How to Build a Ghostwriting Practice: From a $1,000 First Book to Full-Time | The ET Project

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Wayne Brown on The ET Project for an operational walkthrough of building a professional ghostwriting practice from scratch. Topics: the $1,000 first book about an Afghan politician, the decision to leave the ghostwriting agency and go solo, the marketing problems most freelance writers underestimate, the daily production discipline of 500 words a day across four to five active projects, the tough-client patterns to watch out for, where AI fits and where it doesn’t, and the concrete advice Richard gives anyone who tells him they want to do this for a living. They also discuss his book The Ghostwriting Advantage. If you’re a writer considering ghostwriting as a full-time practice, this is the closest thing to a how-to that Richard has done on a podcast.

The ET Project, hosted by Wayne Brown, is a podcast focused on executive transformation, leadership, and the journeys of professionals navigating major career and craft pivots.

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written 113+ books under his own name and ghostwritten 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.

Wayne Brown: Welcome back to this week’s episode of The ET Project. Today, we’re going to be diving into storytelling and the art of writing, specifically ghostwriting. Now, this is a craft that I’m sure brings a lot of challenges to mind, but a lot of voices to life. And if you’re an author, one of the things that I’m fascinated by is the invisibility of the ghostwriter and how they deal with that.

So, you know, if you’ve ever thought about ghostwriting, writing at all covers every genre, right? Whether it’s from memoirs to science fiction, whether it’s fact, non-fiction, or fictional, whether it’s for politicians, whether it’s for celebrities, whether it’s for people like me, just the commoner, you can imagine we cover every particular or potential genre.

So we’re going to be talking with a gentleman who is extremely gifted. I’ve heard him called a prolific ghostwriter. And looking at the number of books that he’s been involved with, I’d have to concur. Richard Lowe, welcome to the ET Project, Richard. I’m looking forward to having this conversation. I think it’s going to be really interesting for our audience to really understand how you can play a part in their aspiration. And not aspiration in particular, but, you know, in general. I’m really looking forward to unplugging some of these nuances that are going to come up. So, Richard, welcome to the ET Project. Good to have you here. How are you?

Richard: I’m doing very well. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show.

Wayne: Whereabouts are you, by the way?

Richard: I’m in Clearwater, Florida, which is just southwest of Tampa.

Wayne: And I mentioned prolific ghostwriter. Maybe you could fill our audience in. How many books are we talking about?

Richard: My current count is 113+ books written under my own name, 54+ ghostwritten for clients, plus a few books under pseudonyms.

Wayne: And when did you start writing?

Richard: You know, on and off little bits and articles and things through my whole life. But I basically started ghostwriting and anything significant in 2013.

Wayne: So we’re talking 13 years, 54+ ghostwritten books plus 113+ written under your own name. That’s an incredible number. And if we do the simple maths, obviously you’re not writing one at a time. How do you manage to fit all that in?

Richard: Well, it’s 13 years and I fit it in because I don’t write all the books at one time. What I do is I write 500 words a day per book. So that takes an hour per day, maybe two, depending on, you know, what I run into, plus meetings and things like that. So that targets about 2,000 words per week. And then that’s 8,000 to 10,000 words per month. Now I’m leaving time in there for meetings and things, so it doesn’t add up totally. So, you know, 8 to 10,000 words per month in a 60,000-word book, it chugs along. But at that number of hours, I can certainly fit in four books at a time. So I generally work on at least one of my own and three or four of other people’s.

Wayne: It’s quite extraordinary. I’ve written one book and I’ve sort of contributed to another. So, you know, with my meager effort, I’m in awe of what you’ve achieved. Perhaps we can kick off the conversation and just sort of look a little bit about the journey you’ve been on. I read somewhere where you describe it as a long, twisty path. You’ve certainly got a very diverse career prior to writing professionally. You’re a professional in the tech industry. You’ve been at the level of vice president. You’re a gifted photographer from what I understand. How much has all of that shaped the writing that you do today and the role that you play when you’re a ghostwriter?

Origins: A Grandfather’s Story, the Library at Five, and Heinlein

Richard: I think with every creative person, the journey shapes the creativity and vice versa. They work hand in hand. My first ghostwritten book, I use that in quotes, was when I was 17. I wanted to meet my grandfather. He was kind of reclusive and I didn’t really know him. So I sat down and started talking to him, and then I decided to write a book.

