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A willingness to explore working with a ghostwriter to get your book done requires a big leap of faith.
If you’ve long imagined yourself toiling away over your computer keyboard, working through all of your ideas late into the night, pecking away at the keys to get your concepts into a Word document — even thinking about involving someone else in your creative process can seem scary or at least anxiety-producing. Are you making a good decision? Who is the best choice to assist you? Are they legitimate?
The truth is that hiring expert help with the writing of your book, in addition to the cost of getting it published, is expensive. That’s one reason you want to be sure you’re getting the benefit of a ghostwriter’s writing and publishing expertise.
Paying for Expert Ghostwriting Help
You’re paying someone to work alongside you for months, helping you zero in on your book’s core message, clarifying your target audience, organizing your key points, identifying where all of the information is going to come from, conducting research to fill in information gaps, interviewing you to coax all of your ideas onto the page, and then drafting, editing, and revising your manuscript until it reflects your ideas and sounds like how you talk.
It takes a lot of time and expertise, and that, in turn, should cost tens of thousands of dollars. (If someone quotes you considerably less, check these signs to confirm they are who they say they are first and not a scammer.)
Can you get it done for less? Absolutely. Yet you may then have to pay a good bit to an editor to fix it on the back end, which takes more of your time and money.
With that lower-cost choice, you’re also missing out on the wisdom of your ghostwriter, who has helped produce many other books and can advise you on what works best and what doesn’t. If you go it alone, you’re relying on your personal publishing industry expertise to produce your book, which may not actually result in your best work possible.
So, how can you zero in on ghostwriters who have the experience and skill set to help you create a book you are proud of and that earns positive reviews? Here are 7 questions you should ask the ghostwriters you are considering hiring:
Process-related Questions
Since this may be the first time you’re writing a book, you should look for a ghostwriter who has done this at least a few times. The more experience your ghost has, the more reliable their advice and observations. Sure, a less experienced ghost may be a phenomenal writer, but can they get the best ideas and concepts out of you? That generally depends on their writing process. Find out what it is and how easily they describe it; it should be second nature if they have the experience they claim to have.
- “How do you work? What does your typical ghostwriting process look like? Can you walk me through all the stages of drafting the manuscript, through editing and publishing?”
An experienced ghostwriter should be able to describe a clear step-by-step approach to writing your book that starts with gathering information and then pivots to writing and editing.
They should be able to tell you at what point they’ll take time to conduct some online research to gather facts and figures and which sources they generally turn to. For example, do they prefer Google Scholar? Lexis-Nexis? Business Source Complete? Or are they simply relying on a general Google search, which is not as comprehensive?
You’ll also want to get a sense of the pace at which they work.
2. “How long does a typical book take to complete?”
Everyone works at their own pace, which, as a ghostwriter, should also be based on how available you are as the client and your desired completion date.
When you ask this question, they may respond with, “How soon do you need it?” That’s reasonable, since it’s possible to speed up the process if given enough warning. There are limits, however.
Most nonfiction books take anywhere from four to twelve months to complete. Promising to get a book done in a lot less time should push you to ask what the schedule would look like because you would likely need to be available for biweekly meetings, at a minimum.
If you want your book to be done sooner, your ghostwriter will have to clear their schedule and rely on you to be available multiple times a week to be interviewed and review their drafts. It’s very time-intensive, and they may charge a rush fee since they’ll have to decline other opportunities in order to get yours done on time.
As they’re providing scheduling estimates, they should be working backward from your desired end date, taking into account production time, too. The printer needs a few weeks, the graphic designer a few weeks, etc. They need to understand the whole process to give you an accurate timetable.
Related to how available you’ll need to be, you’ll want to ask about their preferred interview process.
- “How would you gather information from me? Do you prefer phone calls or video meetings?”
Your ghostwriter should have a pretty canned response for this. Either they prefer phone calls, or Zoom sessions, or meetings on Teams or Google Meet. If they’ve done this a few times, they have a preference.
They should also be able to tell you how long each discussion will be. Research has shown that 90 minutes is the maximum amount of time professionals can truly focus, so I always ask for 60 minutes, in case we go over.
You’ll want to know if they’ll send you questions in advance so you can prepare yourself for the questions to come or if they need you to provide them with background materials. They should be able to describe their process.
