• Position yourself as an industry leader
• Build a community
• Pursue publicity
• Explore public speaking
• Start a podcast
• Develop an email list

Many business authors don’t invest much time thinking about marketing their book before it is written. In fact, most first-time authors assume their publisher will handle all of the marketing and promotion activities. Or if they do begin to think about what they can do to promote it, it’s not usually until the manuscript is in their publisher’s hands for production.

That’s too late.

Marketing your nonfiction book needs to start today or, ideally, before you even start writing it.

Also, I hate to tell you but you’ll be responsible for marketing it no matter which publisher you choose to print and distribute it. Although publishers do invest heavily in the promotion of well-known
bestsellers with a track record of success, the most marketing support many authors receive is an announcement press release. That’s okay though, because being in control of marketing can be a good thing long-term.

Since marketing is up to you, where do you begin?

Here are some ideas, but a terrific resource is Stephanie Chandler’s book, The Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan.

Position yourself as an industry leader

Being able to claim the title of author can be a major boost to your career and personal brand, but the credibility and authority that come with being an author are closely associated with being seen as a leader in your space.

Before your book is done, it’s important to begin to associate your name with your field. That is best done by producing content that demonstrates all you know about your specialty.

Although you have a wide range of platforms on which you can share your content, choose one at the start and go all in.

That one platform might include setting up your own blog on your company’s website if you’re a business owner or creating a totally new one devoted to your topic. Or if you prefer video to writing, you could set up a YouTube channel or an Instagram account to share what you know. LinkedIn is another option, though it’s harder to get noticed without your own named place where you disseminate your content.

Creating and sharing original content in your topic area is step one.

Build a community

Another way to build a tribe of followers is by creating a community where like-minded people can gather to discuss popular topics in your area of specialization.

One of the easiest platforms on which you can create a new group is Facebook. LinkedIn also has groups, but they seem to be providing less support for that feature. And there are paid platforms like Mighty Networks, where you can bring together people.

Setting up the group is the easy part, however. Consistently giving members a reason to return and encouraging their friends and colleagues to join is the challenge. To do that, you’ll want to regularly share relevant content – some you’ve created and some that others have but that you appreciate – and encourage discussions. Ask questions, sponsor contests, and hold live events like webinars.

This all helps your community to see you as a leader and visionary.

Pursue publicity

Another way to enhance your reputation and prestige is to be quoted in the media. The good news is it’s not hard if you know where to find opportunities.

Granted, not every opportunity to be quoted will be totally related to your niche or specialty, but every media mention is valuable. For example, I was once featured in a New York Times article about a home our family considered but didn’t end up buying. Did it mention my ghostwriting business? No. But did it use my name? Yes. That mention adds to my credibility because I can say I have been quoted in the New York Times.

Likewise, you’ll want to broaden the scope of topics you’re willing to talk about with reporters. If you limit your area of expertise to your field, you may rarely come across opportunities. But if you expand the list of subjects you’re qualified to speak about, it’s likely you’ll regularly come across requests to weigh in on TV and article interviews.

For example, look for articles that have to do with where you live, your hobbies, the sports you play, how you’re saving for retirement, and where you shop. As long as what you have to say is useful and positive, it’s likely a good way to add to your list of outlets that have quoted you.

Now, you’ll find a list of articles, blog posts, books, TV, radio, and podcast topics in need of sources through websites that offer to match reporters and writers with people who have information (a.k.a. “sources”). You’re a potential source.

Those services are:

• Help a B2B Writer
• Qwoted
• Source of Sources

You’ll want to register at each of those websites – they’re free to use – and then scour the daily emails you receive to try to spot topics for which you can be a source.

The only time when it might not be in your best interest to respond is if the topic is negative or could paint you in a bad light.

Explore public speaking

Anyone standing at the front of the room is seen as the expert, so the more places you can find to speak to audiences, the faster your reputation will grow.

Develop a 15- and 30-minute talk you can give related to your area of specialization and then reach out to potential organizations that might be interested in having you present to their members or workers.

You could speak locally to service organizations like Rotary, Kiwanis, and Knights of Columbus, or to Junior Achievement or the Boys and Girls Clubs. You could speak to classes at area colleges and universities, as well as elementary and high schools, depending on your subject. Public libraries are regularly in need of speakers, as are trade shows and conventions.

