Richard Lowe is a professional ghostwriter and author. His passion is to help businesses and individuals write books that showcase their expertise, build credibility and tell their story. Richard has written and published over 100 books on a variety of subjects (including 2 Kindle bestsellers), ghostwritten 54 books, and authored over a thousand articles for blogs.
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Business RadioX: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for High Velocity Radio. Welcome to another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is gonna be a good one. Today I have with us Richard Lowe, the Writing King. Welcome, Richard.
Richard Lowe: Thank you. How are you today?
Business RadioX: I am doing well. Before we get too far into things, tell us about your Writing King practice. How are you serving folks?
Richard Lowe: Well, basically, I meet people on LinkedIn and my website and other means and they want to write a book. It could be a fiction book, it could be a book about their career. It could be anything, or a blog series. And then I help them with that.
Business RadioX: So now do you do the actual writing or do you do coaching to help them become a writer, or some combination?
Richard Lowe: I have a series of business models. One of them is to write the book myself, and one of them is to collaborate with them on it, kind of a close collaborator, all the way down to coaching them if they want to write it themselves.
Business RadioX: So how’d you get into this line of work?
Richard Lowe: Well, I’ve always liked to write. But I was never published or anything before I decided to become a writer. I worked in the technical field as VP of two companies, and then the director of computer operations for Trader Joe’s for 20 years. I just got tired of working for a corporation and decided to reach out on my own.
Writing was the natural thing. So I started writing, and then ran into another ghostwriter who had a company and we got along pretty well. I wrote some interesting books, and then realized that I could make a lot more money doing it by myself and went off on my own and have never looked back.
Business RadioX: So now, a lot of people want to be writers, but they don’t like the writing part. Like in their head, the idea of being an author is very attractive. But going from “Hey, I have an interesting thought” to “Is this even enough material for a book?” Like there’s a lot of moving parts. How do you help a person figure out what’s the best path for them?
Richard Lowe: Well, that would be the initial part of the engagement, where we get together and discuss what the book’s about. If it’s a fiction book, we come up with the plot summary and the story arc and the characters and work all that out. That can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
If it’s a nonfiction book, it’s similar, but we’re not worried about story arcs or characters. We start with what they want to achieve, who their audience is, how they want the book to read, what the voice is, and so forth. We work down through the chapters with them. Before long, we’ve got the basic overview of a book, and then we start writing.
Business RadioX: So what do you think holds most people back when it comes to this? This is on a lot of people’s bucket list.
Richard Lowe: Well, writing a book is not an easy thing. Some writers take years to write their first book. Of course, I have, just like everybody who wants to be a writer, a number of books in the pile waiting to be finished in various stages of completion. I’m sure most people who want to be writers have that. And then they get discarded for one reason or another.
The writing part is a big barrier. Then comes the polishing and editing part, actually making it publishable. That’s another barrier. And then the biggest barrier of all is how do you actually get the book to sell? For most writers who want to sell their books on Amazon, that’s the problem.
My clients don’t run into that normally, because my clients are using the book as a marketing tool to help market themselves. They’re not really interested in how well it sells on Amazon. They want to know how this book can help them get speaking engagements or get a job or get promotions. That’s where we work.
Business RadioX: So when that’s the objective, that seems easier to make happen for them. But if they want to be famous or have a movie made from their book, that seems more like a lottery ticket.
Richard Lowe: Well, yeah, they have to actually write a good book. It has to have an engaging plot, a good storyline, good characters. All the things need to come together. Plus, you need to have an agent or a publisher backing you up. So yeah, it’s an order of magnitude more when you actually want a best seller or a movie. I haven’t done any screenwriting yet.
Probably will in the future. But I’ve written books that are intended to form the basis of screenwriting. I wrote the book part and then a screenwriter will take it over from there. But yeah, it’s an order of magnitude more.
Business RadioX: Now when you’re working with somebody and they say, “You know what, this seems like a lot of work, Richard. Why don’t you just take it from here?” Is it something where I wash my hands, we discussed the concept, and then you’re off to the races?
And then I’m just reading it and saying, “I think this person should be the love interest” or “I think there should be a chapter on this.” How involved is the author if you’re ghostwriting it?
Richard Lowe: Well, that person’s called the author, and I’m the writer. That’s the terminology. They’re engaged in that they have to validate that what I’ve written is what they want. And they have to give me their ideas. Because we don’t want me to write a book for me. We want me to write a book from them, their heart and their soul, whatever they want.
So I interview them and get their story, get what they want to write. Then I write it usually chapter by chapter. I send them each chapter to review, because the last thing I want is to get all the way through the book and have them say no. So we do it chapter by chapter, review it together, work out the kinks. Before long, we’re in sync and writing together and it looks pretty good.
Business RadioX: How do you get the author’s voice?
Richard Lowe: Work with them. Interview them and talk to them and figure out how they talk, how they speak, what they want. Then we’ll review my first chapter with them and work out the kinks interactively.
