“How do I know this will pay off?”
It’s the right question to ask before you hire a ghostwriter, and most people answer it badly. They look at the fee, compare it to what the book might earn on Amazon, and decide the numbers don’t work. That math is dumb. It holds only if book sales are the only return, and they almost never are.
Claude once set me straight on this. I’d been thinking of a client’s book as an expense, and it told me to get that expense thing out of my head. The book is an asset, an investment in the client’s future. That changed my whole thought process.
You can put real numbers on a book before you commit. For the study behind the benchmarks, see what the 2024 Business Book ROI Study found.
What should a ghostwritten book’s ROI be measured against?
Its purpose. You measure a book meant to win consulting clients in clients. You measure a book meant to support a fundraise in the round. You don’t measure a family memoir in dollars at all. Decide first what the book has to do, because that decides which numbers you count. I tell every client at the start that it’s very unlikely, if not impossible, that they’ll earn back the cost through book sales. The book is a lever. The return comes from pulling it.
Which returns can you estimate in advance?
The ones tied to your existing business: new clients, larger engagements, speaking invitations, courses and workshops built from the material, and referrals that start with somebody handing your book to a colleague. Count them over a three-to-five-year window. If you can’t name at least one of these for your book, I’d question whether you need a book yet.
- ► New clients. How many more clients a year could the book plausibly bring you, and what’s one client worth over the life of the relationship? For many consultants and advisors, one or two clients cover the whole project.
- ► Higher fees. Authors routinely charge more for the same work. Estimate a modest rate increase across your current volume.
- ► Speaking. Paid keynotes, conference slots and panels that open up once you’re the person who wrote the book. The study found a median increase of $30,000 among authors who saw speaking growth.
- ► Workshops and courses. The book’s framework can become paid training. The study’s median increase for workshops was $40,000.
- ► Consulting. The largest category in the study, with a median increase of $50,000 among authors who saw growth.
- ► Bulk sales. Organizations buying copies for teams or events. The study’s median here was $64,000 among authors who had them.
Be conservative. Take your honest estimate and cut it in half. If the project still works at half, it’s a good investment. I don’t trust any projection that only works at full strength.
Which returns are real but harder to count?
Credibility, mostly. Sixty-eight percent of authors in the study said the book increased their credibility with prospects and clients. That shows up as shorter sales cycles, warmer introductions and prospects who arrive already convinced. It’s hard to put a number on and easy to see, and I’d take it over a bestseller ranking any day.
I don’t trust any projection that only works at full strength.
Career moves count too. I’ve watched clients use a book to raise capital, to be promoted after the CEO read it, and to land speaking invitations they couldn’t get before. One client’s book was the credibility behind a $30 million venture capital raise. A Canadian tech entrepreneur used his to land a TEDx talk and grow his business. Neither outcome was predictable in a spreadsheet. Both paid for the book many times over.
What costs belong in the calculation?
All of them. The ghostwriter’s fee is the biggest, and my current rate is on the ghostwriting services page. Add professional editing and proofreading, cover design, formatting, publishing, and whatever you’ll spend launching and promoting the book. My article on the all-in cost of a ghostwritten book lists each one.
Add your own time as well: a few hours a week of interviews for a month or two, then time to review chapters. It’s far less than writing the book yourself, and it’s the one cost nobody can pay for you. A client who can’t find those hours won’t get a book that sounds like them, whatever the fee.
How long does a ghostwritten book take to pay off?
Judge a book over three to five years. The launch month tells you little.
Longer than most people expect, and longer than the launch. In the study, median revenue roughly doubled between books that had been out less than six months and books that had been out longer. The returns compound: the book keeps opening doors years after publication, as long as you keep using it. Plan on a three-to-five-year horizon. Anyone who judges a book by its launch month is measuring the wrong thing, and they tend to give up on it while it’s still gaining value.
What makes the ROI higher?
A plan for using the book. The study found authors with a clear revenue strategy earned a median gross profit of about $96,000, against $28,500 for those without one. Launch publicity helped too: authors with a PR team saw a median gross profit of $55,500. And ghostwritten books were four times as profitable as the rest.
The gap between those two groups comes down to a plan. A ghostwriter who sells you a book without asking what it’s for is setting you up to decide the project was a waste, and the book ends up blamed for a problem the sales call created.
In practice, that means deciding before the book is written how you’ll use it: the prospects who get a copy, the talks it anchors, the workshop it turns into. My article on turning a ghostwritten book into courses and talks covers the most common routes. A book sitting on a desk won’t help anybody. Use it to get speaking engagements, and when somebody calls wanting to know about your subject, hand them a copy. You wrote the book on this, but you have to use it.
My take
Forget book sales when you run the numbers. They barely register. The money comes from what the book opens, the talks, the bigger contracts, the prospect who reads it and calls. Decide before the first interview how you’ll use it, and judge it over three to five years, never by the launch month. A ghostwriter who doesn’t ask what the book is for is selling you a disappointment. Hand out copies and put the book to work.
What’s a simple way to run the numbers?
Estimate the extra business the book could bring in a year, multiply by three to five years, halve it for caution, then subtract the full cost.
If the result is comfortably positive, the book is a sound investment. If it only works on your most optimistic guess, don’t talk yourself into it. A shorter book, an AI-assisted one, or a smaller first step makes more sense, and a ghostwriter who pushes you past that math is looking after their own income.
The Book Discovery Intensive is that smaller step. It produces a book strategy, including how the book should pay for itself, and a sample chapter, before you commit to the full project. A small engagement that shows a book won’t pay is far cheaper than learning it after the full fee, and a ghostwriter who skips that step is gambling with the client’s money.
Once you know what the book is for, the next question is how to get it written. The Ghostwriting Advantage covers that, from my own work on 54+ ghostwritten books.