Turns out he was in the Yangtze River Patrol in 1938. He was a World War II vet, was captured on Corregidor by the Japanese. He did the Bataan Death March where half of 10,000 people died. And then he spent four years in a Japanese POW camp. So I got to know my grandfather and I found out he was a hero. Now, everybody avoided him because he was cranky and stuff. And I thought after I was done, he’s in the right. He can be as cranky as he wants.

And then after that, you know, had the parent dynamic going on, which was pretty rough. And moved out, had to make a living really fast because nobody prepares you for life at all. Like the concept of paying an electric bill, like what? Just something simple like that. I’m sure everybody has their shocks when they move out, like stuff they have to pay and stuff they have to do. And so making a living and then getting married and having a stepson and going through all the life stuff, writing kind of got put on the back shelf, although I did do articles. Lots and lots and lots of articles in various publications. I was a technical writer for the companies I worked for. Even though I was VP, nobody likes to write. So I did the technical writing.

And then in 2013, I said, oh, to hell with this. And quit my job and moved to Florida, gave up all my dancer and Renaissance faire friends that I was photographing. And there were many, many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of those. And then started up my writing career. It started with LinkedIn profiles. Didn’t like that. Then went to a small ghostwriting company, got a thousand dollars for my first book, which works out to about 50 cents an hour, literally. So gave that up, went and got my own clients and started getting real money, you know, $25,000 a book kind of thing. And then from there, just built up a business and now it’s going strong.

Wayne: Where did the interest in writing come from? Is it something you’ve been doing all your life?

Richard: It came from the early years. My mom really stressed reading and I just picked up writing. My teacher forced me to learn cursive, you know, back then that was normal, but I had to do extra stuff with it. I had trouble with it. And then I had to learn to type, had a lot of trouble with that. And then really kind of just picked it up. I like to tell stories, and that’s what writing is. Good writing is storytelling.

Wayne: I read somewhere that you discovered your love of books at the extreme age of five. How did that come about?

Richard: Well, my mom brought me into a library for the first time, and I fell in love immediately. It was full of books. They had a contest there where you had a piece of paper and you got stickers for each book you checked in after reading them. And I made sure that every week I filled that page with stickers. And I was reading books at adult level such as, you know, the Battle of Iwo Jima and stuff like that. It started with history, loved history, Alexander the Great and all that.

And then my grandmother died and she left a box. And in that box was a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. Now that is not a children’s book. It has very adult themes. And if my mom had known what it was telling me, she would have burned the book. And I read through the whole thing and was fascinated by these new concepts and things. And that was my first science fiction book. I’d read some science fiction stories before that, but that was the first book. Then I subscribed to Analog Magazine. I was excited about science fiction, all those other things, all the greats, loved all that stuff and really got into the reading and just had a love for it ever since.

I don’t read very much now because I do so much writing that picking up a book is like, okay, I’ve been writing all day long.

Wayne: Are you a hard copy person, or do you like the audio books these days?

Richard: Don’t like the audio books at all. I’ve been very strong into the hardcovers. I’m gravitating more towards digital Kindle stuff, because it just takes too much room for the hardcovers and collects dust. You’ve got to dust them and move them around. I’ve moved them all over the country. So this year I did a purge. Got rid of 40% of my books.

Wayne: Wow. Are they your own books we can see in the background?

Richard: Those are some of my favorite books. The one on this side, the yellow ones, is the complete series of every black and white that Charles Schultz did of Peanuts. Next to it is every color one that he did. And then over here is the Eternal Champion series. That’s 50 or so novels. That was expensive. And then next to it is Dennis the Menace and then Simpsons and Dune and all my favorite books, Game of Thrones. So these are my favorite books. And then above is butterflies from a butterfly farm in Africa and one in South America.

Wayne: That you’ve personally captured the butterflies?

Richard: No, there’s a company that sells them. They coat it with a coating of plastic and then put it in these acrylic things because otherwise they would decay. So I found it on butterflyutopia.com. I found that site and had to buy everything.

Twenty Years at Trader Joe’s to Solo in Florida

Wayne: You mentioned a little bit earlier about stepping away from the corporate life. How did you find that? Was it an easy transition or was it something that really troubled you for a period?

Richard: I was not enjoying being part of a company. I mean, Trader Joe’s was a great place to work. I’m not unhappy with my time there. I was there for 20 years and I served as director of technical services and computer operations. I ran basically all the production computer systems. I had a lot of wins there. It was a lot of learning and of course, I made a lot of money and put it into my retirement fund and into savings. So when I left, I had several years of a runway, which I used to prepare myself to survive while I was trying a new career.

