Updated May 2026 to reflect current data. Original recording: May 2025.

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Chris Voss for a conversation about his book The Ghostwriting Advantage, the client-side playbook for anyone considering hiring a ghostwriter. Topics: what to look for when evaluating a ghostwriter, the steps a serious project moves through from kickoff to publication, how voice and adaptation work in practice, the difference between premium ghostwriting and the budget end of the market, and why business leaders increasingly use books as the cornerstone of an authority strategy. The Chris Voss Show reaches over one million listeners per episode at peak, putting this conversation in front of the largest audience Richard has spoken to about the book.

The Chris Voss Show is a long-running podcast with over 13 years on air and one million-plus listeners per episode at its peak, featuring CEOs, authors, thought leaders, and other guests.

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Interview

About The Ghostwriting Advantage

Chris Voss: Hi folks, this is Voss here from TheChrisVossShow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. We’ve got an amazing man on the show. We’re talking about his books, some of the stuff he’s done, and some of the writing services that he does as well. He’s the author of the latest book to come out April 24th, 2025, called The Ghostwriting Advantage: Everything You Need to Know About Ghostwriting Your Book. Richard G. Lowe joins us on the show today.

He’s a bestselling ghostwriter who helps professionals turn their expertise into powerful books that build credibility, attract opportunities, and leave a lasting legacy, with 113+ authored books and 54+ ghostwritten projects across 13 years of practice. He’s a trusted authority in business, technology, and leadership writing. Previously Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s and VP at two tech firms, Richard blends corporate insight with storytelling mastery. His notable works include Focus on LinkedIn, Cyberheist, and Digitized or Die. Welcome to the show, Richard. How are you?

Richard Lowe: Thank you for that great introduction. It almost makes me blush.

Chris: Yeah, just your bio. I just read it.

Richard: I know, I know.

Chris: It’s all that work you’ve been up to.

Richard: It still amazes me. I’ve written 113+ books now.

Chris: So give us a 30,000-foot overview. What’s in this new book, The Ghostwriting Advantage?

Richard: When I went out and looked on Amazon, I noticed that there’s really no books on ghostwriting from the client side. How do you find a ghostwriter? How do you get an idea for a book? What does a ghostwriter do? How do you market it?

So this is everything you wanted to know about hiring a ghostwriter, writing a book, marketing a book, and everything else from A to Z, put together in one place and in nice human-readable form with lots of stories and how people get things done. The goal is to make it understandable so that before you go see a ghostwriter, you can say: okay, this is what I’m looking for, this is what I’m not looking for, this is what to watch out for, and so forth.

Chris: What do you do at your website? Tell us what you do at thewritingking.com.

Richard: The Writing King is my business website. I’m a ghostwriter. I write books for executives, influencers, and high-level people, plus anybody else who wants to write a book. That’s primarily what I do. I also do some blogging and other things, but mostly books.

The books can run anywhere from 10,000 words, which is relatively short, up to 100,000 words, which is pretty long. Game of Thrones is about 150,000 words, just to give you a sense of length.

I’ve written fiction, including a couple of science fiction books, one of them for a fairly well-known rock star. I’ve written memoirs, several of them, plus a young adult book, a children’s book, and just about everything else you could name. Primarily for executives, though, who want to create a name for themselves.

Chris: People can hire you to ghostwrite their book. They can read the book on how to find a ghostwriter and deal with one. What’s the importance of writing your own book? What do people get if they try to write their own book, in your words?

Richard: I thought you’d never ask. What they get is credibility and authority. If you look at coaches and other professionals who’ve really made it, they have a book. The book lays out their whole program, their story, their life, everything, including their failures and how they recovered. That’s very important sometimes, because nobody’s perfect.

Chris: What? I didn’t hear about that.

Richard: Except for you, obviously. A good book covers their philosophy, what they do, what they want, and sometimes their methods. It also gets them speaking engagements, paid ones. They can use it as the basis of their marketing. They can use it to land a TED Talk or get on TV. It basically becomes a fulcrum for them to boost themselves into a new tier of career.