The potential opportunities are virtually unlimited, and we haven’t even explored remote speaking gigs or summits.

If you’re comfortable speaking to groups, this could be a way to quickly elevate your personal brand.

Start a podcast

Podcasts and audiobooks are currently some of the most popular ways that people consume information. For that reason, you may want to consider creating your own podcast where you talk about your topic in a way that serves your target audience. That may require that you brainstorm how to discuss your topic in a way that is interesting and helpful.

For example, if you’re a graphic designer, you could explore trends in design, share examples of great design that you’ve seen out in the wild, interview other graphic designers, and even debate what good design looks like. The common theme across each episode should be that you are the expert and you’re trying to help anyone interested in learning more about it.

On the other hand, if you’re, say, a recruiter, you’ll want to think about what your audience wants to know. Mainly, they want to know how to land a new or better job. If your podcast can give them that kind of guidance, you will attract attention. But if you decide to talk instead about what not to mention on your LinkedIn profile or what webcam to buy for Zoom interviews, you may quickly run out of ideas for content and you may have difficulty gaining any traction with your audience.

If you don’t have the time or interest to create your own podcast, you can still pitch yourself as a podcast guest. The advantage of podcast interviews is that you don’t typically have to prepare a presentation – it’s more off-the-cuff and conversational.

Develop an email list

Building your own email list is another valuable marketing tool. And since it takes time to amass large numbers of followers and fans, start now.

One of the most effective ways to quickly grow an email list is to create a lead magnet and offer it in exchange for people’s names and email addresses. The lead magnet (a.k.a. freebie) needs to be of great interest to your people. If it is, they will gladly identify themselves and allow you to stay in touch.

You want this so that you can reach out once you begin to accept pre-orders of your finished book.

So, think about what information you can give your target audience that they really want right now. Don’t focus as much on what you want to tell them but, rather, what they’re looking for. In the small business world, entrepreneurs frequently want to know how to land more customers or scale their business. Ambitious career professionals often want to know how to land their next, more lucrative job. Parents frequently want tips to overcome common challenges, such as encouraging their child to eat healthy or develop a normal sleep routine.

If you’re not sure what your target market wants, do some Google research. What are some of the most searched words and phrases? What are members of your community after information-wise? You could also run a poll in your Facebook group to gather some of this information.

This is only a partial list of the many approaches you can take to get people talking about you and your book’s topic long before it is published. Ideally, you’ll spend the next few months educating your market and sharing your perspective so that when your book is released, people will be clamoring for it.

The risk if you don’t do any marketing in advance is that it will be released and no one will notice.

Strategizing what you can do to market yourself and your book while it’s being written is part of the service I provide to my clients. If you’d like to chat about having me ghostwrite your business book, please get in touch at marcia at marcialaytonturner.com.

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• Lack of copyright protection
• Potential for plagiarism
• Hallucinations
• Inaccurate information
• No new ideas

You might think that I’m against using artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning to write a book because it threatens my work as a professional ghostwriter, but you’d be wrong.

Right now, AI is not impacting demand for my work, though smart clients have added a clause to our agreement that prohibits me from using it. Since I don’t use it, I have no issue agreeing to that stipulation.

However, the number of times I’ve heard someone tell me, “I’m just going to use AI to write my book” is rising quickly as we all become more familiar with it.

When I caution authors against it, I get the distinct impression they think it’s a negotiation tactic designed to persuade them to hire me.

It’s not.

I caution them against it because there is very little upside beyond speed. And for nonfiction authors, there are plenty of reasons they shouldn’t consider it.

Sure, using AI may seem like an efficient way to make serious progress on your book in mere minutes, but there are huge downsides you need to be aware of before you attempt to do that. Granted, I am not an AI expert — at all — yet I know the current problems with its use include:

Lack of copyright protection

One of the big advantages of publishing your ideas in the form of a book is that it grants immediate copyright protection. If anyone tries to claim your ideas or words as their own, you can sue them for damages. When you hold the copyright, you control how your content is used and who has permission.

When you use AI to generate your book, you have no copyright protection because AI-generated content is not copyrightable.

As of March 16, 2023, according to the U.S. Copyright Office, “If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it.”

That should stop you right there. However, there are more reasons to consider on top of the lack of copyright protection.