The transition was interesting. First of all, I was a photographer, and for eight years, every single year, I photographed dancers and models and things, and I just gave them photographs for free. So as a thank you every year, they threw me a birthday party. So I’d have 100 dancers and a few models and Renaissance faire reenactors come to a hall that I rented, and they would all perform for me, basically. I gave that up. But those were quite fun. You know, having 100 to 200 people perform for you is an interesting thing.

Photography, Dancers, and the Cross-Country Drive

Richard: Then one of the dancers, she’s an Indian Bharatanatyam dancer (I hope I’m pronouncing that right), decided I was not going to travel all the way from California to Florida on my own. So she went with me and had adventures along the way. She flew home. Then she flew back at Thanksgiving because she wanted to show me what a vegan turkey was. And she said, yeah, do you like it? And I said, yeah, it’s okay. And she says, yeah, it tastes just like real turkey. And I’m thinking, first of all, you’re a vegan. How do you know? And second, no, it doesn’t. But it was okay. You know, it’s not something I would eat all the time, but it’s good. She’s a good lady. Wonderful dancer. She was taught by a classical master. They’re called masters of dance.

Wayne: Okay.

You’ve had an interesting journey for sure. If we look at the transition then into writing, I know you talk about one particular story you mentioned earlier, $1,000 for the first assignment. How did it evolve past that point? Like many people would have thrown their hands in the air and said, okay, I’ve probably not on the right course or journey, pathway. What happened?

First Books at $1,000 Each: The Afghan Politician

Richard: Well, I was writing my own book, which I’m still writing because I got distracted, called Peacekeeper. It’s a science fiction book based a million years in the future, and blah, blah, blah. I was attending writing critique groups, and then I ran into a ghostwriter who had his own company. He was looking for writers, and he hired me. I wrote three books for him for $1,000 each, basically, give or take.

And one of them was for an Afghan politician who was a politician in Afghanistan before the Soviets invaded, before the Taliban even existed. And he’s responsible for building all the roads and things. Okay. I wrote, we never finished it, but I wrote his book. I remember having to do like 16 hours of interviews in one day because he was flying back to Afghanistan through an interpreter. That was an interesting project. Couple of other projects, finished the books.

Like I said, it just wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t enough money. It wasn’t the right environment. And I was getting very discouraged. So I said, okay, I’m going to go off on my own because I still had substantial savings.

So I started writing my own books. My idea was: ghostwriters can’t show what they’ve written. So I better have my own books in a portfolio. Well, I went crazy. I always go crazy. I wrote dozens of books on just about everything, from fiction to business, to relationships, coloring books, puzzle books. I did a little bit of everything. And they’re all out there on Amazon.

And then I started getting my clients. I got a client the day after I left the ghostwriting company, I got a client for $15,000, and then a couple of days later another one for 10,000, which was like, oh boy, wow, that was easy. It turned out that that was easy and it actually isn’t that easy because then getting future clients was hard. But it sure was fun writing those first books. And I really got the taste of it, getting it done and seeing the look on their face. Well, they’re all remote through Skype at the time, not Zoom. There was no Zoom back then.

Building the Practice and Learning to Market

Wayne: I can imagine the whole ghostwriting process isn’t all glamorous. I can imagine there are a number of challenges that come along with it in dealing with clients, in trying to understand their needs, their desire, and put that down on paper. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced through this period?

Richard: Well, let me give you several. The biggest challenge of all is I was never trained as a marketer or an advertiser or salesperson. So the biggest challenge was simply, first of all, recognizing that I needed to market myself, and then how do I do it? And it’s something I’ve struggled with the whole time. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at talking to people and can work with them and manage the business.

About the middle of last year, I realized, okay, I don’t like doing this. I don’t want to do this. I’m not good at it. So I hired a company, went through several, and finally hired a company called Allura Creative that is doing part of my marketing. I actually got a taste for it and said, okay, I actually do like this. I’m doing my own podcast now and graphics and all kinds of stuff. I just realized I became a marketer all of a sudden.

Marketing is not sales. And that’s something I hadn’t realized. Marketing is letting the public know who you are, what you are, what you represent, how you can help them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s more of a branding thing. Sales is where you get the people who come in, or you go get them and you talk them into making a purchase. Prospecting is where you go get them. So I had to learn all three of those. Those are difficult, and still are. But I’ve managed to put together the right teams and I’ve learned how to do it. This year I’m doing much, much better at it and having more fun at it. It’s not so much of a sand-in-my-eyes kind of thing, or trying to chew glass. It’s more of, okay, I can do this and doing it right. That’s one challenge.