From Trader Joe’s to Ghostwriting

Chris: Give us a little bit about your story. When did you start writing?

Richard: When I was 17 years old, arrogant, conceited, typical 17-year-old, I met my grandfather. I’d known him before, but for some reason I decided I wanted to really get to know him. He was old, he was kind of cranky, everybody said stay away from him because he was going to bite your head off.

So I said, the heck with you guys, I never listened to my parents anyway, and went over and talked to him. Before you know it, we were having a great conversation. He was a World War II vet. He’d been in the Yangtze River Patrol in 1938. He was captured on Corregidor by the Japanese, was at the Bataan Death March, and spent four years in a POW camp.

I wrote him a little book, which has since been lost. And one of the things I concluded was: A, I like writing people’s stories. That was very, very cool. I got the family to get to know him in a non-confrontational way. And B, he could be as cranky as he wanted. After that kind of experience, he earned whatever he wanted.

Chris: Yeah, no kidding. I’d be cranky after all that too.

Richard: And I gained a profound respect for vets.

Chris: Yeah, the crazy stuff that went on in World War II, Korea, Vietnam. Was Senator McCain there for five years in the Hanoi Hilton?

Richard: Correct.

Chris: I can’t imagine being tortured. You’re not just in prison, you’re in a prison where they torture you. They broke his arms and legs.

Richard: Yeah, it’s not exactly the Hilton.

Chris: Not really a hotel.

Richard: So after that, I had to leave home. There were reasons. When I was 19, I left home. And then I had to make a living, because surprise: you have to pay for things like electricity. Nobody told me.

Chris: Nobody told me about the electricity trick.

Richard: Electricity, phones, things like that. But I managed. I had a good job. I became VP of a tech company, then VP of another tech company within a short time. Then I worked for Trader Joe’s, and I’d forgotten all about writing, except I was always a tech writer. Yuck. Everybody hates being a tech writer. I did it because I could write. But I was also the Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.

Then I decided, okay, I’m getting up there in years, in my 50s. I don’t like working for corporate anymore. Let me try it on my own. I’d saved up some money, so I quit, moved to Florida from California, and started my writing career. Stumbled around a little bit, got some nice juicy projects. After that, it was all over. I was in for life.

Chris: That’s pretty wild. Starting a whole new career at 50 and pounding out 113+ books. I barely got my first book published, and you got me by a long way. At this pace it’s going to be another 50 years before I catch up.

Richard: You can always hire me.

Chris: Oh yeah, that’s the idea. See, we’ve got the right idea.

The Photography Years

Richard: There was something in between. I became a photographer also.

Chris: Oh, okay.

Richard: While at Trader Joe’s, I wound up photographing. I was kind of introverted and kind of depressed, since my wife had passed away. So I decided to become a photographer.

I went out and photographed Renaissance faires. From there, I met some of the belly dancers at the faires. I was sitting in the back row with my telephoto lens because I’m super shy, taking pictures of the dancers, and I put them up on the internet.

One time, one of the dancers approached me. Super scary lady to me, because I was conservative as heck back then. Not politically, but in the way I looked and acted. She had piercings, tattoos she’d done herself on her arm, all kinds of stuff. Scary lady, to me.

She comes up, puts her arms around me. “My name is Marjhani.” Dearest friend now. Scared the heck out of me at the time. She said, “Richard, we love you. We love the photographs. We want you to keep doing it. We want to encourage you. You need to sit in the front row, center.”

They gave me a front row center seat. Then they got me into all the other belly dance shows. And before I knew it, I was photographing three or four shows a week.

Chris: All the belly dancing.

Richard: Belly dancers, salsa dancers, ballroom dancing, mermaids, WWE wrestling matches, masquerade balls. In eight years, I photographed 1,200 photo shoots and 980,000 photographs. Made a lot of friends. I had a birthday party every year where about a hundred dancers and models showed up just to say happy birthday.

Chris: Geez, nobody shows up at my birthday parties except bill collectors.

Richard: Yeah, yeah.

