I’ve written memoirs for people who had already died, working from their papers and from interviews with their brothers and sisters. A whole chapter once came out of a coaching book I was writing because the client’s family asked to be left out.
Other people are in every book. They’re the brother who remembers the move differently and the partner who was in the room when the company almost went under.
An outside interview is the closest thing a ghostwriter has to a second pair of eyes on your life, and it catches things no amount of questioning the author will turn up. It also carries more risk than anything else in the interview phase, because the person on the other end of the call never signed your contract and owes you nothing.
Picture a documentary shot with one camera, pointed at one person, for the whole film. It works, but every scene comes from the same side of the room. Each outside interview adds a second camera angle on the same scene. And a documentary crew worth hiring carries release forms in the van, because nobody goes on screen without signing one.
Can my ghostwriter interview my family members for my memoir?
Yes, with your permission and theirs, and for most memoirs it makes the book better. Family members fill gaps in dates and places, correct stories that drifted over forty years of retelling, and supply the scenes you were too young to remember.
People misremember. They merge two summers into one, move an argument to the wrong house, and inflate or shrink what mattered. I ask clients about the same event several ways for that reason, and a sibling’s version of the same afternoon does the same job from outside. When the stories disagree, the disagreement itself tells a ghostwriter where to dig.
Give a relative something to hold. A photo album, a box of letters or an old address book pulls memories loose faster than any question, and a ghostwriter can ask about whatever’s on the table in front of them. Older relatives tell better stories with a picture in their hands than with a blank phone line.
Family interviews matter most when the subject can’t do the talking. A memoir built from a late parent’s journals needs the people who knew that parent, and my article on finishing a late parent’s memoir from journals and recordings covers how that works.
Keep the family interviews in proportion. Your book is your story, told in your voice, and the relatives add angles and corrections. Most of the interview hours belong to you.
Can my spouse or assistant sit in on my ghostwriting interviews?
They can, and for some sessions it helps. An assistant who manages your calendar, holds the documents or knows the dates of every deal will save time in the early sessions about your business history. A spouse can help an older client stay comfortable, handle the hearing aid battery, or fill in a name that’s gone missing.
For the personal material, I’d ask them to leave. Most people edit themselves with someone they love listening. They skip the girlfriend before the marriage and soften the fight with their father, because the person in the next chair already has opinions about all of it.
Would you tell the story of your first marriage with your second wife listening? If you’d hold anything back, schedule those sessions for when you’re alone. You can always tell your spouse about it afterward, and they’ll read it in the manuscript anyway.
An assistant changes the room less than a spouse does, because an assistant has already seen the calendar, the deals and the bad quarters. Keep the assistant for the business sessions and let the rest run one on one.
Tell your ghostwriter in advance who’s going to be on the call. Every one of my calls is recorded, and I say so up front and in the contract. A third voice on the recording should hear that too, and it’s the law as well as a courtesy: Florida Statutes section 934.03 allows recording a conversation when all of the parties have given prior consent, and other states set their own rules.
Can my ghostwriter interview my employees, colleagues or clients for my business book?
Yes, and for a business book those interviews supply the proof. An employee describing the Friday the founder drove four hours to fix a customer’s problem proves more than any founder’s claim about culture.
Power changes these conversations. An employee asked by the boss to talk to the boss’s ghostwriter doesn’t feel free to say no, and won’t feel free to say anything critical either. What junior accountant tells the owner’s writer that the owner is hard to work for? You’ll get praise, and praise makes weak material. Tell employees outright they can decline without any consequence. Then take no for an answer the first time.
Clients raise a different problem. If you’re a lawyer, doctor, financial adviser or anyone else who holds a client’s confidences, your professional obligations decide what can go in the book, and a client’s willingness only counts if it’s given in the written form those rules require. Have your lawyer or compliance officer sign off on any client story before the interview, and again before publication.
Former employees are easier to hear from than current ones. They’ve got nothing riding on your approval anymore, and a former manager who left on good terms can tell a ghostwriter what it was like to work for you with a candor your current staff can’t afford.
Colleagues at other companies are the easiest group. They’ve got their own careers to protect and they know it, so they’ll tell you where the lines are. Give them a clear idea of the chapter they’re helping with, and they’ll give you the story that fits it.
How do I ask someone to be interviewed for my book?
Ask them yourself, before your ghostwriter ever contacts them. A cold email from a stranger saying “I’m writing a book about your brother” frightens people, and a frightened source either refuses or tells you nothing useful.