Then the next challenge is getting customers. My ghostwriting is a high-ticket item. It’s not a cheap thing. So getting customers from that point of, “I want to do a book,” to “let’s go, we’re going to start now,” getting them over that hump, it took me a while to realize that’s not a one-day process like you would expect or two days or a week. It can take months or even years. I’ve got people who I’ve talked to two years ago who come in and say, “Yeah, I’m ready to go now.” I’m thinking, who are you? But I talked to them two years ago. And that’s odd. You have to get used to that. The cycle is long and it requires a lot of touch points and a lot of work to get them through that decision.

Wayne: And then I think you have a program you offer along those lines, right, to help people understand exactly what they want to do?

Richard: Yeah, I have a Book Feasibility Intensive that runs $4,000 [Ed.: the price is now $5,000]. Basically, we spend several hours intensely talking about your idea and who your audience is and grind it down to: this is the idea and the audience that you want to sell your idea to in your book. And then from there, you can decide, do you want to proceed with ghostwriting or do you want to do it on your own or whatever. The idea is most people come in saying, I have an idea for a book. I want to do this and this and this, but they don’t have anything more than that. This helps bring them down to the level of, okay, I know exactly what I want to do and I know exactly who’s going to buy it.

Tough Clients: Revenge Memoirs and FBI Informants

Wayne: So there’s a couple of challenges. Any other major issues jump out at you?

Richard: Oh, yeah. This challenge comes on both sides of the sale. On one side of the sale, you get the people who want to get revenge. So they want to write what I call a revenge memoir or revenge book. Say they had a nasty divorce or they had a nasty firing. There was one person who was put in prison by somebody, and they want to write a book to get revenge. I don’t do those because they’re nasty. They’re hard. You’re dealing with a lot of emotion, a lot of anger and stuff, and sometimes you’re running into legal issues. So I typically won’t do those. Not that I won’t do a memoir that has, you know, negative things in there. That’s fine. But when it’s specifically to get revenge, I don’t do those.

I had one potential client contact me many years ago who said he was a confidential informant for the FBI or something. Forget exactly which. And he wanted to name names of everybody who was, you know, agents and everything. I said, no. He said, “Well, I’ll give you a couple hundred thousand dollars for it.” And I said, no, I can’t spend your money with a bullet in my head. Sorry.

So that’s one side of the sale. On the other side, I learned that it’s very important to have clients that you can get along with and that can get along with you. Like any sale, and this is creative, so any kind of artistic person is going to run into this. You run into people who you just can’t work with. I would say 95% of my clients have been wonderful people. And some, you know, we all speak like adults and we work things out. There’s always the few percentage, like any business, where it just goes south and there’s nothing you can do about it.

And those can be interesting to deal with. You just gotta power your way through it and figure out, do you want to continue in this or not? There’s been a couple where I’ve said, “We’re basically not going to work together here. Well, let’s just go both ways.” And the client says, “Yeah, you’re right.” And every time, you know, we stop.

The Process: Interviews, Voice, Editing, and Timeline

Wayne: But what happens, as a ghostwriter, does the book still go through the editing process? Or are you then responsible for the editing? How does the whole process work in that regard?

Richard: Well, what I do is I write the book and I do the analysis upfront with my client. So we do a lot of interviews to figure out what it is, what the ideas are, and the outlines and all that kind of stuff. And then I write the book. When the book’s done, then it goes off to an editor.

Now there’s two ways. There’s traditional publishing. If you want to do traditional publishing, you’re talking about a one-to-two-year delay on your publication date and a high probability that no publisher is going to accept it. Self-publishing, you hire an editor. Traditional publishing does their own editing. You get an editor with it. Self-publishing, you get your own editor, you work with them. And I help guide my clients to the editor, but I don’t do the editing. Editing is very different than writing.

Wayne: Yeah, right?

Richard: Yeah. When I write, of course, I may. I’m doing some editing as I go, and you get a good, solid, clean first draft. But it’s not gonna be, or even second draft, but it’s not gonna be printable quality. Most ghostwriters will do the same thing, then hand it off to an editor. Some try and edit themselves. I don’t. I like having a different person. Editors are relatively inexpensive.

Wayne: Yeah.

Richard: Then you also need a book cover artist and some other pieces to make your finished work.

Wayne: There’s typically different forms of editing as well, if I understand correctly. So you don’t necessarily just have the one editor, you may have two or three.