Chris: See what I did there?

Richard: You have to change your address to get rid of those guys.

Chris: Oh, damn it. I already did the fake-your-death thing to get away from my last 10, 11 divorces.

The Ghostwriting Process

Chris: So when you work with somebody and you’re ghostwriting a book for them, give us an idea of how that process works. Are you spending a lot of time interviewing them? Recording them and then writing what they say? Doing the research yourself?

Richard: Once we do the signing and make an agreement, we start with a series of interviews. I use a Socratic method, asking a lot of questions about them and their purpose for life, what they want to achieve, who they want to talk to, their audience.

The goal is for me to get to know them: their voice, their point of view, what they want out of life and the book, who they’re trying to talk to. It’s usually around 100 to 150 questions. They go pretty quickly. The whole thing takes a few weeks.

Then I have a good picture of them. From there, I come up with an outline and a pitch for the book, and we start writing. We go back and forth until we get the voice right, because the voice is very important.

I had one client who cursed like a sailor, would make a sailor blush. I asked, “Do you want the book to do that?” He said, “Yeah, let’s do that.” I wrote the first chapter and he said, “Maybe not that much.”

Chris: You realize how much you swear. Yeah, if I didn’t have an editor, my book would probably be the F-word every five words.

Richard: Once that’s settled, I write the rest of the book collaboratively. I do a few pages or a chapter, send it to them, they review it, send it back with changes, and we go back and forth until we’ve got it right.

Voice and Adaptation

Chris: That’s pretty interesting that you try to gauge the voice. One thing I didn’t fully understand when I went into editing: I had someone to edit my book, but I had a couple of friends write me and say, “Hey, why don’t you use me as an editor?” I didn’t know they were editors, they were just Facebook friends. I said, okay, send me a couple of samples. Both were women.

I make that point because my official editor was also a woman, but she was still able to write in my voice. The two friends wrote in a feminine voice. They turned my logic into feminine feelings. You could read it and it sounded like a woman writing something. Whereas the woman who was my actual editor knew how to write in my voice. That’s when I woke up to how important it is for a ghostwriter to be able to write in your voice.

Richard: It’s very key. That’s what a person wants when they write their book. They want it to be them as if they were talking to whoever their audience is. Whether it’s clients, or in the case of a memoir for seniors, their grandchildren (I do a lot of those), they want to talk as if they were them, for the most part. Sometimes they want some of the imperfections removed. That’s fine.

Chris: I mean, my editor took out all the ums and ahs, and the worst part. I put all the commas in the wrong place. That’s my thing. The editor was like, yeah, we threw all that out, because that’s just you.

Richard: I spent a lot of months in Toastmasters getting rid of the ums and ahs.

Chris: Yeah, I still have them. That’s why we use a script to remove them in the final edit of the show. They only show up in the live.

What are some other aspects you offer that other ghostwriters maybe don’t, that make your work different?

Richard: First, I have a lot of empathy for people. I understand them, at least I think so, because I’ve had a lot of dealings with people. Even though I’m an introvert, I’ve gotten out, photographed a lot of people, interfaced with them as a leader and as a tech person.

I’ve got this wide background, plus 113+ books published. So I bring something most ghostwriters don’t, especially in tech. I also like military history and geopolitics, which makes me ideal for those kinds of books too. If you want to sprinkle a little of that in, I’ve got you covered.

One of the things I’m really good at is leadership and the technical aspect. One of my books was for someone who wanted to write about digital transformation, a very technical subject. They wanted to write it for an audience of leaders. Leaders don’t want to hear about all the bits and bytes and how things work. They want to know: am I going to make money on this? So I had to translate from tech speak (geek speak) to leader speak. That’s something a really good ghostwriter can do. It’s essential. You have to translate.

Chris: Leader speak.

Richard: Leader speak. Or if you’re writing for technicians, you write in tech speak. Or engineer speak. Or women’s-group speak. You have to speak the language.

Chris: What about dog books? Are you able to write in dog speak?

Richard: Pictures, maybe. That would be a trip.