That can be quite a process. They might have a voice, but their characters might have individual voices of their own. One might have a certain dialect, another might have a different dialect. One might be a Southern gentleman, another might be a Northerner. They have different ways to speak, different mannerisms, different ways they look. All these things are important to make the book more real. But their voice is something I have to do interactively with them.
Business RadioX: When you were starting in this journey as a ghostwriter, how did you have the confidence to say, “I can do this,” even though you might not have a huge track record of writing Southern fiction or whatever?
Richard Lowe: Well, Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Airlines, has a saying that if you don’t know how to do it, say yes and then figure it out. I’m paraphrasing, of course. I take that attitude through my whole life.
I used to be director of tech services for Trader Joe’s, and I would quite often get projects thrown at me. Build this computer. I didn’t know how to build a computer. So I figured it out. I needed to install these brand new computers that have artificial intelligence. I didn’t know anything about that, but I had to figure it out. That’s part of life.
I take that attitude, I have confidence, and I just make it happen. I research things I don’t know. I don’t have to know the subject. I’ve got them as the knowledge experts for nonfiction, and I have Google and other tools. I can do basic research on anything and come up with a great book.
That’s how I’ve written books on artificial intelligence and digital transformation and things. I might not know those subjects very well, but by the time I’m done, I know them really well. It’s just basic research.
Business RadioX: So you have a high belief in yourself that you’re able to deliver whatever you promise. How did you figure out the appropriate pricing?
Richard Lowe: That took some work. A lot of writers who go into freelance writing make the mistake of pricing themselves too low. A low price says you’re a commodity. You can find 100 writers who will charge, say, $2,000 for a book, and you’re gonna get a $2,000 book, which is going to be pretty poor most likely.
If you want to not be a commodity, if you want to be professional, you need to price yourself higher. You need to be at a level where the client thinks, “Okay, I’m getting a professional. He knows he’s worth something.” That’s why I charge $1 a word for the writing. It’s right about in the middle. A lot of ghostwriters charge less, and a few charge more. But I found $1 a word works really well for my market.
For a collaboration project, I charge by the hour instead, because it’s not based on words. It’s based on how much time we spend together. It’s just a matter of having confidence.
Business RadioX: And then what is the deliverable at the end? Just the book in their hand? You don’t have any promises of “this will make you more marketable” or “here’s a strategy to get more clients”? Is that outside the scope, or do you include some of that?
Richard Lowe: That’s outside the scope, but through the entire process we’ll be discussing that. I refer them to experts who know how to do those things, people I have in my connections on LinkedIn.
I know editors who will polish the book, proofreaders, promoters, publishers, agents. I help them with that. And we discuss it all along, because I’ve ghostwritten 54 books now. I have a feel for how it works, how it will sell, what they should avoid.
Business RadioX: What’s a ballpark range for a nonfiction book for a business person thinking of doing this to help them have more credibility or more authority in their space?
Richard Lowe: Generally running about $40,000.
Business RadioX: And is that just your fee, or is that now I gotta find the editor and then the people that put it on Kindle and do all the marketing?
Richard Lowe: That’s my fee for writing the book. What they get is a manuscript that’s ready for an editor who then takes it. I tell them they should never have the writer edit the book, because I’m biased. I wrote the book. I’m not going to find as many errors as an editor will. An editor also has specialized knowledge of how to make it polished and publishable.
Having that second pair of eyes is great. Editors aren’t very expensive compared to ghostwriting. So putting that polish on is important. Then you send it to a proofreader. Those are extra cost items, but they’re not that expensive. I can also help them self-publish if that’s what they want. I’ve done it over 100 times. I’ve got it figured out. I charge that by the hour.
Business RadioX: What’s typically the total to do everything as you would recommend it? Is it closer to $50,000 once it’s done?
Richard Lowe: Not including promotion, which can be anything, the book’s probably going to run between $44,000 and $50,000 when you add in all the extras. If they want illustrations, it’s going to be more because they have to hire an artist. I’ve only run into that once or twice where they wanted illustrations. That drives up the price because professional illustrators have their own rates, and you want good quality. If you’ve paid for a ghostwriter, you want good quality illustrations.
Business RadioX: Is there a less expensive way to attack the same kind of authority and credibility, if that’s your objective, to do a blog series rather than a book?
Richard Lowe: Yeah. There’s two ways to do that. One is we can collaborate on the book, which turns out to be a lot less expensive because they’re doing a lot of the work. Ghostwriting on my own is me doing all the work, so that’s the $40,000 price for a 40,000 word book. But if we collaborate, it’s by the hour, and that’s probably half that price.
A blog-to-book concept or blogging series, I’ve got several going now. Those are just monthly fees, usually a retainer basis, say $1,000 a month for a couple of articles. I write those for them. I usually recommend we write them in such a way that they work together so we can make a book out of it after a year or so.
Business RadioX: So you create an editorial calendar where these months turn into chapters that could be sliced and diced into chapters.