Richard: Well, what I’d like to do is find an editor who does them all in one package. So you get the proofreading, the spelling checking, the copy editing, line editing, all these different kinds of editings in one thing. Not developmental editing, usually. That means your book has to be redesigned, basically. That’s a rougher task. Never had a client who needed that at the stage where we’re done. That’s something you usually want to do along the way if you’re having trouble. Actually, really haven’t run into developmental editors at all. So I’m a little fuzzy on it. But yeah, you do have different kinds. I like to find one that does it all together in the same package.

Wayne: Okay. So let’s just say I want to write a book. I have this great idea, but I don’t have the time. I’m not a writer, and I hear about Richard, and I think, okay, there’s my solution. I start talking with you, what’s the process look like? How long does it take to get to the point where you’re able to start putting pen to paper?

Richard: Well, after the contract’s signed and so forth, the process is we have a whole bunch of meetings, usually three or four a week for the first few weeks, but depending on the size of the book it would be less for a smaller book. We’re getting down to: I want to get your heart and your soul and your passion. I want to find out what that is. That could take a bit of time because you might say it’s X, but it’s actually Y. So I ask a bunch of questions to work my way through it until we get to, yeah, my passion is blah, blah, blah. And where their heart is, their voice, all these different kinds of things.

I want to get all of those things. Their voice I can get through various writings they’ve done. I can get through the interviews. I had one client who liked to curse a lot, curse really a lot. I said, “Do you want the book to curse?” He said, “Yeah.” Well, maybe not as much as I do, but yeah. So that’s what I look for: what’s the voice? How do they talk? How do they want the book to talk? Do they want it to talk like them or do they want it to talk like their grandfather? You know, could be any number of things.

Wayne: What sort of time are you talking? Does it take a month, two months? Depends on the individual, I’m guessing, but could it take that long before you can get started?

Richard: Well, for a 60,000-word book, it can take two to four weeks to get through that. It depends on how the interviews go. Sometimes it could take one week, sometimes it could take four. Once that’s done, then we start writing.

I generally like to write the first chapter and then the last chapter, and then come back and redo the first chapter and then go forward until I get to the last. When I hit the last, I’m going to have to redo it. I know that. But the point is that I know where we’re going. I know where the end game is. It depends on the book. I don’t always do that. The last chapter is usually the conclusion, and it’s usually pretty short. If it’s fiction, it’s going to be different. It’s going to be the last chapter, the conclusion, which might not be the last chapter of the book. It might be fifth to last, because there’s usually, you know, like in Lord of the Rings, you’ve got to wind down all the stories. That’s not the last. You don’t want to write, I write the conclusion, the big battle.

Wayne: How much research do you have to do as the writer versus the actual person who wants the book written? How does that work?

Richard: Generally, the client is responsible for research with my assistance. So if it’s a book about blockchain, I’m going to expect them in the interviews to talk to me about blockchain and point me to various publications or things that I need to read. There’s a limit to what I can do. I can’t read, you know, a whole five books or even a whole book. So I tell them, tell me which chapters of the book are important for your book, or tell me which parts of this article are good. And then I’ll read those. I typically will depend on the customer for that. They’re the knowledge expert. I am the writer. And if it’s a lot of research, it’ll get outsourced to somebody who does research.

Wayne: Okay. Yeah. So typically, are we talking a six-month assignment? Could it be 12 months? What’s your experience?

Richard: A 10,000-word book could probably be finished within a month or two. A 60,000-word book could be eight months to 12 months, and only that long because I’ve got multiple clients. I can do them faster. That has a higher fee because I have to push other customers out of the way and take less work on. And I’ve done that. I’ve had clients come in and say, I want it in 3 months. You want a 100,000-word book in 3 months. Yep. You realize I’m going to charge it 2 and a half times my normal rate. Yep. Okay. And I specifically charge a high rate for that because I don’t really want to do that. I want to take longer. But they want it fast, and it’s okay. Then you know that’s what it is. And I’ve had a couple of those.

Juggling Projects and the AI Question

Wayne: Have you found, you mentioned before about the sales and the marketing side, and this is every entrepreneur’s nightmare to some extent, but have you found maintaining a constant stream of people wanting books written to be a challenge, or has that tended to flow relatively well?

Richard: It was a challenge. The challenge is that I tended to focus on the sales part. So when you’re focused on the sales part, you’re going out there and you’re grabbing the obvious, the low-hanging fruit, as I like to call it. You’re, oh, this guy needs a book. You talk to him. He says yes, you go. Those require work to find and they’re not prepped. They’re not ready for it. So when I added the marketing phase, it becomes more steady because these people are coming to my podcast, coming to my group meetings, they’re involved with me. They’re getting to know me. We’ve probably had a couple of talks. We’re in the same networking groups. This is all marketing stuff. So we learn to like each other. And then they know that I’m the ghostwriter they want. And then they go with me. And it becomes a much more steady flow of work when you do the marketing side. If you don’t do the marketing side, it becomes especially bad around the end of the year, especially around elections.