Chris: What if people made a book for dogs about dogs doing stuff, and you basically sit there and read to your dog? You don’t know what they’re saying, but clearly maybe the dogs understand completely.

Richard: Maybe with Neuralink, you know.

Chris: Maybe you end up barking like a dog if you go on Neuralink. It’s the same experience as buying a Cybertruck. Yes, the Cybertruck jokes never end.

Richard: I’ve actually been writing a book for myself from a cat’s point of view.

Chris: The cat’s point of view, really?

Richard: Yeah. The cat’s looking up at people, and the people are these strong protectors. It becomes interesting. A different point of view, just as a way to write.

I’ve also written several books from women’s points of view, and that’s interesting. As you pointed out with the editors, trying to write a feminine book is its own challenge.

Chris: I’ll pull a Jack Nicholson quote: “How do you think like a woman, Jack? I take away accountability and reason.” That’s a joke from a movie. Anyway, it’s got to be interesting to try to write from a woman’s point of view. More emotional, I imagine.

Richard: It does have more emotion in it, generally. When that happens, I often consult with a woman to make sure I’ve got the right point of view, especially in fiction.

Florida, Stories, and Why They Matter

Chris: I’ve seen those around town. Women? Yeah, yeah. There’s a few of them.

Richard: One or two, yes.

Chris: Depends on where you go. I think it’s cool you can adapt to people’s voices and help preserve them. Then of course, you’ve got the leadership author angle. Why do you feel stories are important, or the context, or how they’re delivered and presented? When did you figure that out?

Richard: It took me a little while. My first books were technical and geeky, because I was technical. And they worked. In fact, the first book I ghostwrote professionally, the guy wanted to get the notice of the CEO of his company. It was one of those really big Fortune 50 companies. He wound up not only getting the notice of the CEO, he got a foreword from the CEO.

Chris: Oh, wow.

Richard: Then he got a promotion.

Chris: And he got a promotion.

Richard: Then he got a raise, got put in libraries, then he went off and got venture capital and started his own company based on the book.

Chris: Wow. But it was very geeky, techno-advanced sort of stuff?

Richard: Very, very geeky.

Chris: That’s really interesting. We’ve had a few people on the show that I always assume are the CEO or president of the company, and they’re like, no, they’re somewhere down the line. I’ve often wondered if they’re using it as an advancement tool. That’s pretty darn smart. It increases your value, it shows your wares.

Chris: Was it risky to move from a safe job at Trader Joe’s to becoming a solo entrepreneur? This is a big deal for people.

Richard: It was scary as hell. Just terrifying. Not as terrifying as getting married, but close.

Chris: Before, during, or after?

Richard: Yes. It was terrifying because I’d never done it before. I’d never even done a gig before. And I was uprooting myself, moving to Florida, where I knew nobody. Florida is that weird state on the East Coast.

By the way, after the hurricane last year, I had two alligators on my porch and a bobcat in a tree.

Chris: Really? That sounds like a book right there. Two alligators and a bobcat in a tree. Welcome to Florida.

Richard: I never really answered the question about stories. Let me get to that. So I moved to Florida and it was a big change. First of all, Florida is a great state. During the hurricane, the governor had trucks out. Electricity was back up within six hours. He had supplies built up. I’m sure he screwed up here and there. Everyone does, he’s human. I can’t get politics out of all this. I don’t care whether he’s red or blue or purple. He’s good at his job for the most part. I don’t always agree with him. I don’t need to.

Chris: We should always be critical of our politicians. I’m more critical of the ones I vote for. About 50% of the time I’m saying, okay, I like what you did there.

Does Florida make for a better place to write? Better weather, climate, environment?

Richard: Florida’s actually pretty calm, at least in my area. There’s not a lot happening, which is great for writing. I’m on the shores of a lake, so there’s nobody behind me.

When I came out here, it was an interesting adventure. I knew all those dancers, and one of them, a Bharatanatyam dancer (the Indian classical style with bells on the feet), said, “You’re not going to Florida alone. You’re not driving alone. I’m coming with you.” She hopped in the car and we drove across the country. Took about four days. Met the truck here, helped me unpack, then flew home.