Richard Lowe: Yeah. There’s a different way you write blogs than you write chapters. So it’s better to know you want a blog-to-book up front so you factor that in. You don’t have to do that conversion at the end of adding all the transitions between chapters.
Business RadioX: What’s the most rewarding part for you in this adventure?
Richard Lowe: The success of the client. I had one client, actually one of my very first clients. He came to me for a book on IoT, Internet of Things. We wrote it together. It was a collaboration project. His goal was, he worked for a division of a Fortune 50 company, and he wanted to get noticed by the CEO of that company.
We worked together on the book, and the CEO wound up writing the foreword. So he got the notice, he got promotions, he got speaking engagements, keynote engagements at like $5,000 a pop. He got recognized at conferences. His book is the textbook now in several schools. See why successful people use ghostwriters. So he’s really happy with the results. That’s very fulfilling, that I’m able to say what he got from this, that it helped his career immensely.
Business RadioX: Do you have a preference, fiction or nonfiction?
Richard Lowe: I’ve done more nonfiction than fiction, but I have no preference. I can do either one. I’ve written quite a bit of fiction, and I’m happy with it. I can help in either case.
Business RadioX: When you’re on your own doing stuff for yourself, what do you typically write, fiction or nonfiction?
Richard Lowe: When I began, I wrote a whole pile of nonfiction books that I have on Amazon. But for me now, I’m working on fiction. I’m collaborating with two other authors. We’re writing two books, one with each author, collaborating on some science fiction.
I’ve got a goal over the next few years of writing one book of my own in each of 12 different genres. I want to write a romance book, a Western, a science fiction, a horror book, and so forth. So I get experience in all those different genres. I think that would be interesting.
Business RadioX: All under your own name or under a pseudonym?
Richard Lowe: Probably under pseudonyms, because you want to build a brand. If you mix them all up, you dilute the brand. So probably under pseudonyms.
Business RadioX: What’s some advice for the person considering doing this but maybe fearful of taking the plunge into authoring a book?
Richard Lowe: If the problem is they don’t know how to write or they don’t have the time, they should hire me to help them out. They can also hire me on a writing consulting basis where I basically coach them. That’s just by the hour.
I can help them get over that hump. If they have writer’s block, which is a real thing, I can help them through that. I’m helping one author now who’s having trouble with showing versus telling. That’s a pretty interesting concept in writing where you want to show something rather than tell it, and it makes the story more interesting and alive. I’m helping him with that.
But the thing I would say is just write. The definition of a writer to me is someone who writes with the intention of publishing, who eventually publishes. Anybody can write a journal. Journals are easy. But if you want to publish it, that’s a whole different dynamic. You need to do a lot of different things to make it happen. That’s what I think of as a real writer, a professional writer. It moves from amateur to professional. Just do it.
Business RadioX: What is a baby step for writing a book? Do you outline it? Do you have to come up with a catchy title? What is the first one or two steps a person has to do to begin the book writing process?
Richard Lowe: The theme and the audience. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. What do you want to accomplish? What will the reader get when they finish this book? And who is the audience? Is it young adult? Is it children? Is it CEOs? Who’s going to read it?
Then we aim it at that audience with the intention that at the end, they will come away with that particular theme in their head.
Business RadioX: For a book, how many big takeaways do you need for them to say, “Okay, that was a good book, that was worth my $15”?
Richard Lowe: For a nonfiction book, you probably want a good solid takeaway for each significant chapter. Each chapter should have one or two at the most. So if you had a book with 12 chapters, you want 12 specific takeaways of value.
For fiction, the takeaway is obviously the excitement and the interest of following these characters through without any continuity errors. Good story arcs. The story arc defines how the characters move through the story and what happens. That’s the most important part of starting a fiction book: coming up with a story arc and the character arcs and how they grow.
Business RadioX: Well, it’s an amazing story, and you’re leading an exciting life for a writer. To be able to crank out that much content and produce that many books is pretty impressive and quite the accomplishment.
Richard Lowe: Thank you. I’ve kind of lucked into it. It turns out it intersects my passion with my abilities and with being able to make income. So it worked out really well. I’m very passionate about it. I love it. I love helping somebody produce a book, whether it’s a client who wants to advance their career or a person who’s always wanted to write a fiction novel and never had the time or the ability.
I just love doing that and helping them. I like it even more than writing my own. Helping somebody else gives me satisfaction. I look for good clients who are easy to work with so I don’t have stress and they don’t have stress. A good working environment. I like working from home. It’s basically ideal for me.
Business RadioX: If somebody wanted to learn more or have a more substantive conversation with you, what is the website?
Richard Lowe: thewritingking.com. You go there, there’s a form where you can contact me. I give a free consultation to anyone who wants to write a book. No obligation, no cost. We can set up a half hour or hour long talk about whatever you want to do and come up with a way for you to do it.
Business RadioX: Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.
Richard Lowe: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It was fun to be on here.
Business RadioX: All right, this is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.