Updated May 2026 to reflect current data. Original recording: 2025.

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Chris Abdey on Procrastination Station for a conversation built around the show’s namesake problem: why book projects stall, and how to actually finish one. Richard lays out the calendar-driven system he uses to keep five to ten books moving at once, explains how bad habits quietly become writer’s block, and makes the case that not knowing how to market is a procrastination trap you solve by outsourcing. He also covers why a book is worth the effort, how to speak your audience’s language, and how to build a launch before the book is even done.

Procrastination Station is hosted by Chris Abdey at procrastinationstation.ca.

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Interview

Chris Abdey: Welcome back to Procrastination Station. We’re here with Richard Lowe, a premium ghostwriter who left his role as Trader Joe’s Director of Computer Operations to move to Florida, writing over 113 books, 54+ of them as a ghostwriter, on topics from AI to memoirs. Our icebreaker: which cartoon character do you resonate with most, and why?

The Tasmanian Devil

Richard: It’d have to be the Tasmanian Devil, the old Looney Tunes character, because he definitely doesn’t sit on his behind all day. He’s busy stirring up trouble and doesn’t take anything from anybody. A little chaotic. That’s kind of how I think of myself.

Chris: How would you define procrastination, and what does it mean to you personally?

What Procrastination Costs You

Richard: Procrastination is putting off something that needs to be done. Say your lifelong goal is a cruise to Antarctica. You really want to do it, but you keep putting it off for all kinds of reasons, and then on your last days in the hospital you think, I should have gone, and now it’s too late. That’s procrastination. For me, a book is a big project, and it’s so easy to put off. I used to think, I’ll start tomorrow. But I have a schedule to meet, so if I keep putting it off, I have to scramble to catch up. I decided that’s just dumb.

The System That Beats It

Richard: My schedule is 500 words a day per book, and I write between five and ten books at a time, so 500 words a day per book is 10,000 words a month each. If I get behind by two weeks because I’m off watching YouTube or TikTok, that works into when I get paid, into stress, into the client getting upset, all from putting it off.

My secret sauce is a tickler and calendar system. It tells me: it’s noon, time to work on this project, you have 45 minutes to finish 500 words, do it. Then I take a walk. The caveat is I have to actually listen to those notifications, time to work on Joe’s book, time to take a walk. I get a lot of them. It’s annoying, but it keeps me on track.

Bad Habits and Writer’s Block

Chris: You mentioned that not sleeping, exercising, or eating right leads to writer’s block.

Richard: Your attention goes to your body. It doesn’t have the energy it needs, you’re falling asleep, you’ve got aches and pains from not eating right. And that hands you excuses: I don’t feel good now, so I’ll put it off until tomorrow when I feel better. But you’re not fixing your diet, so tomorrow you’ll feel the same way. It gives you more things to make an excuse about. Writer’s block is really a form of procrastination.

Chris: Why is having a book a really good goal to have?

Why a Book Is Worth the Effort

Richard: Many people have a legacy they want to leave. Someone in their 60s or 70s, maybe a soldier, maybe a tough management role, maybe an assembly line, has knowledge that would be lost if they didn’t write it down. Their children will appreciate getting to know them. On the business side, a book increases the respect others show you, gives you credibility, shows off your expertise. One client used a book I wrote, my name’s not on it, to raise $30 million in venture capital, using it as his credibility. Others have done TED talks or gotten on the speaking circuit, where keynotes pay $5,000 to $10,000 or more. A coach should always have a book, even a short one, because it differentiates them.

A Book Is the Foundation of Your Marketing

Richard: In business, a book becomes the foundation of your marketing. It’s one to 300 pages of content already written. Take a chapter, turn it into speaking notes, and you’ve got a speech. Another chapter becomes a press release, another a blog or a series of blogs. It’s a gold mine of content that’s ready to go. And you can sign a copy and hand it to a customer or hand out signed copies at a speaking engagement. It’s better than a business card, because people don’t throw away books. Order 200 copies at cost, maybe three dollars each, and that’s dirt cheap for a lead, when leads can cost hundreds of dollars. They’ll put it on their desk, brag that they met you, and maybe buy your services down the road.

Chris: You mentioned overcoming being an introvert and marketing as one. Could you go into that?

Overcoming Shyness as an Introvert

Richard: I was painfully introverted and shy back in my 30s. You couldn’t get me on stage. After my wife passed away, I decided to fight the grief and the shyness by going out and photographing people, using the camera as a way to talk to them. After 1,200 photo shoots, I could finally move the camera aside and talk to people like I’m talking to you. It’s essential not to be shy if you’re going to market yourself, because you have to put yourself and your brand out there. Introversion is fine, I still work from home all day with my cat, but break the shyness. It’s scary, I know from experience, but they’re probably not serial killers.

