Updated May 2026 to reflect current data. Original recording: October 2015.

Richard Lowe, The Writing King, gave this live talk at the Learn & Earn Money Secrets & Networking Lunch in Clearwater, a plain-spoken buyer’s guide to hiring a ghostwriter: what one is, why a business owner would want a book, how the deal works, what a ghostwriter won’t do, how to tell a professional from an amateur, and what it should cost. It’s one of his earliest recorded talks, and it still reads as the checklist he’d hand anyone shopping for a ghostwriter.

BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATION

The Talk

What a ghostwriter is, and why you’d want a book

Richard opens with the question everyone asks: what does a ghostwriter do? He writes the book; you publish it under your name. On every contract he’s signed, he’s invisible, you’re the author, it’s work-for-hire. So why would a business owner want a book? To brand the business. He describes writing a roughly 100-page book that lays out a client’s whole sales process, complete with stories of who succeeded and who failed, so the client can hand it out and instantly look like the authority. That’s the real power: you set the book on the desk, the prospect says “you wrote a book,” and you’re already halfway to the deal. You don’t make your money selling it on Amazon; you make it using the book to sell everything else.

The other big reason is to record a life. Plenty of people, including ministers and business founders, want their memoirs on the page. He mentions a fellow ghostwriter who wrote the redemption story of a former narcotics runner turned minister, and his own unfinished memoir for an Afghan official who fled the country just ahead of the Soviet invasion, the kind of book someone wants to get down before it’s lost.

A ghostwriter is a project manager

Here’s the criterion most buyers miss: you’re not just hiring a writer, you’re hiring a project manager. A book takes anywhere from six weeks to several years, and over that stretch the ghostwriter has to manage you, the busy client, getting you to sit for interviews you don’t have time for and keeping the whole thing moving. So when you’re evaluating one, watch the meeting itself. Were they on time? Did they run it? Did they set up and manage the interview well? If they can’t manage a single meeting, they can’t manage a months-long project, and you’re done before you start.

What makes a book a book

A book isn’t just a pile of words. Each paragraph should make you want to read the next one; each chapter should pull harder into the one after it; and for a business book, the ending should leave the reader either sold on your service or cleanly disqualified, which is part of the point. The other craft challenge is voice. Richard writes the book as if he were you, so the first few chapters are spent finding that voice, first person or third, stories or straight prose, technical or plain. It’s the same skill behind the most famous ghostwritten books, where the writer disappears entirely into the subject’s voice. Technical books, he notes, are the hardest, there’s simply so much to learn.

How the deal works: the statement of work

It’s work-for-hire. You own the copyright and the finished manuscript; the ghostwriter owns nothing. If the contract ends early, you should get everything done so far, because you paid for it, and a ghostwriter who won’t hand it over has no integrity. The sequence matters. First a one-to-two-hour consultation about your goals, your market, and your readers, and a good ghostwriter won’t even quote a price yet, because they can’t know one. Then comes a statement of work, your contract, spelling out exactly what gets delivered: the topic, the length, the number of phases, the payment schedule, and a termination clause. If a ghostwriter won’t produce a statement of work, or it’s missing any of those pieces, move on. Oral agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

One more protection: build in a re-quote. No one can price a book accurately off a single interview, so a fair ghostwriter gives an estimate, does the first quarter of the work, and then re-quotes against reality. At that point you’re only in for 25% and can continue, scale back, or walk away. Speaking of which, expect to pay around 25% up front, since most ghostwriters are one-person shops, but if anyone asks for more than about 30%, forget it.

What a ghostwriter does not do

This is where unprepared buyers get angry at the end. A ghostwriter writes the manuscript, full stop. They are not your proofreader (grammar) or copy editor (content); you’ll hire those separately, and they’re far cheaper than the ghostwriter. They don’t format for Kindle, paperback, hardcover, or other platforms. They don’t design the cover, you can get a good one cheaply elsewhere, and they don’t build the index or handle graphics, spreadsheets, and photos. And do not ask a ghostwriter to market the book; marketing is a separate discipline built on relationships and networking, and if a ghostwriter offers it, refuse. A ghostwriter is one part of a team, and going in blind to that is how you end up holding a manuscript wondering what to do next.

How to tell if they’re any good

The catch is that ghostwriters work under nondisclosure, so they often can’t show you the actual client books they’ve written. So demand samples anyway: they should have published something, articles, papers, and ideally books on Amazon under their own name. That, Richard says, is exactly why he writes so many of his own books, so a prospect can go read them and judge. No published work at all is a red flag. And check that the samples read differently from one another, because a ghostwriter who can only write in one voice can’t write in yours; five samples that all sound the same are a warning sign. References help when you can get them, but they’re not always available.

What it should cost

Then the part everyone waits for: price. Richard’s flat rule is that shopping for the cheapest ghostwriter is a mistake, because a writer charging far below professional rates is an amateur, a newbie, or desperate. His current rate is a dollar a word, which puts a real book well into the tens of thousands, and that’s the range a serious business book should land in. He started out taking $1,000 projects until he realized it’s just as hard to land a $1,000 client as a $20,000 one, and the small client is usually the bigger headache because they don’t have the money and don’t want to pay. His point to the room: this book carries your name, your face, and your business, so why hunt for the cheapest person? You’re paying for a thing you’ll be stuck with, the way a cheap tattoo announces itself forever. Pay for the best value, not the lowest price, and remember it’s a tax-deductible business expense besides. (Talk to your accountant on that last part; he’s a writer, not one.)

Blogging and the blogged book

Audience question: Is it good to start with blogging?

Richard: Yes, and you can plan it as a blogged book from the start, a regular blog every couple of weeks that’s designed, from day one, to be collected into a book at the end. The catch is you have to intend it up front; trying to bolt two years of scattered blog posts into a coherent book afterward rarely works. On price, blog articles tend to run roughly $100 to $200 each, billed by the month or by the piece, two a month of 600 to 1,000 words on topics you supply. The beauty is you spread the cost over a year or more instead of paying a lump sum, you build readers along the way, and at the end the blog sells the book while the book sells the blog. And yes, he keeps proofreaders, copy editors, and a cover artist on tap for exactly the surrounding work a ghostwriter doesn’t do.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Notable quotes from this talk

Common questions from this talk

How do I know if a ghostwriter is any good?
Demand samples. Because client work is usually under nondisclosure, look for published writing, articles and especially books on Amazon under their own name, and check that the samples read in different voices. No published work, or five samples that all sound identical, are red flags.

What should a statement of work include?
The topic, the length, the number of phases, the payment schedule, and a termination clause. It should describe the project clearly enough that you can say “yes, that’s what I want.” If a ghostwriter won’t produce one, or it’s missing those pieces, walk away.

How much should hiring a ghostwriter cost?
More than you might hope, and that’s the point. A writer charging far below professional rates is usually an amateur or desperate. Richard’s current rate is a dollar a word, which puts a serious book into the tens of thousands. Pay for value, not the lowest price.

What does a ghostwriter not do?
Proofreading, copy editing, formatting, cover design, indexing, graphics, and marketing are all separate jobs handled by other specialists. A ghostwriter writes the manuscript; expecting them to do the rest leads to disappointment.

Can I start with a blog instead of a book?
Yes, and you can plan a blogged book from the start, regular posts designed to be collected into a book later. Articles run roughly $100 to $200 each, you spread the cost over time, and in the end the blog sells the book while the book sells the blog.