“How did you get into this?”
It’s the question I hear most from writers who find out what I do. I got into it slowly, and from the side. I didn’t set out to be a ghostwriter. At seventeen I sat with my grandfather over a few Christmas visits and got him to tell me about the war. That became the book Behind the Wire decades later. Then I spent 33 years in enterprise technology, including 20 years as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s. Writing ran alongside all of it, and eventually it became the work.
Paths into ghostwriting vary enormously, and the skills you need at the end of the path don’t. People think ghostwriting is simple: you listen, you type, you get paid. It’s demanding work, and I’d like a new writer to hear that from me before they spend a year learning it the hard way.
Do you need a degree to become a ghostwriter?
No. There’s no degree, license or certification that makes someone a ghostwriter, and clients almost never ask. What they judge is whether you can listen, whether your sample reads like them, and whether they trust you with their story. Many working ghostwriters came from journalism, corporate communications, teaching, law or business. The background matters less than what you learned in it.
My own background turned out to be an asset. Decades of running technology operations taught me how to keep a long project moving, and it lets me write credibly about cybersecurity, AI and IoT for clients in those fields.
Should you write your own books before ghostwriting?
Yes. It’s the best training there is, and it gives prospective clients something public to judge. I’ve authored 113+ books under my own name, and every one taught me something about structure, pacing or finishing that I use in ghostwritten books. It also answers the question every client asks: can you get a book done? Your own books matter more because your ghostwritten work can’t be shown. Clients hire ghostwriters for discretion, and many will never let you say you wrote their book.
What skills do you need to learn?
Interviewing first, because the book comes from what the client says. Then structure, voice capture, discretion and project management. Writing well is necessary and not nearly sufficient. My article on the skills a good ghostwriter needs goes through each one in detail. The skill new ghostwriters most underestimate is disappearing. A writer with a strong style has to keep it out of someone else’s book, and that’s harder than it sounds.
Somebody in a webinar once asked me what separates a successful ghostwriter from an unsuccessful one. I said confidence. Beyond the basics, like knowing you can write, you have to walk in knowing you can do the job. I don’t mean thinking you can, or pretending you can. You know it, and you figure out the nuances as you go. Walk in front of a new prospect without that confidence and they’ll sense it, and you won’t get the job.
How do you build a portfolio when clients are confidential?
With your own books, with projects clients have cleared you to mention, and with case studies written carefully enough not to reveal anyone. Ask each client at the end of a project what, if anything, you may say publicly. Some will let you name them. Most won’t, and you have to be fine with that. I won’t name a client who hasn’t cleared it, however proud I am of the book. A writer who shows off a confidential project to win the next one is telling every future client exactly how they’ll be treated.
Clients know this problem well. My article on how to vet a ghostwriter when NDAs hide the portfolio is written for the buyer’s side of it, and it’s worth reading from the writer’s side too.
What does a new ghostwriter need to know about contracts?
A writer who shows off a confidential project to win the next one is telling every future client exactly how they’ll be treated.
Enough to protect both sides. Every project needs a written agreement that sets the scope and length, the price and payment schedule, who owns the work (the client, entirely), confidentiality, what happens if either side stops, and how extra work is priced. Mine sets an “up to” word count, puts a project on hold after 30 days of silence, and treats it as abandoned after 60. Have a lawyer draft your template once. It pays for itself on the first difficult project.
A new writer who skips the contract because the client seems nice is setting both of them up for a fight. Nice people disagree about scope and deadlines all the time, and the contract is what lets you settle it without losing the client or the fee.
Should a new ghostwriter work for free or for royalties?
No. The offer comes up constantly: write the book now, get paid when it sells, maybe share the cover as co-author. Most books never earn back the cost of writing them through sales, so a royalty-only deal means working for nothing. I turn those offers down every time, and a new ghostwriter should too. Charge for the work, even if you start with smaller projects and lower rates while you learn.
What is the job like once you’re doing it?
Mostly listening, and more emotional than most writers expect. Clients cry in interviews regularly, when they reach the tragedies. You’ll hear things nobody else has heard, and you’ll carry them without telling anyone. You’ll write books whose views you disagree with, because it’s the client’s book and not yours. And some weeks you’ll spend more time on scheduling, reminders and contracts than on writing.
The reward is the moment a client reads a chapter and tells you it sounds exactly like them, or a family holds the finished book of a parent’s life. For me, that’s never gotten old.
My take
Never write a book for a promise of royalties. Most books don’t earn back the writing through sales, so that deal means working for nothing. Write a lot under your own name first, learn to interview, and get a lawyer to draft your contract template once. Then keep quiet about clients who haven’t cleared you. A writer who brags about a confidential project tells every future client how they’ll be treated.
Where should an aspiring ghostwriter start?
Write and finish a book of your own. Practice interviewing on the people around you, starting with the oldest relative you have, because those stories won’t wait. Learn the business side before you need it. Then take a small paid project and do it well. Stay away from the courses that promise to hand you ghostwriting contracts when you finish. Scammers sell them to people who badly want this work, and the promise is a lie, because finding clients is the hardest thing any ghostwriter faces and no course can do it for you.
If you’re on the other side of this and looking to hire, my ghostwriting services explain how I work, and the Book Discovery Intensive lets you test the fit first. If you’d rather write your own book with guidance, my book coaching is built for that.
The book on this: The Ghostwriting Advantage is 254 pages on what a ghostwriter does and doesn’t do, written for the person deciding whether they need one.
Before I wrote a word professionally, I photographed dancers. The Ghostwriting Advantage tells that story and explains how ghostwriting works from the client side of the table.