Chris: What goes into a business book, and what should you not put in?

Speak Your Audience’s Language

Richard: Early in my corporate career, a CEO once cut me off mid-pitch because I was buried in technical jargon he couldn’t follow. It was a hard lesson in speaking the audience’s language, and it’s exactly what we do in a book. For a business audience, we don’t talk about the bits and bytes of how AI works, we talk about return on investment, the dangers, the ethics, the security and why it matters. Everybody has a sublanguage: church, an engineering conference, medicine, that one’s tough, I’ve written a few medical books. You have to break through that barrier and tailor the book to your audience and your goals at once.

When a Book Won’t Help

Richard: A book won’t help if it’s not aimed at the right people. If you’re an engineer writing for the equivalent of your bosses but you write it like an engineer, they won’t understand it, because they hired you precisely so they don’t have to know that stuff. A legacy book is the same: if you’re a Vietnam vet writing for your grandchildren, you have to translate the guns and weapons and experiences into something they understand. Speaking the right language is one thing that separates a bestseller from a non-bestseller.

Chris: Is the content more important, or the title?

Title, Cover, and Standing Out Among 10,000 Books a Day

Richard: Content is critical, you can’t have a book without it. But people buy based on the cover and the title. So I have to suppress a scream when someone says, I paid for a ghostwriter but did my cover in Canva to save money. You just told me your book won’t sell. Spend the extra dollars and hire a book cover artist. About 10,000 books a day are published on Amazon, so how does yours stand out? The title and cover make someone look inside or open the flap, then they read the first two paragraphs of the introduction and decide. A title like “AI” tells me nothing; “How I Made a Million Dollars With AI, and I Can Prove It” gets my interest.

Chris: With 10,000 books a day, do you need an ad campaign at launch, or can you go grassroots?

Build the Launch Before the Book Is Done

Richard: You definitely want a campaign. If it takes eight months to write the book, then starting day one, we do weekly posts on whatever social media you like. You build the buzz while you’re writing: talk about the process, the epiphanies, the moment you realized you’d been doing something wrong, short videos, quotes. Create a Facebook group and pour people into it. The goal is several thousand people engaged before launch. Then schedule a launch party, virtual is simple, hire a host with a good speaking voice, make it about four hours so both coasts are covered, get a few other authors on, give away prizes, sign books. Then do it again for the revision, the workbook, and so on.

As for paid ads, don’t do them unless you’re an expert or you hire one. I wasted so much money on paid ads I’d wince if I added it up, until I got smart and stopped, because I don’t know how to do it.

Outsource What You Can’t Do

Richard: That ties back to procrastination. A lot of why I procrastinate is that part of the task is something I don’t know how to do, like marketing. So I stop and tell myself I’ll figure it out tomorrow. The fix is to outsource it. If you don’t know how to market a book, hire somebody, on Fiverr, or an expert, or on a barter basis, maybe they need a beta reader. Hire a coach, hire a marketer, take the free training on the internet. Not knowing how to do something is a big reason for procrastination, so find somebody who does.

Chris: How realistic is it to break even on book sales versus going all out?

Let the Goal Define the Book

Richard: Understand your goal for the book. If your goal is to sell more copies than you spent, that’s where your marketing goes, and you’ll need to spend money and probably hire an expert. If your goal is to reinforce your coaching brand, your return comes from how many leads you convert into paying customers. A book aimed at raising venture capital is an entirely different book, different ending, different supporting evidence, from one aimed at selling copies to laypeople in airports, which is different again from a legacy book for your grandchildren that needs no marketing beyond Christmas cards. The goal defines the book and where the marketing money goes. If a client isn’t sure of the goal, sometimes we do a short engagement to brainstorm and pinpoint it.

Chris: What’s your ideal client?

The Ideal Client (and the Ones I Turn Down)

Richard: Someone easy to work with, who knows the goals, understands the process, and acts like an adult. My work is collaborative, it’s a relationship, and the last thing I want is a toxic one. If a chapter comes back bloody with changes, I’m fine with that, it’s part of the process. They’re critiquing the book, not me. Critique the book all you want, I want you to have the best one possible.

I’ve turned down strange ones, including a mafia informant who wanted to name names, no amount of money is worth that risk. I also don’t do revenge memoirs, partly for legal reasons and partly because getting caught in the middle of a nasty divorce is no fun.

The Book That Actually Gets Finished

Richard: A woman named Doris spent a lifetime writing her dreams in notebooks and assumed they would never become anything. We turned them into a published novel. That is what waits on the other side of not putting it off: the book that actually exists, instead of the one you keep meaning to start. Every system, every tickler notification, every walk after 500 words, it all exists to get you there.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

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