The Craft and Business of Ghostwriting: Taxes, Recordings, and Getting Paid Right

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Massiel on the How to Write a Book podcast for the longest and most wide-ranging conversation in this series: the full craft and business of ghostwriting. It runs from his path out of enterprise IT, through how he captures a client’s voice, handles writer’s block, reads red flags, and prices scope creep, to the business fundamentals most freelancers ignore, illustrated with the story of a trailer-park client whose life’s dream journal became a published novel.

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.

Meet Richard Lowe

Massiel: Thank you so much for joining us today, Richard. Give us the full introduction of yourself.

Richard: I’m Richard Lowe, a ghostwriter, which means I write books for other people, and so far my name has never been on the cover. Sometimes I’m in the acknowledgments, sometimes not, but I’m paid up front, so having my name on it is irrelevant to me. It’s a good living. I’ve written 113+ books of my own and ghostwritten 54+ more for clients, and these aren’t simple books: artificial intelligence, science fiction, novels, you name it, I’ve probably written it. Just about any genre, with a couple of exceptions, and my main criterion is a good relationship with the client, so I make sure they’re going to be an adult about it.

From Trader Joe’s to writing

Massiel: You said you started this career about ten years ago, which is recent. How did that happen?

Richard: I started in tech around 1981. I was VP of one company, then vice president of another, then IT director at Trader Joe’s, managing all the computers and people in the corporate office. After nearly 20 years there I decided it was time to move on, not to another company but to being a writer. Everybody teased me that I’d never make as much money writing. Now, ten years after leaving, I make literally twice what I made as IT director, I work from home, I pick my own clients, and I’m having a great time. It’s a good career for my later years; I could do it to my deathbed if I had to.

The grandfather book at seventeen

Massiel: Did you have any coursework or help, or did you just dive into ghostwriting?

Richard: I’ve always been a writer. My first ghostwriting project, never published and pretty amateur, was at 17. Nobody knew my grandfather; they all said he was a cranky old man, horrible to get along with. I wanted to know him and didn’t care what they thought, so I went and talked to him. It turned out he’d been captured on Corregidor by the Japanese in World War II, part of the Yangtze River Patrol, taken on the Bataan Death March, where 10,000 Americans started and only about half made it, then held in a POW camp for four years.

Richard: I wrote his book, and afterward I thought, he’s earned the right to be as cranky as he wants. When you’ve seen people decapitated in front of you daily, you can be as cranky as you like. He read it and passed away shortly after; he had Alzheimer’s, so I got it to him just in time. It went on a shelf and has since disappeared, but it was my first experience.

A career before the writing

Richard: After that I had to work for a living, so I took a job as a VP of consulting managing a whole team, at only 19, having never had a real job before other than a liquor store. I also wrote the SCADA system, System Control and Data Acquisition, which controls the flow of water, oil, air, or natural gas through pipelines, for the Las Vegas Valley Water District, which controls Hoover Dam, and for New Haven, Connecticut, and Ojai, California. Then I went back to being a VP of consulting, and then I was at Trader Joe’s for one month shy of 20 years.

Massiel: So you didn’t retire; you just decided it was time to do writing?

Richard: I didn’t retire, I decided it was time to jump out on my own. I had retirement funds saved, so it wasn’t a huge risk, though it was a risk. But I was already at risk, because in your 50s you start not being able to find jobs. Ageism is everywhere and it’s probably the worst of the isms, because people are totally competent at 50 or 60 and still can’t find jobs, so they often move into self-employment. That’s what I did.

Selling your own books is hard, so he turned to ghostwriting

Richard: I wrote a lot of books on my own and found that selling books is hard, and that wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I moved to ghostwriting. My first professional ghostwriting job was a memoir for a politician in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion in the 70s. During a coup he was put under house arrest, then got a phone call from someone he never identified who said only, leave now, get your family and leave. He took it at his word, got his family in the car, and went to the bank, where a stranger told him to take only a thousand and not withdraw it all, because emptying the account would signal he was leaving. People were on his side.

