who wanted a book to capture the culture of his rapidly growing enterprise. I remember actually hitting my knees in prayer in the elevator on the way to his Century City office, asking myself what on earth does a billionaire need someone like me for? And the divine answer came back quickly: “He needs a book, you moron!”

I got off my knees and got to work.

I learned back then that highly successful people are extremely busy, and they typically don’t get less busy as time goes on. When they think about doing a book, the idea hasn’t come to them just now for the first time. They have probably been thinking about it for years, but they just never found a way to get it done. The idea of locking themselves away for endless hours and doing the work themselves never appealed, and perhaps they never met anyone who had a process that would make only a small imprint on their schedule.

Let me be clear. There are a lot of really outstanding ghostwriters in the world, and they do things differently from how I do them. And that is fine. I’m simply providing you my methodology, which has been proven successful over more than 1,000 books that my team and I have done over 35 years.

How does a ghostwriter plan a book?

From Notable Authors: Michael starts with two questions: what the book is for, and who it’s for.What do you want your book to do? →

So now the client talks, and I’m listening for potential chapter ideas. The call is recorded, of course, but I’m taking notes feverishly and organizing a table of contents on the fly, which I will then polish over the next couple of days and present to the client typically within 48 hours of the call. My goal at this point is to listen for a potential title, subtitle, chapter titles, and a paragraph or two of description that will explain what goes into each chapter.

We are creating what I call an itinerary for the journey. If you ever backpacked across Europe, you might have planned to spend three days in London, three days in Paris, three days in Geneva … and then you met someone in Paris, and the two of you went to Spain. Boom. It is the same thing with a book. The table of contents can and will be adjusted over the course of the writing. That is fine. It is just that both of us—the client and I—need to see, on paper, a clear sense of the flow of information from the author (the client) to the reader. That is what the table of contents is for. We will sign off on the table of contents in a second, typically much shorter call, and then get into the interviewing.

How do ghostwriter interviews work?

I need one hour of interview time for each chapter. In that hour, the client and I will have a broad-based conversation that I will lead with open questions. Typically, I may not have to ask more than six or eight questions over the course of the hour. I just want the client to download everything in her head about the topic without concern for what goes in front of what, where stories are needed, and so on. Some of that can be filled in later. I just want the client to talk.

Some clients are very modest and don’t really believe that they have a book in them, so I put it this way:

“I understand that a book sounds daunting; however, what if we thought of it as ten or twelve conversations, one for each chapter, about the things that matter most to you, about the ways you serve people, about the ways you run your business or your practice, or about how you think about your field? Couldn’t we have ten or twelve interesting one-hour conversations about ten or twelve topics related to what you do?”

At that point, most of them shrug and say, “You are probably right.” And then, they find that they really enjoy the interview process, because they have never been listened to in this way, and they have never had a chance to clarify their thinking.

I’m listening for what you are saying that no one else in your field is saying. I’m listening for what you are saying that is so important to you that you might not even express the idea fully, for fear of being rejected or ridiculed. That is my gift, the ability to hear what is behind your thinking, to stop the presses and say, “Wait! What did you just say? Can we just talk a little more about that?”

When that happens, half the time, clients are surprised. They figure that “everybody knows” what they know or what they think. That is so not true! (Pardon the grammar, but that is how I felt, so that is how it is staying.)

How does a ghostwriter capture your voice?

At the end of the first hour of interviewing, I explain that every hour of interviewing I do leads to 12 to 15 pages of the book. I explain they will have the chapter within two weeks of the call, and at that point, I will be expecting comments, like “I like this, I hate that, that doesn’t sound like me, that is great, do more of this, do less of that,” and so on. If I waited until the manuscript was done, I would be making a terrible mistake. I wouldn’t be giving the client a chance to correct the material immediately.

Delivering chapters one at a time, and getting comments from the client, allows me to edit that chapter and then do the rest with what I’ve learned about their guidance regarding word choice, sentence structure, and so on.

I also warn my client, as that first hour ends, that they will probably go into a state of panic once we get off the call. Accomplished people are used to accomplishing things. Typically, in an hour, a highly successful person will have answered 20 emails, closed a deal, reached out to a prospect, met a patient, created a financial plan, ordered labs, or done something else tangible. Here, they can panic (we just talked for an hour! Nothing happened! What on earth?). I warn them that is how they are going to feel, and that the relief will only come when they get the first chapter in their inbox.

And then it is wash, rinse, repeat, through the end of the book.

Does a ghostwriter do the research?

Research? Yeah, I’ve got people who can do research and get us specific facts and figures, but as I advise my clients, what will matter most to the reader is what is in the client’s brain already. It is the client’s work or life experience that will make the difference, and statistics will just buttress the conclusions that the client has already reached.

How long does it take to ghostwrite a book?

Our goal will be to deliver the manuscript within five months—but quality will always take priority over speed.

How does it work on Notable Authors?

From Notable Authors: The rest of this guide is ours, not Michael’s.

1. 01You write to a writer, and you can book a call.
2. 02The writer sends a contract: a fixed total, split into stages, each with what it delivers and its price. You see all of it before any money moves.
3. 03You pay one stage at a time. Each payment is held until you approve that stage’s work, or released 7 days after delivery if you don’t respond.
4. 04A revision round is one set of comments on a delivered stage. The contract says how many you have.
5. 05If the book changes direction partway, the writer proposes a change order, and you both sign it.

Questions and answers