When a Business Tells Its Story: Ghostwriting for Companies and the People Who Lead Them

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Lee Cantor on High Velocity Radio, from the Business RadioX studios, for a practical walk through the business of ghostwriting: the models he offers, the barriers that stop most would-be authors, how the author-and-writer collaboration works, pricing without becoming a commodity, and the lower-cost blog-to-book path to authority.

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written more than 113 books under his own name and ghostwritten over 54 more for clients. Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

What The Writing King does

Lee: Today I have with us Richard Lowe, The Writing King. Tell us about your Writing King practice. How are you serving folks?

Richard: I meet people on LinkedIn, my website, and other means, and they want to write a book: fiction, a book about their career, anything, or a blog series, and I help them with that.

Lee: Do you do the actual writing, or coaching to help them become a writer, or some combination?

Richard: I have a series of business models. One is to write the book myself, one is to collaborate as a kind of ghost collaborator, all the way down to coaching.

Lee: How did you get into this line of work?

Richard: I’ve always liked to write but was never published before I decided to become a writer. I worked in the technical field, VP of two companies, then Director of Computer Operations for Trader Joe’s for 20 years. I got tired of working for a corporation and reached out on my own; writing was a natural thing. I ran into another ghostwriter who had a company, wrote some interesting books, realized I could make a lot more money by myself, went off on my own, and never looked back.

Figuring out the right path for a book

Lee: A lot of people want to be writers but don’t like the writing part. The idea of being an author is attractive, but going from an interesting thought to a book has a lot of moving parts. How do you help a person figure out the best path?

Richard: That’s the initial part of the engagement. We get together and discuss what the book’s about. For fiction, we come up with the plot summary, story arc, and characters, which can take from a few days to a few weeks. For nonfiction, it’s similar but without story arcs and characters. We start with what they want to achieve, who their audience is, how they want the book to read, and the voice, then work down through the chapters. Before long we have the basic overview, and then we start writing.

The three barriers: writing, polishing, selling

Lee: What holds most people back? This is on a lot of people’s bucket list.

Richard: Writing a book is not easy. Some writers take years to write their first book, and like everybody, I have a pile of unfinished books in various stages. The writing part is a big barrier, then comes polishing and editing, making it publishable, which is another barrier. And the biggest barrier of all is getting the book to sell. My clients don’t run into that, because they’re using the book as a marketing tool to market themselves. They’re not interested in how well it sells on Amazon; they want to know how it can get them speaking engagements, a new job, or promotions.

Lee: When that’s the objective it seems easier. But if they want to be famous or have a movie made, that’s more like a lottery ticket.

Richard: Right. Then they have to actually write a good book, with an engaging plot, good storyline, and good characters, plus an agent or publisher backing them. It’s an order of magnitude more. I haven’t done screenwriting yet, but I’ve written books intended to form the basis of a screenplay, where I write the book part and a screenwriter takes it from there.

Author versus writer: how the collaboration works

Lee: When you’re ghostwriting, how involved is the person? Do they just discuss the concept and then read it and suggest a love interest or a chapter?

Richard: That person is called the author, and I’m the writer, that’s the terminology. They’re engaged in that they validate that what I’ve written is what they want, and they give me their ideas, because we want a book from their heart and soul, not mine. I interview them, get their story and what they want, then write it chapter by chapter, sending each chapter to review. The last thing I want is to get all the way through and have them say no. So we review chapter by chapter, work out the kinks, and before long we’re in sync and writing together.

Capturing the author’s voice, and the characters’ voices

Lee: How do you get the author’s voice?

Richard: I interview them, talk to them, figure out how they speak and what they want, then review the first chapter together and work out the kinks interactively. It can be quite a process. The author might have a voice, but their characters also have individual voices: one might be a southern gentleman, another a northerner, with different dialects, mannerisms, and ways they look. All of that makes the book more real, and their voice is something I have to develop interactively with them.

Say yes, then figure it out

Lee: When you were starting, how did you have the confidence to say you could do this, even without a track record in, say, southern fiction?

Richard: The owner of Virgin Airlines has a saying, and I’m paraphrasing: if you don’t know how to do it, say yes, then figure it out. I take that attitude through my whole life. As Director of Tech Services for Trader Joe’s, I’d get projects thrown at me, build this computer room, install these AI computers, and I didn’t know how, so I figured it out. That’s part of life. For research, I don’t have to know the subject; I have the client as a knowledge expert, plus Google and other tools. That’s how I’ve written books on artificial intelligence and digital transformation. I might not know the subject well starting out, but by the time I’m done I know it really well.

Pricing: don’t be a commodity

Lee: How did you figure out the appropriate pricing?

Richard: That took some work. A lot of writers going into freelance make the mistake of pricing themselves too low, and a low price says you’re a commodity. You can find a hundred writers who’ll charge $2,000 for a book, and you’ll get a $2,000 book, which will probably be poor. If you want to be professional, not a commodity, you price yourself higher, at a level where the client knows they’re getting a professional who knows he’s worth something. That’s why I charge 50 cents a word for the writing, right about in the middle; some charge less, some charge a dollar or two a word. For collaboration I charge by the hour instead, because it’s based on time spent together, not word count.