Richard: He made it down to Pakistan and got out. When the Americans went back into Afghanistan, the prison he’d have been taken to had about 15,000 skeletons of executed people beneath it; he’d have been one of them. They paid me a whole thousand bucks to write it. After that my boss said I couldn’t do better than my cushy job, so I left. The day after I left I pulled in a $15,000 contract, and the day after that a $10,000 contract, and I knew I could make it.

Writer’s block is a signal, not a verdict

Massiel: What’s your stance on writer’s block?

Richard: Writer’s block usually means you’ve been staring at the screen too long or you’re stuck somehow. The way I get around it is I work on six books at a time, six clients, so I switch from one to another and it clears up, or I take a walk, work on model kits, or play with the cat, do something else, and come back. If that doesn’t work, I look at my diet, my sleep, which is a big cause, and whether there’s somebody around me telling me I’m not as good as I think I am, which is a big one. If someone’s belittling you, they’re the problem; get them out of your life. Find the things impacting you and fix them. If you still can’t, you just tough it out and write, and since clients pay me month to month, I don’t have a choice.

Finding clients and pinning down the vague idea

Massiel: How do you find projects? Do they find you?

Richard: My website, a lead generation service, cold emails, and referrals. I get a steady stream of leads and I’m good at converting them, because I can talk and I’m not a total dweeb. Usually they have a vague idea of what they want, so I propose a little analysis to get that vague idea down to a real one, and then they’re excited to move forward. Sometimes we jump right in; sometimes they can’t afford a book, so we do blogs instead. That’s why I want to talk to people rather than just email, because they may have other needs.

Massiel: What’s the most common reason people come to you?

Richard: They’ve left their job, voluntarily or not, and want to do something else, often start a coaching business or raise venture capital. My very first solo client was a $10,000 book, and he raised $30 million in venture capital from it, because he used the credibility to prove he knew what he was talking about. I’ve written a children’s book to support a client’s charity, a young adult book in the style of the Goosebumps author, and a science fiction book for a triple-platinum rock star.

The ghostwriter never knows the subject first

Massiel: Do you take on projects where you don’t yet know the topic, or only ones you already have a background in?

Richard: I never know the subject, and that’s common to all ghostwriters. The client is the subject matter expert; they’re the one who knows, and I’m the one who writes. We do interviews and work together, they give me the information and I write it up. I wrote books on AI without knowing a thing about AI going in. I also do research, some included in the cost, some extra.

The rhythm of the project

Massiel: What’s the feedback cycle like? How often do you deliver chapters?

Richard: The project starts with a month of getting to know each other, because I have to write as them, like an actor learning to be them. Then we do a chapter a month, sometimes two if they’re in a hurry, which costs extra, so it usually becomes an eight-month to two-year project. At the end I help them publish and market it, because they usually want the book to do something, as a tool to promote themselves. One client just did a TED Talk; a lot of them have that goal, along with keynote speeches, where a keynote speaker gets 10 or 20 grand a speech, which is how they pay for the book.

Massiel: What happens if you write something and the client says it’s totally off?

Richard: It happens, especially in the first chapter or two, and I tell them at the beginning we’re going to be adults: if you don’t like something, you tell me and we work it out. So it’s, what didn’t you like, let me rewrite it, how’s the revision, spot on, great. No whining, no upset. The first chapter is usually rough, and by the time we’re done I’m basically them when I write.

Outlines and the discipline of scope creep

Massiel: Do you outline together, or just go for it?

Richard: We start with an outline, and it becomes part of the scope of work; we write according to it. Adding or subtracting chapters later means renegotiating cost. One thing I learned as a software programmer is you have to handle scope creep, where people add one minor thing after another until 50 minor things aren’t minor anymore. You handle it on the very first one: I’ll give you this one free, but after this it’s an extra charge. I charge by the word, so more words cost more, and interviews are by the hour.

Richard: The time to catch scope creep is the first instance, exactly like managing an employee: the first time they screw up is when you handle it, because after that it’s accepted. We’re not getting angry; we just have the conversation, this is beyond the scope of work, here’s what we do about it, whether that’s I’ll cover it or it’ll cost extra.

Reading the red flags before you sign

Massiel: How do you know you want to take on a project or a client?

