Each path trades time, money and involvement differently, and book coaching sits between hiring out the whole book and doing it all yourself.
How does ghostwriting work if you talk and I write?
I’m a ghostwriter, so you know which way I lean, and I still don’t think every book needs one.
I care that the book gets finished and sounds like the person whose name is on it. When you talk and I write, that voice has to come from somewhere, so I do a lot of interviews up front. Writing in somebody else’s voice means becoming them for a while. That takes real moxie.
Hire a ghostwriter, work with a book coach, or write it yourself. Three results, three timelines, three prices.Share on X
Ghostwriting is for people who have a book in them but don’t have the time, skill, or desire to write it themselves. Most of my clients are executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals whose time is worth more spent running their business than sitting at a keyboard for six months.
The process works through interviews. We talk. I ask questions. You tell me your stories, your expertise, your perspective. I take that raw material and turn it into a manuscript that sounds like you wrote it yourself. No one who reads the book will know a ghostwriter was involved unless you tell them. For more, see is a business book worth the investment? How to decide and the hybrid model.
A 40,000-word book takes four to eight months of active work, plus a month for revisions before it goes to a professional editor. You can find current ghostwriting pricing on the ghostwriting page. A 60,000-word book is $60,000. The price reflects the time, expertise, and intellectual labor involved in producing a book that represents you accurately and holds up under scrutiny.
This is the fastest path to a finished, professional book. If your goal is to have a published book working for your career within a year, ghostwriting is how you get there.
How does book coaching work if you write and I guide?
Coaching works when you want to do the writing yourself and need a professional keeping the structure and the schedule on track. It goes badly when the person hiring the coach is secretly hoping somebody else will end up writing it. Be straight with yourself about which one you are before you pay anybody, because a coach can’t supply your hours at the keyboard.
Book coaching is for people who want to write the book themselves but need help doing it well. Maybe you can’t afford a ghostwriter right now.
Maybe you want the experience of writing your own book. Maybe you have the time and just need structure, accountability, and someone who knows what they’re doing to keep you on track.
You can find current book coaching pricing on the book coaching page. Sessions cover everything from developing your idea and building an outline to reviewing chapters, fixing structural problems, and getting the manuscript ready for an editor.
The timeline depends entirely on you. Some clients finish in a year. Some take two or three years. The speed depends on how much time you commit to writing between sessions and how disciplined you’re about doing the work.
The result is a book you wrote yourself with professional guidance at every stage. You develop real writing skills in the process. That matters if you plan to write more than one book.
When should you write the book yourself?
Writing it yourself is a perfectly good answer, and if the budget isn’t there, writing with AI’s help is fine.
Treat it like a tool and you’ll do fine; let it do your work for you and you’ll have problems. My 40-plus writing handbooks use AI prompts to help you build a better protagonist and a tighter plot while you do the writing. The reader either stays engaged or puts the book down, and that’s true whether AI helped or not.
You can write the book entirely on your own. This costs nothing except time, and time is the catch.
Most people who set out to write a book without any professional support don’t finish. They get stuck in the middle, lose momentum, can’t figure out what’s wrong with the structure, or simply run out of motivation when the initial excitement wears off. The ones who do finish often produce a manuscript that needs extensive editing because they didn’t have anyone identifying problems along the way.
If you choose this path, you still need to budget for professional editing, cover design, and formatting before the book can be published. Those costs add up. And the timeline is unpredictable. Without external accountability, a book that should take a year can stretch to three or five or never.
This path works for people who are disciplined writers with a clear vision and the patience to figure out the craft on their own. For everyone else, some level of professional involvement produces a better book in less time.
How Do You Decide Between Ghostwriting, Coaching, and DIY?
Time, budget, wanting to be the writer, and how developed your idea is decide the route.
If writing is the obstacle and the story isn’t, that’s the clearest case for ghostwriting there is. A lot of my clients have limited written English or none, and it’s one of the main reasons they hire me. If you go that route, hire the person you’ll talk to. Agencies put you in front of a salesperson who makes it all sound wonderful, then hand you to writers you never met. I’d almost never recommend one; an experienced solo practitioner is the better bet.
The decision comes down to honest answers to a few questions.
Do you have the time to write a book? If you’re running a business, managing a career, or handling responsibilities that fill your days, ghostwriting removes the time problem entirely. You invest hours in interviews instead of months at a keyboard.
Is the budget there? Ghostwriting is a significant investment. If you have $50,000 or so and want the fastest path to a professional book, that’s the route. If your budget is smaller but you have the time to write, book coaching gives you professional guidance at $250 an hour. If your budget is minimal, writing it yourself and investing in editing afterward is the most affordable path.
Want to be the writer yourself? Some people want to write their book. They want the creative experience and want to develop the skill. Book coaching supports that goal. Ghostwriting doesn’t, because the ghostwriter does the writing. Neither approach is better. They serve different purposes.
How well-developed is your idea? If you can explain your book’s message in one sentence, have stories and examples ready, and know who the book is for, you’re ready for a ghostwriter. If your idea is still forming, book coaching helps you develop it. If you’re not sure what the book is about yet, start with coaching before committing to a ghostwriting contract.
What happens after the manuscript, whichever route you choose?
Once the manuscript’s done, I steer clients away from traditional publishing. Three of my clients’ books went that route, and each one took 12 to 18 months to reach print. You wait longer, you earn much lower royalties, and you lose control of your own book. For most of the people I write for, a book that’s out and working for them beats one sitting in a publisher’s queue.
Regardless of which path you take to write the book, it needs to be published. I offer a publishing service that handles formatting, distribution, and listing on major platforms including Amazon. This gets the book into the world on a timeline you control.
Traditional publishing through a major house takes 18 to 24 months after signing a contract and requires a literary agent. For most of my clients, that timeline and process don’t fit their goals. They need the book published and working for their business within months.
The publishing path is a separate decision from the writing path, but they work together. A ghostwritten book can move from finished manuscript to published in weeks. A self-written book follows the same publishing process once the manuscript and editing are complete.
Is There a Stigma to Using a Ghostwriter?
The stigma talk wears me out. Executives, athletes and people in their nineties hire help with their books because their story matters more than whether they can type it themselves, and the life, the ideas and the voice on the page are still theirs. Choose whichever route gets your book finished, and don’t let anybody’s sneer about ghostwriting keep a good story off the shelf.
Clients occasionally ask whether using a ghostwriter is somehow dishonest.
Ghostwriting is standard practice in publishing. Business leaders, politicians, celebrities, and professionals across every industry use ghostwriters. The ideas, experiences, and expertise in the book are yours. The ghostwriter’s job is to put them on the page in a form that readers want to read.
No client of mine has ever used a “with” or “as told to” credit. The book goes out under the author’s name. That’s how ghostwriting works.
Schedule a free consultation to figure out which path fits your book.
Frequently Asked Questions
Work With a Book Coach
If you want to write the book yourself with a professional guiding the process, book coaching keeps it on track from outline to publication. Explore Book Coaching Services.