What the fee includes, and the real total

Lee: What’s the deliverable at the end? Just the book, or promises about marketability?

Richard: The deliverable is a manuscript ready for an editor. Making them more marketable is outside the scope, but throughout the process we discuss it, and I refer them to experts in my LinkedIn connections: editors who’ll polish the book, proofreaders, promoters, publishers, agents. Having ghostwritten 54+ books, I have a feel for how it works and what to avoid. I always tell them the writer should never edit the book, because I’m biased, I wrote it, so I won’t catch as many errors as an editor, who also knows how to make it polished and publishable.

Lee: What’s a ballpark range for a nonfiction book for a businessperson wanting more credibility?

Richard: Generally about $20,000, and that’s my fee for writing the book, delivering a manuscript ready for an editor. Editors aren’t very expensive compared to ghostwriting, and I send it to a proofreader too. Those are extra but not that expensive, and I can also help them self-publish, by the hour, since I’ve done it over a hundred times. With all the extras, the book probably runs between $22,000 and $25,000, more if they want illustrations, since illustrators have their own rates and you want good quality.

A less expensive path: blog to book

Lee: Is there a less expensive way to attack this same kind of authority?

Richard: Two ways. One is to collaborate on the book, which is less expensive because they do a lot of the work; my ghostwriting it alone is the $20,000 price for a 40,000-word book, while collaboration is by the hour, probably half that. The other is a blog-to-book concept. I have several blogging series going, usually a monthly retainer around $1,000 a month for a couple of articles, and I recommend we write them so they work together and can become a book after a year or so. It’s better to know you want a blog-to-book up front, so you factor it in and avoid a difficult conversion at the end.

The most rewarding part: the Fortune 50 client

Lee: What’s the most rewarding part for you?

Richard: The success of the client. One of my very first clients came to me for a book on the Internet of Things, a collaboration. He worked for a division of a Fortune 50 company and wanted to get noticed by the CEO. We worked together on the book, and the CEO wound up writing the foreword. He got the notice, promotions, keynote speaking engagements at $5,000 a pop, recognition at conferences, and the book is now in several schools. That helped his career immensely, and being able to say what he got from it is very fulfilling.

Writing for himself, and advice for the fearful

Lee: When you’re writing for yourself, fiction or nonfiction?

Richard: When I began, I wrote a whole pile of nonfiction that’s on Amazon, but now I’m working on fiction. I’m collaborating with two other authors on science fiction, and I have a goal over the next few years of writing one book of my own in each of 12 different genres, romance, western, science fiction, horror, and so on, to get experience in all of them. Probably under pseudonyms, because if you mix them all up you dilute the brand.

Lee: What’s your advice for someone considering this but fearful of taking the plunge?

Richard: If the problem is they don’t know how to write or don’t have the time, they can hire me to help, including on a writing-consulting basis by the hour, where I coach them over the hump, through writer’s block, or through concepts like show versus tell, which makes a story more alive. But my definition of a writer is someone who writes with the intention of publishing and eventually publishes. Anyone can write a journal; publishing is a whole different dynamic, and that’s what moves you from amateur to professional. Just do it.

The first step, and the takeaways that matter

Lee: What’s the baby step to begin the book-writing process?

Richard: The theme and the audience, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. What do you want to accomplish, what will the reader get when they finish, and who’s the audience: young adults, children, CEOs? Then we aim the book at that audience, with the intention that they come away with that particular theme.

Lee: How many big takeaways does a book need to feel worth it?

Richard: For nonfiction, a good solid takeaway for each significant chapter, one or two at most, so a 12-chapter book has about 12 specific, valuable takeaways. For fiction, the payoff is the excitement of following the characters through without continuity errors, which comes from a good story arc: how the characters move through the story and grow. That’s the most important part of starting a fiction book.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

What are the ways to work with a ghostwriter?

Three models along a spectrum: the ghostwriter writes the whole book, the two collaborate as ghost collaborator and author sharing the work, or the ghostwriter coaches the author through writing it themselves. The right model depends on budget, how much the author wants to be involved, and whether they want the finished book done for them or want to build the skill.

What does a ghostwritten business book cost?

The writing fee for a nonfiction business book runs about $20,000 for roughly 40,000 words, delivering a manuscript ready for an editor. Editing and proofreading are extra but modest compared to the writing, and self-publishing help is billed by the hour, so an all-in total typically lands between $22,000 and $25,000, more if professional illustrations are involved. Collaboration, billed hourly, can cut the writing cost roughly in half.

Who owns the book and how involved is the client?

The client is the author and owns the book; the ghostwriter is the writer. The author stays involved by supplying their ideas, story, and voice through interviews, then validating each chapter as it’s written. Working chapter by chapter, rather than delivering a finished manuscript at the end, keeps the book aligned with what the author actually wants.

Is a blog series a cheaper route to authority than a book?

It can be. A blog-to-book retainer, often around $1,000 a month for a couple of articles, spreads the cost over time and builds authority as it goes. If the articles are written from the start with a book in mind, they can be assembled into a book after a year or so, avoiding the difficult and costly conversion of turning unrelated blog posts into chapters later.