How Hiring a Ghostwriter Actually Works: The Process, the Price, and Why There’s No Royalty Deal

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Ken on 22nd Century Management for a complete walkthrough of hiring a ghostwriter: what ghostwriting actually is, how a book builds authority, the full process from consultation to publication, how pricing and timeframes work, and why royalty deals almost never happen. Audience members Beth and Tony put live questions to Richard throughout.

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

Who is The Writing King

Ken: I’ve got with me today Richard Lowe, a professional ghostwriter, and that doesn’t mean he writes ghosts. His passion is helping businesses and individuals write books and other things that showcase their expertise, build credibility, and tell their story. Richard, tell us more about who you are and what you do.

Richard: I’m a professional ghostwriter. For 33 years I worked in the tech field, most recently 20 years with Trader Joe’s as a director. Then I got tired of working for a corporation, struck out on my own, went through all the fear and terror of that, and wandered into ghostwriting, which turned out to be my passion. I like to write, I like to help people, and it makes income, so it’s a nice intersection. I’ve written 113+ books under my own name, plus some under pseudonyms that are more controversial than I want under my name, and I’ve ghostwritten 54+ more for clients.

What ghostwriting is

Ken: What is ghostwriting?

Richard: Ghostwriting is work for hire. You contract with me to write. I tend to write books and blog articles, but ghostwriters can write anything from Hallmark cards to poems to songs; hiring ghost songwriters is popular now. You hire me to write a book, I do the writing, and you do the ideas. I interview you to get your concepts, your values, what you want the book to be about. It’s still your book, not mine, the same way a contractor builds a house for you; it’s your house, he just built it. That’s important ethically, and it’s what you want if you hire me: your voice, your thoughts, your background. That’s what I capture in the interview part. I write both fiction and nonfiction, because I’m the writer and you’re the subject matter expert, so I depend on you, research, or both for the information.

How a book helps: the Fortune 50 client

Ken: How can a ghostwriter help an individual?

Richard: It depends on your goals. Take a book aimed at getting speaking roles: a keynote speaker at a major conference can make 15 or 20 grand a pop. It also gets you press, because the media loves books, and it establishes you in your field because you’re the one who wrote the book. One of my very first clients was a C-level employee at a division of a larger company who wanted to be noticed by the CEO of the whole company. I wrote the book, and not only did he get the CEO’s notice, the CEO wound up writing the foreword. He’s now doing speaking engagements, the book is a textbook in some classes and sells in libraries. It gives you a name; it’s a tool, like a hammer, but it doesn’t do any good if you don’t use it.

Richard: The other use is fiction, where you want a book to sell to the mass market. There I help you plot the book, come up with the plot points and characters, and we write it together as more of a collaboration. I just finished a young adult book in January that got published on Amazon and turned out well. In that case the hard part is the marketing; I don’t do the marketing, and getting a self-published book to sell is usually the problem, though it’s surmountable.

What ghostwriters can write

Ken: What kinds of things can ghostwriters write for a person?

Richard: A broad range. I’ve written young adult books, fiction novels, and I’m just getting a contract for a children’s book aimed at younger children, like the Goosebumps books. My main focus, given my technical background, is books that explain technology to managers and leaders rather than deeply technical books. I’ve written four books on artificial intelligence, five on digital transformation, three on computer security, and a book on the Internet of Things, plus books for a dentist, a cleaning supply company, and a person who did retirement planning.

Richard: The dentist wanted something in her office to give patients explaining how dentistry works. The cleaning company wanted something to give customers explaining what they do, an actual 200-page book about their franchise. It can be anything you want me to write, because I do the writing and you provide the knowledge, though I do research where needed.

The full process, start to finish

Ken: What’s the strategy for somebody interested in working with a ghostwriter?

Richard: Let me go through the whole process. We connect, usually through LinkedIn, my website, or increasingly referrals. We have a free consultation of up to an hour about your book and what you want to write, and I explain the whole process. Then we put together a contract, a statement of work with all the terms and the price. You sign it through DocuSign, which is simple since a lot of people working from home don’t have printers, then pay the first invoice, a down payment, and we begin.

Richard: The first two weeks to a month is strategizing: the table of contents, the theme, the voice, and for fiction the plot points and characters. After that I target one to two chapters a month, beginning with interviews, then an outline you approve, then a first draft. The first draft is rough and not fully proofed, just for you to confirm the concepts are right. I take your comments, polish it, and move to the next chapter. By the end we have a book in good shape, we do a final revision, and then I always recommend sending it to a line or copy editor for the final polish, because editors know the markets and get nitty-gritty in a way the writer shouldn’t, since I’m biased about my own work.

The author builds the following while the writer builds the book

Richard: While we write the book, some things need to be done by the author. I’m the writer, you’re the author, I’m the bricklayer. The author has to build a following, because a traditional publisher’s first question is how many engaged followers you have, and a self-publisher needs those followers to buy the book. So during the six months to a year it takes to write, you build your following.

Richard: Choose one channel you like: YouTube if you like video, Instagram if you like pictures, Facebook for consumers, LinkedIn for businesses. Focus there and build. On my own podcast, Author Talk with Richard Lowe, I interviewed an author who got 600 people from her church to volunteer, spreading the word about her science fiction books in exchange for little prizes, making a game of it. Those engaged followers are who buy your book when it’s first published, whether you self-publish or publish traditionally.