Wayne: Yeah. So your experience at end of last year?

Richard: From August until just last month, dead as a doornail. Nothing. Now that I’m grooving in the marketing, I’m getting more and more inquiries and more and more people coming on board. Unfortunately, I’m aware of the up and down. So I’ve got the depth of finances to be able to have a few months where I’ve got nothing coming in. That’s very important when you’re a freelancer, any kind of freelancer. You’re going to have dry times. Make sure you’ve got the money in the bank.

Wayne: Yeah, I think that can apply to just about every business as well, right? It’s one of those things.

How do you, obviously working on multiple stories, and I’m guessing not all nonfiction at the same time, not all fiction at the same time, how do you keep the storyline in your head or how do you capture that and be able to maintain that?

Richard: I just do. I just do a, computer people call it a context switch. We’re working on one thing and then go off, take a walk, come back, and I’m working on something else. So in the morning, I might be working on a science fiction book for a rock star. The second half of the morning, I might be working on a book about blockchain. Then the third half, I’m doing marketing stuff. The fourth, maybe three hours, I’m doing a book on AI. And then I finish up the evening by doing my science fiction book or my collection of short stories. I’m working on a collection of short stories too.

Wayne: Incredible. You mentioned AI, and of course, I have to ask, I mean, it’s impacting every industry, every line of business, and I’m sure writing is no exception. Books in particular is no exception. You know, what’s the impact it’s having for you or for book writing in general?

Richard: By the way, I purposely laid out that seed for you.

It’s been interesting. AI cannot write a good book for you. It can write a book for you. It can write a decent book for you. Can it write a book that has your passions, your heart, your soul, everything you want in it? No, it can’t do that. But what it can do, if you just want a book, all you want is a book, you don’t care that it’s mediocre to okay quality, then yeah, use AI. It’s going to have inconsistencies, it’s going to have false data because AI hallucinates. It lies. I even ask it sometimes, “Are you lying there?” Oh, yeah. It says, yeah, I’m lying. Okay, thank you.

So you have to be careful with that. If you want a book that actually will, say, become a bestseller or make you look the best that you can, you want a human author. And if you can’t do that, you want at least to have a human editor who edits a deep edit. I do offer that kind of work where I’ll write a book with AI and then I’ll do a deep edit on it. That’s part of my professional writing services.

Wayne: And that’s actually what I was thinking about: do people come to you these days where they’ve pulled a book off the internet, essentially through AI, and they say, now make this something that I can be proud of?

Richard: Well, they come to me like that. I don’t generally take those kinds of projects because then I’m mixing somebody else’s ideas with my ideas with their ideas, and it becomes very weird. And then it also becomes weird with figuring out what’s been plagiarized and what hasn’t. AI tends to plagiarize. So you have to be careful of that too. Plagiarism is deadly when you write a book. If it hits big, you’re going to become a target for legal stuff. So don’t plagiarize. Don’t steal other people’s work. AI is famous for stealing other people’s work.

But I do offer this kind of work as part of my professional writing services because it makes the project much cheaper and you will get a decent quality book. It won’t be as high a quality as if I wrote it from scratch, meaning not anywhere near it, but it will be something that you’d be happy to put your name on.

Wayne: I remember when we first started talking, you said quite often you write a book and then you use AI to test the characters, etc.

Richard: The appropriate place for AI in writing, or in any kind of creative industry or most industries, is as a digital assistant. You can think of it as a digital employee. So you’ve got your AI off to the side. I have it on my other screen here next to me. Actually, I sometimes have it on both. And you say, okay, here’s this chapter. I just wrote this chapter. What do you think of it? And it says, well, it’s pretty good except for this and this and this and this. Okay, fine, I’ll fix those. And then you come back to it. Now we think, well, it looks good now, except you’ve got some spelling errors, you’ve got some grammar errors, and you’re inconsistent here and so forth. Finally get it polished up.

Then you say, how does it fit with the last chapter? Well, it doesn’t. Okay. Why not? Well, AI’s already going to tell you, it’s real chatty. It’s annoying because it’s like, oh, here’s all the reasons. I just want you to tell me yes or no.