Richard: During the free hour-long consultation I keep all my senses open to how the client reacts and how I react. If I get a red flag, like in dating, I don’t dismiss it; I look at what caused it. One client offered me $190,000 for a big project, but he was an absolute jerk, and after two meetings I told him I wouldn’t work with him. He got upset, which told me I’d made the right choice. I turned away $190,000 because I’d have been miserable, and I don’t need that; that’s why I left corporate.

Richard: If I feel toxicity coming on, I’ll say, we’re getting a little hostile, let’s just be adults, and we talk it out and repair it, or we don’t, and maybe it’s time for the project to end. A key to freelancing is being in a financial position to fire a client. If you’re afraid to fire a client because you depend on him, you need to fix that. During COVID I lost two clients, one to long COVID and one who died, and you can lose a client anytime, which is why I keep seven to ten clients going: books, blogs, marketing one-pagers, case studies, LinkedIn profiles, resumes. Keep the clients coming so you can afford to say no.

Confidence is what separates the rates

Richard: That’s the key difference between a low-cost ghostwriter and a higher-charging one: confidence. Higher-cost ghostwriters have more experience, but they’re also confident. Can you do my book? Of course I can; I know I can do your book. But if you come off unconfident, asking timidly what they think of your price per word, that shows.

Massiel: Besides having a few clients, how can writers get that confidence?

Richard: You just have to do it. Get a friend or a coach and drill it: one of you is the interviewer, one the interviewee, and you drill for days. A coach sounds expensive but it’s a one-time charge and, if you have a business, deductible. Or join Toastmasters, which is a great way to build confidence, because people shoot you down all day and then you get your turn. I was in Toastmasters.

Beating shyness with a camera

Richard: I’ve always been introverted and still am; introversion is gaining energy from being alone, while an extrovert gains it from a group. But I used to be super shy, and shyness is the inability to talk to people. I defeated it when my wife passed away: I picked up a camera to fight both grief and shyness. I photographed all the national parks in the Southwest, then Renaissance faires, where they hired me, and I have about 400,000 pictures from the faires alone. Then belly dancers, wrestlers, salsa dancers; I was part of all those communities. One day I realized I wasn’t shy anymore and was done, and I’ve barely picked up the camera since.

Richard: You cannot survive as a freelancer if you’re shy, because shyness reads as a lack of self-confidence. So go to Toastmasters, join a club, give speeches, host book reading groups at the library, get over the self-doubt and become confident. Then you can charge higher rates. It’s confidence combined with experience and skill; obviously if you can’t write or can’t deal with people, you won’t survive.

Ghostwriting fiction, and Gators in the Soup

Massiel: We covered why people want a ghostwriter for nonfiction. What about fiction? What problem are you solving?

Richard: Usually they can’t write, or they wrote a manuscript and realized it’s horrible, or they don’t have the time, or a book has sat unfinished for years. When it’s their manuscript, that’s my input instead of interviews, and I charge ghostwriting rates because I’m basically ghostwriting.

Richard: My most touching story: a woman contacted me and offered to buy me lunch at Panera Bread. Meeting her and her family, she struck me as stereotypically living in a trailer park, and I assumed she couldn’t afford a book, no judgment intended. But she could. She’d kept a dream journal her whole life, thousands of handwritten pages, and wanted me to novelize it. Her sister helped me get through it, and we wrote a novel called Gators in the Soup, on Amazon. It took about a year on monthly payments, and she passed away three months after it was finished, but she got her book and was so proud; it was the best thing she ever did. It’s one of the most touching things I’ve done.

The unexpected benefits of ghostwriting

Massiel: What are the unexpected benefits of ghostwriting, versus writing under your own name?

Richard: First is financial: like any freelancer, you charge and get paid as you go, with a down payment and monthly payments, so you avoid the self-published writer’s problem of figuring out how to make money and market it, or the years it takes to break into traditional publishing. Only three of my clients went traditional, and they enjoyed the result but hated the two-year process. Another benefit is I’ve gotten better at marketing, so I now offer marketing help, with the caveat that I’m not a marketer; we start marketing when we start the book, not when it’s published, which works very well.

