Giving Voice to Others: The Engine Behind a High-End Ghostwriting Practice

Updated May 2026 to reflect current data.

Richard Lowe, The Writing King, talks about the work he loves, giving voice to other people’s ideas while they take the credit, and the far less glamorous machine that makes it possible to do that at a high level. The craft is one thing; the system for finding clients, delegating the busywork, and staying accountable turns a freelance gig into a real practice.

The conversation runs from his exit out of corporate technology through the operational pieces most writers never talk about.

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In this episode

Leaving corporate: runway and full commitment

Richard’s advice on going independent is unsentimental. Have a financial runway, enough cushion to survive the slow early stretch, and then commit fully. He’s wary of the comfortable plan B, the safety net that quietly lets you give up the moment things get hard. The point is to commit to the work you actually want to do instead of hedge your way back to the thing you left.

Finding high-paying clients

Good clients don’t materialize on their own, and waiting for referrals isn’t a strategy. Richard runs deliberate lead generation, and one of his main tools is LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, which lets him filter for the kind of executives and entrepreneurs who actually need and can afford a serious book. The work is targeting the right people on purpose, then reaching out, instead of hoping the right people stumble across him.

Scaling with virtual assistants

A one-person practice hits a ceiling fast, so Richard delegates. The key, he says, is that virtual assistants only work when they’re given clear deliverables and measurable metrics, what done looks like and how it’s counted. Vague instructions produce vague results; specific ones free him to spend his hours on the writing and the client relationships that only he can handle. Running the practice this way is part of what it means to treat ghostwriting as a real business. As Richard puts it: “Even though my name’s not on it, I’m still proud of my work, and I’m going to give you the best I can. If there’s something you want more of or something you don’t like, I want to know, so I can fix it.”

Publishing: self versus traditional

Richard has worked across both self-publishing and traditional publishing, and he treats the decision as strategy instead of habit. Each path has trade-offs in control, distribution, and effort, and the right answer depends on what the author actually wants the book to do. It’s also why he’s clear-eyed about how to bring in the right help for the route you choose.

Accountability and ambition

Even disciplined operators drift, so Richard works with a business coach for accountability, an outside party who holds him to the goals he sets. One of those goals is to work with celebrity clients, building on the long tradition in which the most visible books are quietly shaped by a ghostwriter. Putting a name to the ambition, and answering to someone for it, is how the ambition turns into a plan.

In Richard’s words: “Bonnie Dillabough kept talking to me about her dream of writing a book. I asked her what was stopping her. I suggested she set up an interview with Mercedes Lackey, a fantasy author she liked, and Lackey talked with her for about four hours outside the interview. When it was over, Bonnie started writing, and she went on to publish eight books. That’s one of the reasons I’m a ghostwriter, helping people get their message out.” You can hear Bonnie on her own Author Talks episode.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

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