The Secret Weapon Behind Powerful Books: What a Premier Ghostwriter Does Differently | The Drew Sutton Leadership Show

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins leadership coach Drew Sutton to unpack what actually sits behind a powerful book: the ghostwriter, and specifically what separates a premier, high-touch ghostwriter from a commodity service running on AI. Richard explains why the up-front work matters, why farmed-out cheap books disappoint, what he’s learned across more than a hundred books, and how a finished book becomes the foundation of an author’s authority and marketing. He also tells the story of the client whose retirement bought a lifelong dream, and the executive whose book raised tens of millions.

The Drew Sutton Leadership Show is hosted by Drew Sutton, a leadership coach with an operations background.

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 and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

Drew Sutton: Welcome back to the Drew Sutton Leadership Show. Today we have Richard Lowe, a premier ghostwriter with 113+ books and multiple bestsellers, a former Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s, and founder of the Ghostwriting Guru. I’m a leadership coach, and I run into a lot of people offering to get your book done for $4,000 using ChatGPT. You do something different. What’s the difference between a ghostwriter and a premier ghostwriter?

What a Premier Ghostwriter Does Differently

Richard: I spend a lot of time up front, and I don’t use AI to write the book. My goal is to understand you, who your audience is and what they want, what you want and why, and then to get your heart into the story. ChatGPT and low-cost ghostwriters don’t do that, they’re just trying to produce the piece. I want to understand your stories, your passions, your goals, and weave them through the book so the reader goes, oh my God. That’s what premier ghostwriters do, they go after the heart and soul of the person and put it into the book.

Drew: The general package is, come on a show, we take the transcript, somebody changes the voice, and you’re done. That’s appealing, but having someone really dig into your life’s work and tease out the meaningful lessons is a different service.

Why Cheap, Farmed-Out Books Disappoint

Richard: Let me answer something you didn’t ask. Those services sound great because they do everything for a low price, but a lot of that fee goes to overhead and the rest gets split among multiple ghostwriters, plural, because they farm out pieces. Those writers are paid peanuts and often aren’t native English speakers. You get a book that’s okay, but not one that shows you off as a thought leader, the kind you look at and wish you hadn’t done. One of my clients researched one of those book-in-a-box-type services, that’s a type, not a specific company, and called every testimonial on their site. Every single one gave him a negative review. So check the testimonials before you put your money down.

Drew: A quick disclaimer: I have friends in the get-your-first-book-written space who are excellent, so if five or six figures isn’t your budget, there are good services and I’m happy to point you to them. But what’s cool about Richard is the high-touch premium work. Why did you get into this?

An Origin Story at 17

Richard: Back when I was 17, I wasn’t a writer. My grandfather was getting Alzheimer’s, and everyone said he was too persnickety to bother with, but I decided to get to know him before it was too late. It turned out he was a war hero, and I wrote his story into a book we never published. After that I was hooked on writing. Then I had to make a living, went into the computer industry for 33 years, and at the end of it decided I was done with corporate. I lived off savings for a while, went into ghostwriting, and now I make a better living than I did in tech, doing my passion.

The Client Whose Retirement Bought a Dream

Richard: My favorite story is my best client. An older woman found me online, and we met at a restaurant. I assumed from the start they couldn’t afford much, a humble couple. She’d used her retirement because she wanted to write a book, so I gave her a cut rate. She handed me a thick stack of transcripts and said, I want this to be a novel. I hired someone to transcribe it, and we wrote a book called Gators in the Soup, on Amazon, about gators on a magical journey through a Florida full of magic, talking to the animals, getting into conflicts. It was her dreams. The look on her face still brings tears to my eyes. Her sister loved it too, even though it came out of the inheritance. She was almost 80 and passed away three months later from COVID, but she got her dream before she died. Clients have told me it’s almost like the first time you hold a baby in your hands. That’s why I do it.

Drew: You’ve written over a hundred books. Did you ever think you’d get that far?

A Hundred Books in Thirteen Years

Richard: Those books are across 13 years, so about ten a year. I never really thought I’d get this far, it just evolved. A 60,000-word thought-leader book takes eight to twelve months, so I keep three to six going at once and rotate them through the day, a steady daily stint on each. I have to keep that pace or I fall behind.

Drew: Any lessons from over a hundred books for people who want to start one?

Outsource Everything Except the Writing

Richard: First lesson: hire a ghostwriter, it’s a lot of work. Beyond that, use other people to fill the gaps where you lack the knowledge. I’m a ghostwriter, not a marketer, so I hired a marketing company. I’m not an editor, so I hired an editor, editing is a different side of the brain, and I don’t do it well. For an audiobook, hire someone to narrate, you can hire a high-end actor for less than you’d think next to the cost of the writing. Outsource the business pieces and the things you don’t do well, but don’t outsource the writing, that’s the job. The other lesson is to really listen to the customer and get their goals embedded in the book so it stays pinpoint accurate and doesn’t wander. If you’re writing a memoir, you don’t want the whole life, you want the story that threads through the life. Nobody wants a Game of Thrones-sized book about someone’s life, unless it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s done one or two things.

Drew: A CEO or VP listening might say, I have the cash and the content. How should they organize their thoughts before coming to you?