Potential for plagiarism

As part of getting AI platforms like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude up to speed, existing books, articles, blog posts, speeches, videos, music, and other human-generated content were used as input into the system. The software was then programmed to make connections between the material it has access to. So, when you ask it questions, it is effectively regurgitating information based on what it has received as input.

It is rehashing other works.

In some cases, that regurgitation is plagiarism. If the AI-generated output is verbatim from something that exists and is protected by copyright, or if the AI tool has rephrased the data without attribution, such as with an article spinner, both can be considered a form of plagiarism.

To avoid plagiarism claims, you must cite the original source. However, that is difficult when AI does not identify it as such.

Using material that was generated based on existing published works opens you up to expensive lawsuits. If your work violates a copyright, you are liable to pay damages that typically start at $10,000. That can get pretty expensive pretty fast. And since you have no way of knowing whether AI has plagiarized, it’s best to steer clear of it for content generation.

Hallucinations

I’ve heard that more recent updates of AI platforms have reduced the incidence of hallucinating, or when AI produces content that is completely fictional, but it’s still important to be aware that it happens.

Recently a classmate of mine used AI to do some background research on their dissertation topic, as a final check to be sure they had found all relevant journal articles. Imagine their astonishment after months of research when ChatGPT provided a list of 11 new journal articles that were exactly on point for their topic. In addition to being surprised, they were also excited to have come across new research they could cite.

However, when they went to read the alleged journal articles, it became clear they did not exist. ChatGPT had made them up.

Fortunately, my classmate took that extra step of checking each and every citation and quickly discovered the research was fake. However, this is a risk you take if you do not double-check everything AI generates. It’s possible quotes provided or statistics cited may be completely made up.

Inaccurate information

Beyond making information up and presenting it as fact, AI can also be wrong. If the information it has been fed is incorrect, it will present it back to you as if it is right when it is not and you may or may not be aware of the error.

This could happen because the platform interpreted satire or sarcasm as truth when it was meant as a joke; just look at The Onion. Or because the website it relied on for information was, pure and simple, wrong.

This could happen with user-generated content that is not reviewed by an outside expert, such as on Quora, Reddit, or Wikipedia. Much of the information is useful – even fascinating – but it is not always right. And AI can pull from those sources just as easily as it draws from an encyclopedia or dictionary.

No new ideas

Finally, if you rely on AI to spot trends or emerging concepts, rather than developing your own ideas, you are using AI as a crutch. It will be more difficult for you to position yourself as a thought leader or expert when you can’t or don’t conceive of your own original ideas.

Similarly, since AI can only make connections between what it has received as input, it is always behind the times. You have access to information as of this second, but AI programming does not occur in real-time.

Yes, AI can be a useful tool for tasks such as organizing information, but be careful if you begin to rely on it too much for idea generation or writing. The content it produces for you may replicate content it has produced for others on the same topic, which, at a minimum, will be flagged as duplicate content by Google. This is bad for your search rank and, worst-case, can open you up to plagiarism claims.

Instead, if you hire a professional ghostwriter, who can work alongside you to help you crystallize and express your unique ideas and perspective, you can be sure that it does not already exist and the chance of plagiarism claims is negligible.

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• • What is the market rate for ghostwriting?
  • Why make the investment?

The ghostwriting industry has exploded in the last few years, with rising demand for content, the ubiquity of social media, and increased awareness of ghostwriting services being major drivers.

As more experts and leaders have realized how useful it is to hand off writing responsibility to a professional writer, ghostwriters have gotten busier.

The good ones have also gotten more expensive. As ghostwriting has emerged as a legitimate occupation, rates for ghostwriting services have increased. No longer is ghostwriting a cottage industry or an underground service kept under wraps — more authors and experts are proclaiming how essential their ghostwriter was to their success. That has helped make people aware of the value a ghostwriter brings to the table.

Ghostwriters have also proven their worth to aspiring authors looking for help in bringing their ideas and stories to the market. A well-written book can yield new business opportunities, speaking gigs, consulting engagements, media attention, and more. The stronger the book, the more valuable it is to the author.

Among ghostwriters, there are also strata, with the more experienced and successful ghostwriters charging higher fees. These ghostwriters have demonstrated their skill and ability to help clients complete writing tasks, often with awards, bestseller honors, and commercial success as results. They also charge a premium for that credibility.