And then you ask it questions like, okay, say it’s a fiction novel, do the characters remain in character through the whole book? Or is this the right characterization for that century that the book’s written in? You can ask it any kind of questions you want about that. And it finds the patterns, it’ll tell you. You can do that over and over and over again until you have it perfect.

So you could say, for example, would this get a 10 out of 10 on a writing contest? And it’ll say, no, it gets an 8 out of 10, and here’s why. Okay, what do I need to do to make it a 10 out of 10? We’ll do all this stuff. Then you say, okay, fine, I’ve done all that stuff. And it says, okay, now it’s an 8.5 out of 10. Why don’t you tell me all that? And then you got to do it again. You do it iteratively. You do it over and over and over.

Advice for Aspiring Writers and The Ghostwriting Advantage

Wayne: I can imagine we’ll get to a point where it’s going to become even more iterative. Maybe not in the foreseeable couple of years, but I can imagine we’re going to get to that point.

I was thinking while you were talking about that, what is some advice you would give to an aspiring writer who’s just starting out? They’ve never written a book. How do they sit down and put a framework together or put their concept down so they can actually start to write? Would you have any advice for those types?

Richard: Well, the first advice is probably advice a lot of writers will give: just put your butt in the chair and write. And that comes from Mercedes Lackey, who’s a fantasy writer. Just put your butt down in the chair and start writing, because you’re not going to learn to be a writer unless you’re writing.

Now, you could start with your journal. You could start with any kind of thing, write a page or two or three or four a day, every single day. Just keep writing. I’ve got a book down here. It’s called The Write Book or something like WRIT, and it’s a book of exercises. Maybe I can give you the title and you can put it in the description. It’s got a whole year’s worth of exercises like, okay, now write a story focusing on the person’s face, and now write a story focusing on the person’s arms, and now in motion, and now interacting with other characters. So it builds on things until finally you’re writing real stories. Those kinds of things are awesome because they’re very practical-oriented.

I tend to avoid writing classes, but for some people they can be very useful, especially if writing. I mean, I have been writing most of my life, but if you haven’t been a writing class could be very good. You can pick some, I pick online one-on-one classes or one-on-four kind of classes. Wouldn’t do more than one-on-four. Don’t do the prerecorded ones. Pay the money and have somebody actually train you. And I do offer writing coaching, which is another way to do it. Find a writing coach. So if you can’t afford a ghostwriter, you can hire me and I’ll coach you through your book. I won’t write it. I’ll coach you.

Wayne: Sounds like a nice middle ground from going from being the absolute writing by myself without any guidance through the handing over to a ghostwriter. Finding this coach in the middle sounds like quite a smart way to go.

Richard: Well, yeah. In the writing coaching, we’ll work through your idea first, and then we’ll hone that down, come up with an outline together, and then we’ll work through your first chapter, and then you’ll write maybe a couple pages, and I’ll critique it. We’ll go back and forth. It generally takes a while, but it depends on how much work you want to do on it. If you want to write a chapter a week or a chapter a month, we’re going to be moving at a pretty good clip. Some authors come in and they do a chapter every couple of months. Some authors come in and they do a chapter a week. It can be very intense coaching. And of course, it’s charged by the hour in that case. And however many hours you want to spend a week, you get charged for, and then we work together. But you write the book is the point.

Wayne: Okay, okay. And does that cover grammar as well as storyline, or is it sort of dependent on what they’re meaning?

Richard: We’re focused on the writing and the story, not grammar and pronunciation. Now, if you don’t speak good, I’m an English speaker, so if you don’t speak good English, relatively good, or you don’t write good English, I probably won’t take you on as a client because I’m not in the business of teaching you how to write in English. You’re gonna have to take some classes on that. I’ve had that happen before, where I wound up teaching them, you know, for my rates, teaching them how to conjugate verbs and things was ridiculous. I said, go take some classes over here, those are recorded, and then come back, and then we’ll write together.

Wayne: Right. Now, I believe you are just about to release another book. When does this one hit the shelves and what’s it about?

Richard: It comes out on April 24th and it’s called The Ghostwriting Advantage. I’m having a book launch party on April 24th at 7 p.m. So if you go to my LinkedIn, you’ll find it under my events.

The book is about ghostwriting from the client side. So you want to write a book. This tells you everything you need to know from the initial idea all the way to publishing, all the different ways to publish, all the different things you need to know. It’s really in-depth so that if you read it, you can walk into a ghostwriter, say me, and you will know what you’re getting into, you’ll know all the pieces and everything, and you can keep it as a reference as you go through. So it’s intended to be everything you need to know about hiring a ghostwriter and working with them. It’s long, but it’s well worth it, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Wayne: What is the primary reason you find from your clients that they engage you as a ghostwriter? Is it because of time? Is it because they just can’t get the idea down on the page? Is there a primary reason?