Richard: And it’s a lot of fun working with different people. About four-fifths of my clients have been men and one-fifth women, which surprises me. Most are C-level businesspeople, VPs, CIOs, CEOs, and founders. I get to work with the CEO of a hundred-billion-dollar company one day and someone in a $50,000 startup the next, one writing about how to be successful and the other about mistakes to avoid. I’ve written for two rock stars; one I can name is David Victor, a lead singer of Boston, who now runs a tech company, and I did his LinkedIn work. Really nice guy.

Learning story structure, and the truth about AI

Massiel: How did you learn the different story structures, nonfiction and fiction, and how do you keep learning?

Richard: Udemy has a lot of classes; always get the specials, a $149 class for 15 bucks, never full price. Writing critique groups are valuable, but avoid the ones full of writers who only critique your grammar; I don’t need a group to check grammar, I need one to make sure the story flows. For grammar I’ll send it to an editor for 10 or 20 bucks, or use Fiverr, which is great for quick amateur work but not for professional jobs. For a real book cover, hire an artist, don’t use stock photos; you’re paying my rates for the book, so what’s an extra $750 for a unique cover.

Richard: As for AI, it’s a crappy writer: passive voice, way too wordy, and detectors flag it, and publishers and Amazon won’t accept AI-written work. There’s a line between AI-generated content and AI-assisted content. I don’t use AI to write or even help write stories; I use it as a small tool to ask whether something makes sense, then I go rewrite it myself. It’s nowhere near good enough to use professionally, and I can spot it. I told a potential client he’d written his site with AI, and he asked how I knew.

Confidentiality, and critique versus criticism

Massiel: Do you use critique groups or outside feedback during the ghostwriting process, or is it entirely between you and the client?

Richard: Client work is confidential, so I don’t use critique groups for it. Ghostwriters who do are violating the ethics of ghostwriting unless they have the client’s permission. I critique my own work, or I’ll ask AI whether something is well written, but you never take client material to a critique group. For grammar, I offer to send it to an editor, who bills the client directly.

Richard: A word about editors: to become a professional, you have to learn to accept criticism, and I draw a line between critique and criticism. Critique is actionable and precise, like, this character reads as a woman to me though you’ve written him as a man; you can act on that. Criticism is, you’re a lousy writer. I accept critique and reject criticism, hard. If a critique group is criticizing you rather than critiquing your work, find a new group. The thing that kills you fastest in any creative field is a negative person around you, and it’s usually subtle, a little word or a sneer that sends you straight to writer’s block and self-doubt. Handle them with kid gloves the first time, an iron glove the second, and out of your life the third.

Advice for people entering ghostwriting

Massiel: You do a chapter a month for a client. For people just entering ghostwriting, how do they scope a project?

Richard: If you have no experience, write your own book first to learn your pacing, your style, and how good a writer you are. Get a writing buddy or a critique group to work out where you each need help. You’re never going to be a ghostwriter if you can’t do what I’m doing right now, which includes active listening, where you shut up and listen. Too many freelancers are thinking of their answer before the question is even asked; clear your mind, hear the question, then answer it. Do that with clients or they won’t come back.

Richard: One way to build these skills is to drill with a partner, not a friend, someone who throws scenarios at you: today I’m the rude client, the Karen who yells at you, and you have to handle it. Drilling is like exercising; you practice the freelancing and writing on someone who isn’t a customer, so you’re not learning on real customers. And nasty shouldn’t be tolerated for long; people get entitled because they’ve been tolerated, so stop tolerating it.

The business side freelancers ignore

Richard: The thing freelancers and ghostwriters must watch is the business side. You have to pay taxes, and generally you pay as you go, setting money aside for the IRS like a job does. Get a business license, which most cities require. Ghostwriting is a service, so you usually don’t charge sales tax, but if you resell books you’ll need a sales tax license. Take a business class; none of this is obvious, because freelancers think of themselves as just a person when they’re actually a business. If you’re big enough, incorporate; it costs a couple grand but can save you five or ten thousand a year in taxes, since corporations are taxed differently. I should take my own advice and incorporate.

Capturing the voice, and recording everything

Massiel: What are some tips for getting the client’s voice as you write?

Richard: Talk to them a lot; schedule interviews, build the time into the contract, and learn not how they speak but how they want the book to speak. You’re learning their ideal of themselves, which is different. One client swears a lot, and I asked if he wanted swearing in the book; he said yes, no more than three swear words a page, and I had him put it in writing.

