How to Vet a Ghostwriter When NDAs Hide the Portfolio

The better a ghostwriter is at the job, the less evidence they can show you.

Confidentiality is the product. Most of my 54-plus ghostwritten books carry no public connection to me, because that’s what the clients paid for. Every serious ghostwriter works the same way. So every serious ghostwriter shows up to your first call with claims that sound exactly like a scam operation’s. Trust me. I’ve written bestsellers. I’ve worked with important people, no, I can’t show you.

The mills know this. They exploit it deliberately. Their fake writer profiles claim the same unverifiable bestsellers real writers can’t prove, and from the outside the claims look identical. There are documented networks of scam ghostwriting sites that steal real writers’ names and photographs to decorate fake agencies. The playing field is rigged to make the honest professional and the con artist indistinguishable on paper.

These outfits do real damage. Someone with a story they’ve carried for years pays a website that looks like a writer, gets back a manuscript that sounds like nobody, and loses the money and the months. Some of those authors decide the book was a bad idea and give up on it, and the story goes with them.

The people who most need a good writer, first-time authors with a real story and no publishing contacts, are the easiest marks for these operations. It’s a rotten setup. They can’t check a portfolio, because no honest ghostwriter can show them one. So vet around the NDA wall, and do it before you sign anything.

What can’t a ghostwriter fake?

Books under the writer’s own name. An NDA hides client work; nothing hides the writer’s own catalog. I have 113-plus books published under my own name that you can buy, read, and judge tonight. A “ghostwriter” with no published work of their own is asking you to believe they save all their talent for strangers. Ask for the writer’s own books first, before you ask about client work. The mills fall down immediately here, because their writers don’t exist.

I’d be suspicious of any ghostwriter who can’t point you to a single book with their own name on it. Writing is the one skill you’re paying for. If they’ve never let readers judge their own work, you’ll be the first person to find out what it’s worth, and you’ll find out after you’ve paid.

A public voice with history. Podcast appearances, interviews, articles going back years. I’ve done more than a hundred podcast episodes; you can listen to me talk about craft, unscripted, for fifty hours if you want to. A record like that can’t be manufactured last month. Whatever writer you’re considering, look for the equivalent: is there a real person with a real history behind the website, or did this operation appear fully formed in 2024?

Named clients where permission exists. Some clients waive anonymity. My case studies include named, checkable projects, including a book adopted for coursework at Purdue University. One named, verifiable project outweighs fifty anonymous bestseller claims. Any established ghostwriter should have at least a few.

Reviews attached to a real identity. Reviews on a Google Business profile connected to a verifiable person and location are hard to fabricate at scale. Reviews on the writer’s own website prove only that the writer owns a website.

What Questions Should You Ask a Ghostwriter?

Talk to more than one writer, and pay attention to how each of them treats you. One client talked to more than a dozen ghostwriters before he hired me, and he chose me because I was the first one who acted like a person and treated him like one. A sales script sounds the same no matter who’s on the line. A working writer starts asking about your book because they’re already thinking about how to write it.

On the call, a handful of questions separate working writers from sales operations, because only one group has done the work:

• ► “Walk me through your last project’s timeline, week by week.” A working writer describes interviews, outline, chapter cadence, revision loops, the client who rewrote chapter six twice. A salesperson describes a package.
• ► “What do you do when a client hates a chapter?” The answer involves a specific memory and a process. The fake answer involves “unlimited revisions.” That phrase should worry you instead of comfort you. Unlimited revisions from an anonymous team means nobody accountable ever has to get it right.
• ► “Who, by name, writes the words?” The most important question on this list. Mills sell you a “team”: a project manager, an editor, quality assurance, and somewhere at the bottom an interchangeable subcontractor you’ll never meet. If the person selling isn’t the person writing, you’re not hiring a ghostwriter. You’re hiring a broker with a markup.
• ► “What’s your AI policy, in writing?” Covered in depth in Will My Ghostwriter Secretly Use AI? A professional puts it in the contract without hesitation.

What Are the Red Flags When Hiring a Ghostwriter?

Some signals are exits. They cold-called you or their ad found you before you searched. The price is dramatically below market. That’s only possible when the writing costs them nearly nothing. They want the full fee upfront. The contract is vague about revisions, ownership, or confidentiality, or there’s resistance to a contract at all. They promise publication or bestseller status, which no honest writer can promise because writing and publishing are different work.

And they get defensive when you probe, because probing is what their whole operation is built to avoid. I’d take defensiveness on a first call as a confession. A writer who bristles at a question about their process will bristle at your notes on chapter six, and by then you’ve already paid.

Contrast that with what the legitimate version looks like: you found them through their work, the price reflects a human being spending months on your project, payment is staged against milestones, the contract is specific because specificity protects both sides, and your questions improve the conversation. I like prospects who grill me. They’ve thought about what they want, and they read their contracts.

Ask how they protect your files, too. Mine sit on a hard drive with strong encryption, and I send them to you on OneDrive or whatever platform you want. (See why encryption matters to writers.) I’m very cognizant of security. I used to write LinkedIn profiles for executives at public companies, and those had to go through legal before they went anywhere, because certain numbers couldn’t appear in them.

How do you test a ghostwriter before hiring?

From the podcast

Jack Barsky built an entire American life on a stolen birth certificate, and is precise about how the identity was assembled, on Leaders and Their Stories: Jack Barsky was a real person who passed away at the age of eleven, and they could somehow get that birth certificate, which I used to establish myself as an American. Credentials are documents, and documents can be obtained. Test the work instead.

After all the vetting, there’s still a gap between checking a writer’s record and knowing they can write your book. Close it with a small commitment instead of a leap. That’s what my Book Discovery Intensive is for: ten hours of interviews, a full book strategy, and a 2,000-word sample chapter in your voice, credited toward the engagement if you proceed. You judge actual work product on your actual project before committing to the full investment.

Any ghostwriter worth hiring can offer some version of a paid trial. The ones who push you straight to the big signature are telling you where their confidence doesn’t reach, and I wouldn’t trust them with a book I cared about.

The NDA wall is real, but it only blocks one kind of evidence.

The writer’s own books, their public history, how they handle hard questions and whether they’ll let you test them all sit in plain view. The mills are betting you’ll be too polite or too rushed to look, and I think cashing in on someone’s hope for their own book is about as low as this business gets. Look anyway. A real writer will respect you for checking.

From the author

The Ghostwriting Advantage
Portfolios hidden by NDAs make vetting harder. In The Ghostwriting Advantage I explain how to get your book written for you, drawn from 54+ books I have ghostwritten.

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