Then she called me up and said, “I had a gig in Jamaica and I’m doing a layover in Tampa. I’m going to come by this Thanksgiving and make some vegan turkey. You’re going to love it. It tastes just like turkey.”

After we ate it, my first question was: how do you know it tastes just like turkey if you’re a vegan? I didn’t ask her that out loud. My second thought was: it doesn’t taste like turkey.

Chris: I’ve done the vegan thing. It kind of tastes, you know. If you close your eyes, maybe.

Richard: If you close your eyes, it doesn’t smell like turkey. That’s the thing.

Anyway, this is what I mean about stories. Stories are important because they engage people and pull them in. You probably notice on your podcast that the most boring guests are the ones who go, “I do this and I do that, I’m selling this, blah blah blah.” You’re sitting there thinking, “Just shut up, let’s wrap this.” Then you get the ones with stories, and you’re engaged. A book is the same way.

Chris: It’s literally in the show note writer we send guests. “Bring your stories.” And then they don’t.

Richard: They’re focused on selling whatever they’ve got. But everybody has a story. Everybody has a bazillion stories.

Chris: Yeah, even big brands have gotten good at telling stories.

Richard: Yeah, except when they’re not.

Movies and Storytelling

Chris: Sometimes, yeah. I mean, there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly, I guess.

Richard: That was a great movie, by the way.

Chris: That was a great movie. It will always be one of the greatest movies of all time.

Richard: I am a movie buff. I want to tell you.

Chris: Are you an Akira Kurosawa fan?

Richard: I don’t know who that is.

Chris: Oh, you’re not a movie buff then. I’m just teasing. Akira Kurosawa, check him out. He started making films in Japan pre-World War. He made some of the greatest movies of all time. Every American director, every great director has ripped him off, both in how he did cinematography. He basically wrote the book from whole cloth on how to do film. You want to go watch his movies because every great movie came from it.

George Lucas will fully admit he grew up watching Akira Kurosawa movies as a kid. Made him want to be a director. He ripped off Star Wars from the Kurosawa movie, The Hidden Fortress, I believe it’s called. The funny thing is, when you watch The Hidden Fortress, you’ll be sitting there thinking, this is Star Wars, just set in the samurai era.

Richard: Did he do Seven Samurai?

Chris: Seven Samurai? Yes. That was one. And I believe that’s been remade.

Richard: I know what you’re talking about, The Magnificent Seven.

Chris: The Magnificent Seven, yeah. So Seven Samurai, all these movies are just ripped off, or borrowed, that’s the right word. Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Spielberg, you name it. They all grew up watching Akira Kurosawa movies in the theaters when they were kids.

So now this has become the movie show, folks. It’s cool storytelling though.

Richard: Yeah, good movies tell stories and they tell them well. One thing I want to write is on my bucket list. I want to start writing movie scripts. But that’s a whole different ballgame than writing a book. It’s a very different format. It’s as different as writing music.

Chris: We have a lot of people on the show whose books end up being written into screenplays. Sometimes they buy the option and it just keeps getting rolled over or flipped, and they make more money off the options than they do off the book by never having the film made. It’s kind of funny.

Richard: It is kind of funny. But it makes it hard for me to watch a movie, especially these days. I watch the movie and I’m like, oh God. I also know CGI, so it makes it even worse. I’m like, oh my God, they ruined the CGI.

Chris: Do you think you have a problem like I do, where you watch a lot of movies nowadays and within about five minutes you’ve got the whole movie and the ending figured out?

Richard: Typically I can know how the movie’s going to end within the first five minutes, and I’m probably 90% on the spot. If they really change things, Sixth Sense, I knew how it was going to end. It was pretty obvious.

Chris: I got it about five minutes before the kid said it.

Richard: Yeah, I got it within a few minutes after the movie started. I was like, yeah, gotcha.