Richard: I record all meetings, but first be aware of your state’s law; Florida requires permission, and recording someone unaware is a felony. I use Zoom because it announces the recording, and their awareness is all you need. Recording matters because clients won’t remember what they said. If they later want a change, like removing the swearing they approved, the transcript shows they approved it, so it’s a change request I can charge for. Without their permission on record, I’d take it out on my own dime; with it, I charge for it. It’s a book, but it’s also a project and a customer relationship.

Stay in control of the project

Richard: Remember you’re the ghostwriter, the freelancer, the manager of the project, unless you’re working under someone like a marketing director on a blog project, which is the exception. Don’t let the client take control: don’t let them collaborate on the writing, don’t hand it out for them to work on, don’t give review copies early. If you’re not in control, you’re perceived as an amateur.

Massiel: How can you tell when a client is trying to take control?

Richard: They stop meeting milestones, they try to add things to the scope that shouldn’t be added, they talk down to you. You cut that off, because people become entitled when you let them; you’re training them. When they say, add another chapter, you say, that’s an extra cost, it’s extra time. Well, what if we cut down an earlier chapter? That’s fine, then no extra cost, and they haven’t taken advantage of you. Watch the red flags like in dating: if they’re not on their best behavior on the first date, that’s the best they’ll ever be, so kick them out, because they won’t get better and you can’t train them.

Getting the book out, and a TED Talk to conquer

Massiel: When is your ghostwriting book coming out?

Richard: I just started it. The plan is to write the book, do some blogs with it, then a state-level TED Talk and eventually a national one. I have to overcome an extreme, nauseating fear of doing a TED Talk, but I’ll figure it out; I survived marriage, I can survive anything.

Richard: My advice to aspiring writers: don’t start with a novel, that’s a huge bite. Start with a thousand-word short story and enforce that limit, because you’ll be tempted to go over. Pick a prompt, a mermaid falls in love with a centaur, or space aliens attack New York, and do it in a thousand words. Then move up to more stories and articles, and have them reviewed in critique groups. Don’t be surprised if they come back bloody; if they don’t, you’re in the wrong group. Then get a client to write their blogs or marketing copy, keeping in mind that copywriting is very different from writing. Good copywriters can get paid a million dollars a page, because that page generates a hundred million for the company, but that’s a different animal from what I do.

Where to find Richard

Massiel: Where can people find you and your work?

Richard: At thewritingking.com, my home base, where all my articles and contact forms are. You can connect and schedule a talk there or through my LinkedIn. If you have a short writing problem, you can schedule a paid hour of coaching; if you want a full book, schedule a free hour up front and we’ll talk. The website or LinkedIn is really the only way to reach me, and you can get to my LinkedIn from the website.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

Does a ghostwriter need to know the subject already?

No, and none do. The client is always the subject-matter expert, the one who knows the material, while the ghostwriter is the one who writes. Through interviews the writer draws out the information and shapes it, supplemented by research. Richard has written books on subjects like artificial intelligence without knowing anything about them at the start.

How does a ghostwriter capture a client’s voice?

By talking to them a lot, with interview time built into the contract, and by learning not simply how they speak but how they want the book to speak, which is their idealized voice. The first month is spent getting to know each other, and the first chapter is usually rough; through rounds of specific feedback the writing converges on the client’s voice until the ghostwriter is essentially writing as them.

What’s the difference between critique and criticism?

Critique is actionable and precise, a specific observation you can act on, like a character reading as the wrong gender. Criticism is just name-calling, telling someone they’re a lousy writer. A professional learns to accept critique and reject criticism firmly, and to leave any group or relationship that traffics in criticism, because a subtly negative person nearby is what most reliably triggers writer’s block and self-doubt.

What business basics do new ghostwriters overlook?

The fact that they’re a business, not just a person. That means paying taxes as you go, getting a business license, obtaining a sales tax license if reselling books, and considering incorporation once it saves more than it costs. It also means controlling scope creep from the first instance, recording meetings where legally permitted, keeping several clients so you can afford to say no, and staying in charge of the project rather than letting the client take control.