Most people assume clients hire a ghostwriter for the writing.
Clients see the writing, so they judge the writing. It’s also what goes wrong least often. When a ghostwritten book fails, it’s nearly always because of something that happened before the writer wrote a sentence: the wrong questions, a structure that couldn’t hold the material, a voice that belongs to the writer instead of the author.
After 54+ ghostwritten books, and 113+ of my own, these are the skills I think matter most, in roughly the order they get used.
Why is interviewing the most important ghostwriting skill?
Because the book is built from what the author says, and most authors don’t know what they know until someone asks. A good interviewer asks about specific moments instead of whole decades, follows the answer instead of a script, and lets silences run long enough for the deeper story to come out. I learned that at seventeen, asking my grandfather about the war over a few Christmas visits, and I still use it every week.
Listening is the other half. A ghostwriter who talks too much fills the recordings with the wrong person’s life. I share my own stories in interviews only to give a stuck client an example or to break the ice, never at length and never emotional ones.
What does structure have to do with ghostwriting?
Everything that makes a pile of interviews into a book. Hours of conversation arrive out of order, repeating themselves, full of detours. The ghostwriter decides what the book is arguing, what order the material goes in, the story that carries each point, and what gets cut. Most failed first drafts I’ve been hired to rescue, including a growing number written with AI, don’t have a sentence problem. They have a structure problem.
How does a ghostwriter capture someone else’s voice?
By listening to far more of the author than will ever appear on the page.
The rhythm of their speech, the phrases they repeat, the way they build an argument, the stories they reach for, what makes them laugh. Interviews, lots of them, are how I do it. The result should read like the author on their best day.
The hard part is disappearing. A ghostwriter with a strong style of their own has to keep it out of the book. My article on what happens when a ghostwriter changes your voice covers what clients should watch for. A ghostwriter whose style you can spot on every page has failed at the one job the title describes. The best compliment I can get is a client who reads the finished book and forgets I was involved.
Why does a ghostwriter need discretion?
Because clients tell a ghostwriter things they’ve told nobody else. Addictions, divorces, business failures, family secrets. I tell every prospect on the first call that they’re under confidentiality from that moment, and at the kickoff meeting I give each client one rule: don’t tell me anything you don’t want in the book. Discretion also means never talking about clients who haven’t cleared it. When clients have taken their books to traditional publishers, I’ve been sworn to secrecy, and I’ve kept it.
When should a ghostwriter push back?
On facts, legal risk and clarity, and almost never on opinions. I write views I completely disagree with, on politics and plenty else. I’m not the client’s priest, therapist or judge. But when a client wants to say something about an ex-spouse or a former boss that would get them sued, I tell them, as their trusted advisor, and show them how to change the details so the story stays true. So far every client has taken that advice.
Why does project management matter in ghostwriting?
Because a book runs for months, and months are where books die. Interviews get canceled, drafts sit unread, scope grows, clients disappear. A good ghostwriter keeps the calendar moving and the contract clear: what happens if a client goes silent, how extra chapters are priced, what’s delivered and when. I spent 20 years as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s, and keeping large projects moving under pressure is most of what that job was.
People who come to me after a bad experience with another ghostwriter tell the same story over and over. The writer couldn’t meet the schedule, wanted more money halfway through, or never captured their voice. Two of those three are project management failures, and they’re the ones I’d screen a ghostwriter hardest for.
Does a ghostwriter need to check facts?
Yes, including the facts the client is sure about. Memory drifts, and family legend drifts faster. My family’s version of my grandfather’s war put him on the Bataan Death March.
His journal put him on a different march, into Manila, after Corregidor fell. When I wrote Behind the Wire, the journal won. A ghostwriter who writes down whatever they’re told, unchecked, puts the author’s name on the mistakes.
When a checkable claim turns out to be wrong, the reviewer who spots it blames the name on the cover. A ghostwriter who skips the checking because the client sounded confident has handed that risk to the author, the one person who hired them to catch it.
Why does a ghostwriter need emotional steadiness?
Steadiness. Clients cry in interviews all the time, usually when they reach the tragedies. A ghostwriter has to stay calm, stop asking questions, talk about something easy for a few minutes, and come back when the client is ready. A client who’d been abused as a child got the story out over four sessions, a little further each time. Another had to return several times to his daughter’s death before he could get it all out. Neither needed a therapist from me. They needed someone who could wait.
Does a ghostwriter need to know when to say no?
Yes, and it’s an underrated skill. I once turned down a retired FBI informant who wanted a book naming the Mafia figures he’d informed on, at what would have been the biggest fee of my career. I turn down revenge memoirs and requests to write on spec for a share of royalties. Saying no to the wrong book protects the ghostwriter, the client and everyone who would have been in it.
How can you test a ghostwriter’s skills before hiring?
Watch the first call. A good ghostwriter spends most of it asking about you and listening. Ask how they handle confidentiality, what they’d push back on, and what happens if you go quiet for a month. Then get a sample chapter written from your own interviews. It’s the only real test of voice.
Of everything here, listening is the skill I’d weigh most heavily, because it’s the hardest to fake on a sales call. A ghostwriter who talks through your first meeting will talk through your interviews too, and you’ll pay for a book that sounds like them. I’d walk away from that writer however good the portfolio looks.
The Book Discovery Intensive is built for exactly that: interviews, a strategy and a sample chapter before you commit. My ghostwriting services cover the full book, and my article on how to vet a ghostwriter lists the questions to ask.
The book on this: The Ghostwriting Advantage is 254 pages on the whole job as it is practiced, from the first interview through to the finished manuscript.