Richard: Time is the main reason. They simply don’t have the time. So a CFO will come to me or a CMO or a CTO, all these different C-levels will come to me and say, I want to write this book about the cloud. I’ve got this idea, blah, blah, blah. That’s unique, I think. And I simply don’t have the time to do it. And I’ll say, good, that’s the perfect reason to hire me. So then they come to me, we negotiate and come up with a contract, and then we start writing. That’s my number one client.

Number two is the person who may have the time, may not, who doesn’t have the writing experience, but they know they need a book to raise themselves up to a new level. Coaches. If you look at coaches, the ones who are actually making it, they have a book. Most of them have a book. Why do they have a book? Because it’s their authority, it’s their credibility. So if you want to be a coach, and a lot of people are becoming coaches because they’re becoming unemployed and they’ve got to do something. Putting “I’m a coach” on LinkedIn and then getting hourly rates seems like a good way to make a business, except that there’s a million of them. Everybody else has the same idea. So how do you make yourself different? You get a book. And I write those kinds of books.

The third kind of book I write is senior legacy books. So if you’re a senior and you want to write a legacy, I write those.

Wayne: It’s a fascinating field, Richard, and as you said, more and more people are sort of turning to this direction. So I can only imagine that you’re going to be busy for some years in the future. I look forward to connecting maybe in a couple of years and seeing whether you’ve cracked the 2,000 books mark or where you’re up to. Really interesting conversation. Where’s the best place for people to connect with you and follow what you’re doing or find out how to work with you?

Richard: First of all, they can find me on LinkedIn at Richard Lowe, my picture’s there, so it should be easy to spot. Or at thewritingking.com.

Wayne: All right. Well, thank you, Richard. And you mentioned another thing we’ll put in the show notes as well. Great conversation. I’m sure there’s a lot of listeners out there who have been thinking about writing a book or who have thought about it, daunted by the prospect of it. Well, here’s an avenue. I don’t want to put people off, but of course, it’s not going to be that cheap. It’s not a five-minute job and it’s not a $5 job. So people need to be ready.

Richard: There’s a good reason why people don’t start books. They’re not easy. I do offer a 30 to 60 minute free consultation. So if you just go to my website, set up a time, we’ll talk about your idea, and then we can decide. Then you can decide, yes, I want to go or no, I don’t.

Wayne: All right, fantastic. Well, thank you, Richard. Great having you on the show.

Richard: Okay, thanks.

Wayne: So what are you waiting for? Hit the subscribe button below and click on the bell icon so I can pop up in your feed occasionally with a great tip for your ultimate role.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take a ghostwriter to write a full-length book?

A 10,000-word short book takes roughly one to two months. A 60,000-word business book or memoir typically takes eight to twelve months when the writer is balancing multiple active projects. Fast-track timelines exist (a 100,000-word manuscript in three months has been done), but the premium is roughly 2.5x normal rate because other clients have to be deprioritized. The interview phase alone takes two to four weeks before drafting begins.

How does a ghostwriter run four or five book projects at once without losing the threads?

Discipline plus context switching. Richard writes 500 words a day per book, which works out to roughly an hour of focused writing per project. A working day moves through several projects in turn: an hour on one manuscript, a break, an hour on the next, marketing time in the middle, evening writing on a personal project. The 500-word daily anchor is what keeps four or five books in motion at the same time without any one of them stalling.

Can AI replace a ghostwriter for a business book?

For a book that needs to carry an executive’s actual voice, judgment, and authority, no. AI produces decent-quality prose but cannot reach the author’s heart, soul, and passion the way real interviews and collaborative drafting do. AI also hallucinates, invents facts, and tends to plagiarize, which becomes a serious legal risk if the book sells well. Where AI does help: as a digital assistant during the writing process for chapter feedback, consistency checking, and iterative revision. There’s also a place for a hybrid path where AI drafts and a human editor does a deep pass, available through professional writing services.

What’s the difference between full ghostwriting and writing coaching?

Full ghostwriting means the ghostwriter does the writing. The author provides interviews, expertise, and feedback, and the ghostwriter delivers the manuscript. Writing coaching means the author does the writing while the coach guides the idea, the outline, the chapter structure, and gives critique on drafts. Coaching is charged by the hour instead of per project, which makes it more affordable for authors who want to write the book themselves but need an experienced ghostwriter walking alongside them.