Don’t Prepare, Just Brainstorm

Richard: Believe it or not, don’t. They have an idea, so they come to me and we set up a brainstorming engagement, by the hour in a block, where we hammer the book out together, back and forth. It takes time, because you’ll have fixed ideas about what you want, but is that what your audience wants? We get on the whiteboard and have good conversations, sometimes heated ones, and by the end you go, yes, this is what I want the book to be about. Then we proceed, or not, depending on what you want.

Drew: How many bestsellers do you have?

Richard: Two of my own, on the Kindle list, and three clients with traditional publishers like Wiley, each selling around 20,000 copies and hitting their goals. One client used his book to raise $30 million in venture capital, the book was the credibility he submitted with the proposal.

The Book Is the New Business Card

Drew: In the coaching space we talk about building authority. It used to be a business card, then flyers, then a website. What about the idea that your book is the new business card, that you won’t be taken seriously without one?

Richard: Absolutely correct. Look at coaches, the ones with books put them proudly in their banners. If you don’t have one, you’re considered less than the coaches who do, because the thinking is, if you were good, you’d have a book. A book lets someone preview your process before or while they talk to you, and it lets the press find you and gets you speaking engagements. The press loves books.

Drew: I told engineers the same thing about checklists. You’re an expert, so don’t you have a process? It’s in my head. Then let’s put it on paper. We don’t want surgeons to wing it in the chest cavity, we want a practiced process. Writing a book proves you have one.

Richard: Exactly. It proves you know what you’re doing well enough to write a book on it that others can understand. Now you’ve got the authority, the credibility, and the press eats it up. But it’s a marketing tool in your toolbox, and you have to use it.

The Book as a Six-Month Campaign

Drew: So I’ve got my book back. What do I do with it?

Richard: Before we even finish, you start promoting. As we write, we do weekly posts showing your writing journey, and you can name me as your writing coach or advisor, or not, since I’m generally anonymous, but sometimes naming me works well. That builds buzz. We do a pre-release about 45 days out so people can start to buy, then a launch party, as many people as you want, ideally over a thousand, spread across both coasts so four hours long, with some high-powered guest authors, giveaways, and book sales. Then use the book: send it to the press, into press releases, to the speaker circuit. Anywhere you want to speak, mention you have a book and send copies. Send it to clients and prospects, put it on your website. And pull content from it for blogs, articles, video scripts, and speeches. It’s the foundation of all your marketing material.

Drew: What’s your podcast, so folks can find it?

Richard: Conversations With Influencers, on YouTube. It’s an ad hoc show, I record as I find influencers.

Who You Are Is Who You Attract

Drew: Let me read a John Maxwell law: the law of magnetism, who you’re is who you attract. Your thoughts?

Richard: Very true. There’s a great book from the 90s by Larry Winget, People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It, and one of his points is to surround yourself with people above your level. If you want to be a millionaire, start hanging out with millionaires, without dropping your existing friends. I’ve been doing that, and it works wonders. Last year I joined a networking group, Eliances, filled with high-caliber people, about 60 every week, and it’s been fantastic for leads and connections. When you find a group with the right power level, it’s amazing what comes out of the woodwork, and of course you turn around and do things for others too. That’s part of the game.

Drew: As you climb, higher-level people put gates around themselves. Early in my career that frustrated me, but now I understand we don’t have time to meet just anybody, and a book helps pre-qualify you.

Richard: A book proves you’ve succeeded and helps you pre-qualify people.

Drew: We’re nearly out of time, so the floor is yours. What should the audience hear?

The Secret Most Powerful Books Share

Richard: Consider that most books by celebrities and high-powered people weren’t written by them. Do you think busy billionaires have the time or know how to write a book? They use a ghostwriter, and most celebrity and political memoirs are ghostwritten. My favorite wrestler is an exception, Mick Foley, known as Mankind, who wrote his own biographies and they’re great, he’s a comedian now and funny as heck. So if you really want to get ahead: write a book. Or rather, don’t write a book, hire a ghostwriter to write it with you. It’s a collaboration, and it has to be, or you’ll get a book that isn’t quite what you want.

Drew: And as you write, you clarify in your own mind what your purpose, message, and audience are.

Richard: Exactly. I’ve done several coaching books where, by the time we’re done, the client’s coaching process has totally changed. It helps their marketing too, because now they have something to market with.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Quotable moments

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a premier ghostwriter different from a cheap one?

A premier ghostwriter spends significant time up front understanding the author, their audience, and their goals, and writes the book themselves without AI, working to get the person’s heart and stories onto the page. Low-cost services spread the fee across overhead and multiple farmed-out writers, producing a book that reads fine but doesn’t establish the author as a thought leader.

How can you vet a ghostwriting service?

Check the testimonials. Richard had a client who researched a book-in-a-box-style service and called every testimonial listed on its site, only to get a negative review from each one. The lesson is to verify the references a service publishes instead of taking the polished sales pitch at face value.

What should an author outsource?

Everything except the writing. Richard outsources marketing, editing, audiobook narration, video, and graphics, noting that editing uses a different part of the brain and that even a high-end actor to narrate an audiobook costs little next to the writing. The author’s job, or the ghostwriter’s, is the writing itself.

Why is a book the new business card?

It proves you have a process and know your field well enough to explain it clearly, which builds authority and credibility. It lets prospects preview your work before they engage you, helps pre-qualify the right people, and opens doors with the press and speaking circuits, provided you actually use it as a marketing tool.