Call or write to the person and tell them what the book is about, why their memory matters, how long the conversation will take, and that it’ll be recorded. If you’re willing to offer it, tell them they can review anything that quotes or describes them before the book comes out. Then introduce your ghostwriter by email and step back.
Ask your ghostwriter for a summary of each outside interview, the same kind you’d get after your own sessions. I summarize every session with AI’s help and send it to the client, and an outside call deserves the same treatment. You’ll know what your brother said about the bankruptcy without sitting through ninety minutes of recording, and you can flag anything that needs a second conversation.
Stay out of the room for most of these conversations. People talk more freely about you when you aren’t listening. A group call with the whole family produces a warm, useless hour of everybody agreeing with the loudest person.
I hate the agency model here: a salesperson closes the deal, and a writer the client never met calls his elderly mother with a template. That mother gave her memories to a stranger because her son asked her to, and the least she deserves is a ghostwriter who knows the book and treats her like a person.
Do people my ghostwriter interviews need to sign a release?
Anyone whose words you quote, whose stories you retell in detail, or whose identity a reader could work out should sign one. A release protects you both, because it puts in writing what they agreed to.
Your own contract with your ghostwriter covers you and the writer. It says nothing about your sister. Without her signature, you’re relying on her memory of a phone call, and memories of phone calls change fast once someone sees themselves in print. Picture her opening the finished book and finding her worst year in it with no warning.
The recording matters here too. It shows what the person said and that they knew they were on tape. Keep your copy. My contract keeps recordings for three months after a project ends, and clients can get copies on request, so ask for any outside interview you’ll want later. My article on what happens to ghostwriting interview recordings has the details.
Have a lawyer draft the release or read yours before anyone signs it. The cost is small next to a dispute after publication, and a lawyer who works with authors will know what your publisher expects.
What should an interview release for a book say?
A good release is short enough that a nervous aunt will read it. It names the book and the author, says the person agreed to be interviewed and recorded, and grants permission to quote them and describe them in the book and in its marketing.
Keep the language plain. A release written in legalese scares off the people you most want to hear from, and a lawyer who works with authors can keep it enforceable without making it unreadable.
It should say whether their real name appears or a changed one, and whether they get to review the passages about them. Put in writing that they gain no ownership of the book, and state whether they’re being paid. Settle the ownership point before anyone talks. A colleague who supplied three chapters of stories can start to feel like a co-author, and you don’t want that argument after the book is out.
A release doesn’t cover defamation or invasion of privacy for anyone who didn’t sign it. The ex-business partner who never agreed to anything is still out there. My article on writing about living people without getting sued covers that side of the risk.
What if a family member refuses to be in my memoir?
Respect it, and write the book without them. You can still write your own memories of that person, told fairly, but you can’t get their side, and you shouldn’t pressure them for it.
When a family asked to be left out of a client’s coaching book, the chapter about them came out entirely. I’d rather lose a chapter than watch a client lose a brother over it. A book that costs you your brother isn’t worth publishing, and a ghostwriter who pushes you to include someone against their wishes is thinking about the manuscript and forgetting about your life.
Refusals also tell you something. If your sister won’t talk about the year your father left, that year still hurts her, and your chapter about it needs more care than you’d planned. My article on writing about family without a lawsuit or a family rupture goes through how to handle those chapters.
Will my ghostwriter keep what other people say confidential?
A professional one will, under the same terms that cover you. I tell prospects on the first call that they’re under nondisclosure, and my statement of work marks everything proprietary. Outside interviews belong under the same terms, because they’re part of your project.
Be careful with one thing. An outside source will tell your ghostwriter things about you that you never knew, some of them unflattering. Decide before the interviews start whether you want to hear everything or only what goes in the book. Plenty of authors would rather keep their memory of a friendship intact, and that’s a fair choice to make before anyone picks up the phone.
What should you do before your ghostwriter calls anyone?
Make a list of every person you’d like interviewed, with one line on what each one knows that you don’t. Call each of them yourself this week. Ask your lawyer for a one-page release, and have it ready before the first outside call goes on the calendar.
After that, walk through the list with your ghostwriter. A good one will tell you which interviews are worth the time and which ones only make the author feel thorough. If you’re still choosing someone, my ghostwriting services page explains how I work, and the Book Discovery Intensive is a shorter first step. The Ghostwriting Hub has the rest of the process.
What makes me angry is the ghostwriter or agency who lets a book go out with a sister’s worst year in it and no signature anywhere. You’d never let a film crew put your family on screen without a word to them first. Treat your book the same way, and when the finished cut runs, every angle in it will belong to someone who said yes, with the signed releases sitting in the drawer.