Chris: Seriously, wow, that’s pretty good. Those M. Night Shyamalan movies, the early ones, were definitely a surprise for me. But I like movies like that. I don’t want to see it coming. I want to revel in the story.

Richard: I want a good story. I don’t care if I see it coming or not, because I know all the plots. I want a good story with good characters, good CGI, good acting, all that.

Nobody beats the actors of old, with the exception of maybe Keanu Reeves and a couple of others. Keanu Reeves is on my list. I want to meet him just to say hi. I’ve met the guy who played Wolverine, whatever his name is, for about five seconds. I’ve met The Undertaker from WWE for another three seconds, but I met him. He’s tall.

Chris: Yeah, he better be for all the slapping around they do in the shows.

Richard: Got a picture of him in the air flying.

Chris: Yeah, those guys, man, they must have a lot of surgeries.

WWE, Mick Foley, and Closing

Richard: Oh, I’ve got a story here. When my wife and I were married before she passed away, we basically didn’t have a lot in common. We got married too fast.

Chris: You were married for how long, though?

Richard: 12 and a half years.

Chris: You made it last. Good for you.

Richard: So one thing we found that we had in common, just accidentally, was that we liked WWE wrestling, believe it or not. She’d be screaming and yelling, standing on the couch.

One wrestler I like is Mick Foley. He plays Mankind. Really nice guy. Since his wrestling career, he’s become an author, a bestseller (I think 10 books), and a comedian.

So in 2020, he was scheduled to come to Tampa and give one of his comedy shows. I had a VIP seat, front row center. I was going to finally meet Mick Foley, shake his hand, say hi, hopefully get him down to the table, talk for a few minutes. What happened in early 2020?

Chris: Oh, COVID.

Richard: They canceled all of his shows. I was like, did you do this? I’ve been waiting my whole life. And he hasn’t come back in the area yet. Maybe he’ll watch this show and he’ll come back.

Chris: Maybe we’ll have him on the show. We’ll have him on the show and you on the show, and you guys can meet on the show.

Richard: I would like to do that. I really would like to set it up.

Chris: Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. So as we wrap up, anything more you want to tease out about the work you do for people, how they can reach out to you, how they can find out more, your dot-coms, all that stuff?

Richard: What really differentiates me from other ghostwriters is that I work very hard to get to the core of your story (your emotions, your reason for being) and work collaboratively. A lot of ghostwriters (not all) do all the interviews, then disappear and write the book, and you only see it at the end. I don’t like that. I hate the revisions. I want to write it as we go, so you’re in agreement throughout. Not have you look at the end and go, “Ooh, this isn’t what I wanted.” So we write it together.

I also have a deep background in tech, leadership, and a lot of other things, as you can probably tell on this show. That makes me ideal for a wide variety of subjects.

I tell my clients this in the initial interview: we’re sizing each other up. If I’m not right for you, or you’re not right for me, we need to tell each other now. Keep it non-toxic. Be the adult in the room. That’s very important. Be the adult in the room.

You can find me at thewritingking.com. There are lots of forms there to get in touch. You can also go to contact.thewritingking.com to bring up a contact form and schedule something. I give a free hour for people to talk. And I have a Book Discovery Intensive: if you’re not sure what you want to write about, we’ll spend a few hours talking through it.

Chris: Grab it, folks, while you can.

Richard: Grab it, come on. And of course buy The Ghostwriting Advantage on Amazon and leave a good review.

Chris: Thank you. You were a great interviewee. It was wonderful to have you, although we kind of turned into the movie show for a second there. Definitely check out Akira Kurosawa.

Richard: I’ve been finding Norwegian and Finnish movies are pretty good too.

Chris: Really? Send me some directors. I’m a purist on movies. Sit in the dark, be quiet, you get a pee break, that’s about it.

Richard: Turn off the phones while we’re watching, please.

Chris: Watch the movie. Don’t ask questions. If you watch and have a brain, you’ll understand what’s going on. If you’re busy asking questions, you can’t figure it out.

Richard: And if you’re going to do that, go watch it on TV and leave me alone.

Chris: Exactly. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We’ll see you next time.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

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