Likewise, newer or less experienced ghosts are more willing to accept lower fees as a way to gain valuable experience. They may not have a track record, so they charge less in exchange for the chance to gain more experience. But “less” is still a decent fee.

Even among lower-priced ghostwriters, people who start to explore what’s involved in hiring and working with a ghostwriter are sometimes surprised by the fees charged.

What is the market rate for ghostwriting?

The truth is that most ghostwriters don’t charge enough for their work. Although there is no agreement on what a “market rate” is for ghostwriters, nonfiction ghosts often use $1/word as a gauge. For some ghostwriters $1/word is what they aim for and for others, it’s the bare minimum they’re willing to accept.

Yes, there are posted rates on some websites, such as the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), but those rates are extremely low. They do not reflect what professional ghostwriters are charging today. It is suspected that EFA members who completed the rate survey are primarily editors, not writers, who typically charge less for their services, and consequently have driven the recommended rates for ghostwriters down.

The problem generally with setting rates for writing services is that many people think writing is easy. They don’t attach much value to quality writing and editing and are shocked to hear that professional writers sometimes charge as much as attorneys.

To get a sense of why ghostwriters charge fees in the thousands of dollars for articles and blog posts, and tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars for book projects, consider the work involved:

Number of hours

Depending on the size of a writing project, ghostwriters are likely to spend many hours planning, researching, maybe interviewing, drafting, and editing their deliverables. When they’re working on a book, the number of hours required will typically go into the hundreds. And even when they’re not tapping away at their keyboard or on Zoom interviewing clients and experts, they’re thinking about the project — strategizing what the best opening line will be, what statistic might drive the point home, or what example would really highlight the message.

Which is to say that the time invested in a ghostwriting project goes well beyond the physical research and typing of words.

Length of project

While the total number of hours to be invested in an assignment is one factor impacting the fee quoted, how many weeks or months the ghostwriter needs to set aside to complete the work is another.

An article or blog post might take a week or two to complete. A white paper or case study might take up to a month, and a book could take more than a year. That’s a long time to be committed to creating and polishing a finished product — time during which the ghostwriter can’t take on other projects. So, on top of paying a ghostwriter for their time and attention, you’re also paying for space in their brain and on their schedule.

Familiarity with format

A decent percentage of professional writers are gravitating to ghostwriting because of the higher fees. However, not all writers can automatically be ghostwriters.

For one, as a ghost, the writer should have demonstrated experience writing the types of finished products the client requires. That is, if the client is looking for a ghostblogger, the writer should have plenty of experience blogging. If the client wants to hand off newsletter article writing, the ghostwriter should have crafted dozens of newsletter articles.

And if the client wants a book, the ghostwriter should, at a minimum, have written a few books. Because writing a magazine article and a book-length work are two different skill sets.

Ability to mimic voice

The one skill that differentiates ghostwriters from all other types of writers is mimicry, or the ability to write in someone else’s voice. It’s that specialized talent that sets ghostwriters apart.

Many professional writers develop their own writing style and tone, which is their “voice.” Being able to shift and adapt and write in a way that is different and that sounds like someone else is challenging. Not all writers can do it.

Expertise required

Finally, in addition to being a top writer, with skills honed over years of work, many of the best ghostwriters also bring publishing expertise to each project. Not only can they guide clients regarding what strong writing looks like, but they can also advise them regarding their publishing options and the pros and cons of each.

Most clients want to be sure that once a written product has been created, it will get published. That’s true whether the document is a blog, an op-ed, or a speech.

Why make the investment?

So, are ghostwriters expensive? Yes, they are. They’re also an investment, not an expense.

Hiring a ghostwriter is a lot like building a new home, especially if you’re writing a book. The cost of that home will depend on where you’re planning to build, whether the architect you’re hiring has built homes like the one you want to be designed, whether the construction crew is experienced, and whether the interior designer is clear on your aesthetic.

If you’ve selected a desirable lot (or topic) and hired a talented team, your home is going to come in on time, on budget, and be worth more than what you paid for it from Day One. Over time it will appreciate faster than other homes in your subdivision.

With books, a well-written title will attract attention and admiration. It will bolster your claims that you’re an expert. And it will make it easier for you to uncover and pursue new opportunities. It will also cost you more than you might have expected to pay.

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