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Most CEOs and business leaders would agree that thought leadership positioning can be good for business and good for your personal brand. To achieve that status, you need a strong public presence, which is typically accomplished through regular articles, blog posts, books, public speeches, and media interviews.
Given the frantic, often all-consuming schedule that C-suite execs and entrepreneurs grapple with, it’s almost impossible to keep up the pace of information-sharing without outside help. Retaining professional support has become a normal part of doing business now that we live in the age of 24/7 social media.
However, some leaders believe that the only way for their personal brand and reputation to be authentic is if they create their own content. For many, that holds true even when the possibility of writing a book surfaces.
The Real Cost of a DIY Book
Business leaders who consider writing their own book often focus on the financial benefits, to the exclusion of other considerations. They tally the cost savings of a do-it-yourself (DIY) book and arrive at a fairly large number.
After all, professional ghostwriters aren’t cheap.
But in making the decision only about money, they don’t take into account other costs.
The first is their time investment. To begin drafting a book, you can’t just start writing unless you’re working on a fictional account that can be made up in your head. If you’re writing a nonfiction book, you’ll need to study existing books on your topic, to confirm the book you want to write doesn’t already exist. You’ll need to spend time organizing your key points and creating an outline. Then you’ll need to do online research to confirm that your arguments and examples are based on fact and not hearsay or AI hallucinations.
Your first draft of a chapter could easily take 40 hours or more, depending on how fast a writer you are. Many of my clients are smart, creative, and articulate, but writing even a few paragraphs can take a full day, they’ve told me. Which means that 40 hours per chapter may be low.
When you start to calculate how much of your time you’ll invest, using your equivalent hourly wage as a rough estimate, you may be surprised by what writing your own book is costing you. If you’re paid, say, $100/hour, each chapter is costing you at least $4,000 if you can get it done in 40 hours. That may be optimistic, however.
Beyond the straight number of hours you’ll need to spend working on your draft manuscript, there is the issue of consistency. Rarely are weeks exactly the same schedule-wise, which means you may be able to find two hours this week to work on your book and maybe four next week, but it’s a challenge to make consistent progress.
Without a dedicated block of time in which to work on your book, it could take many months just to finish drafting a single chapter. It’s difficult to gain any real momentum when you’re working at that pace.
When your whole manuscript is drafted, are you familiar enough with the book publishing industry to know what to do with it at that stage? Do you know who should review it next? Do you have a publisher lined up?
Then there’s the quality question. You may be a decent writer, but are you a strong enough writer to pen a book you’ll be proud of? Are you confident it can stand head-to-head against other books on the same topic?
Poorly written content can do you more harm than good. If your book turns out to be mediocre, as evidenced by Amazon reviews or published book reviews, the damage to your reputation and career can be extremely costly.
Writing your book yourself can certainly help keep money in your pocket, but is that the best decision long-term?
The Professional Ghostwriter Investment
Professional ghostwriters charge tens of thousands of dollars to work alongside you and write your book. The more experienced, in terms of books published; the number of bestsellers to their name, NYT, WSJ, and USA Today; and the number of writing awards earned; the higher their price tag. That’s because with more experience, the lower your risk of ending up with a dud.
Newer book ghostwriters will certainly charge less. By “less” I mean under around $25,000. Celebrity ghostwriters will charge more on the order of $150,000 and up. And the rest will typically be somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000.
As with most things, you tend to get what you pay for.
Some of you are seeing those numbers and are certainly experiencing sticker shock. How can ghostwriters justify charging that much, you may be thinking?!
Well, they’re charging for their considerable expertise as well as for their time. Drafting, editing, and polishing your book will take months. And skilled ghostwriters bring to the project specialized publishing expertise that will also benefit the project.
The result is a book that is better, more insightful, and more skillfully written than you could have done on your own — without you having to spend hours and hours trying to finish it.
When DIY Makes Sense
There are situations, however, when writing your book can make the most sense.
The first is if you genuinely enjoy the writing process. If you love writing, then consider hiring a writing coach to guide you. You’ll be the writer, and you can have a consultant standing by to offer feedback and input on your drafts.
The second scenario when writing your own book makes sense is if you have lots of time. If you have free time and are interested in doing the writing, that’s another vote for a DIY approach. Of course, this assumes that you’re not already under contract and you don’t have a deadline hanging over your head in a couple of months.
Finally, if you can’t afford to hire a professional, writing your first draft can be one way to reduce your need for a ghostwriter. If you can craft a rough draft manuscript that you can hand off to a developmental editor, you can save money that way, too.
Your decision regarding whether to write your book yourself or to hire a professional ghostwriter really comes down to opportunity cost.
You can absolutely write your own book. You likely have the skill and you have the ideas, so you could write it. But should you? Is spending months writing the best use of your time? What is your time worth? And are you confident that a manuscript you draft will be worthy of 5-star reviews on Amazon? Will it be the best version possible?
That’s where the true value of a professional ghostwriter can make all the difference. They can help ensure your personal brand and reputation are enhanced by your book and that you’ll have a positive return on investment.