Traditional versus self-publishing, and the book proposal

Richard: If you self-publish, you need a cover and the publishing steps, which I can help with; I’m not a cover artist but I can find one for you. If you publish traditionally, you hand them the manuscript and they say yes or no. For a traditional book you may submit an outline, synopsis, or a book proposal before writing, depending on the book and strategy, which we discuss at the beginning. If you self-publish, you skip all that. It’s a long, complex process, but the beauty is you’ve hired me, and I know all the steps because I’ve published hundreds of books for my clients.

Richard: Since I also do book coaching, sometimes people come to me just wanting to publish a book they’ve already written. That’s usually by the hour and takes a few hours. Then you decide the formats: paperback, Kindle, iBook, audiobook, and I can help with all of those.

How pricing works, and why not royalties

Ken: Tony asks: how do you price it? Do you consider outcome-based contracts?

Richard: By outcome-based, meaning royalties, the answer is no. I price by the word. You wouldn’t work your job on the chance you get paid in a year or two, and I can’t do that as a ghostwriter; it’s my living. So it’s a down payment up front, usually 25 percent, and then the rest divided by however many months we think it will take, paid monthly.

Ken: Tony also asks: how do you determine the timeframe?

Richard: I target a certain number of words per month. If it’s 5,000 words a month and it’s a 60,000-word book, which is a normal size, that’s however many months it works out to, and remember the first month is strategy, not writing. So an average book takes six months to a year depending on budget, because a shorter timeframe means higher monthly payments. Most people do eight months or a year for a smaller monthly payment; I’ve had a couple who wanted it in three months, which is doable, it just costs more per month. It works out the same in the end.

Richard: I don’t do retainer plus outcome-based, and very few ghostwriters will. The only exception is if you’re someone like Clinton’s ghostwriter or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, a real name almost guaranteed to bring in a lot of income. Outcome-based is a roll of the dice, because part of it is my writing skill but the other part is the person, the story, and the promotion, which isn’t under my control. If you lose interest, I don’t make any money, and that’s not fair. So the answer is a flat no, with the real-name exception.

Popular genres in 2021

Ken: Let’s go back to Beth’s question: what books are most popular now in 2021?

Richard: Romance novels are the most popular. Science fiction and fantasy are very popular. Biographies too; Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biography is a fascinating book, 150,000 words, huge. Self-help is always popular. And the man who wrote Goosebumps has sold 400 million copies, close behind J.K. Rowling, who I believe is the richest author in the world.

The compile-from-a-course case

Ken: I’m thinking of creating a book based on the service management course I teach in the copier industry. I have all the audio and video recordings of the classes; it just needs to be compiled into book form. Would having a lot of content ready change the pricing?

Richard: Yes. In that case we’d work on an hourly basis. We’d have you transcribe all of it through a transcription service, then collaborate on edits together. But going from recorded classes to a book often doesn’t mesh well, especially if you didn’t plan it at the beginning, so it’s more work than you’d think. I usually do those by the hour.

Ken: Tony asks: for a 60,000-word book, ballpark cost?

Richard: A 60,000-word book at 50 cents a word is $30,000, which is about mid-range. I’m not the low-end ghostwriter; you can find ghostwriters who’ll do it for almost nothing, but you don’t want them, just like you don’t want the low bidder for your flooring. And you can find ghostwriters who charge ten times my price, the ones with Pulitzer Prizes and names that can sell the book themselves. My price includes a basic amount of research and interviews; extensive third-party interviews or research beyond the normal amount, which we define in the statement of work, are by the hour. Only a couple of my books have fallen into that. Research usually isn’t much, because you’re the subject matter expert and can point me to what to read, and chapters are 2,000 to 5,000 words each; I don’t write highly technical books needing a citation every 15 lines.

Ghostwriter versus copywriter

Ken: In my industry, writing and placing newspaper or magazine articles builds credibility. If you’re not the wordsmith, you’d hire a ghostwriter for that. Does that make sense?

Richard: If you’re providing real value, like an article on things to think about when buying a copier, I do that all the time as blogs and articles. Because I’m a little higher priced, I tend to do more AI-type pieces that require knowledge; copiers go lower in price because you can find lots of writers for that. But if you’re getting into advertising, that’s a copywriter, an entirely different thing. Copywriters charge 10 to 50 times my price; a single page of copy can cost a hundred thousand dollars, because that page is going to sell your product and make millions. A copywriter writes ads, which is different from providing value, which is why I split them apart.

One book, many uses

Richard: One interesting thing I’m doing for a customer right now: we’re finishing his book, and the next step is turning each chapter into speaker’s notes, so each chapter becomes something he can talk about. One book gets split into many things to help his career and sell his products and services.

Ken: Tony’s second question: with 15,000 followers, what percent would buy a $20 book?

Richard: It depends entirely on how engaged they are. If it’s a list you bought off the internet, 5,000 names for 10 bucks, none of them will buy. If it’s people you’ve built up over a long time who are excited about you and stay engaged, you could have 20 percent buy the book. That’s the problem with promotion: it depends on you, or on the value of whoever you hire to do it and how much they engage.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

Whose book is it when you hire a ghostwriter?

It’s the client’s book. Ghostwriting is work for hire: the client is the author and owns the book, the ghostwriter is the writer. The comparison is a contractor building your house, it’s yours, he just built it. The ghostwriter captures the author’s voice, thoughts, and background through interviews, so the finished book reads as the author’s own.

How does a ghostwriter price a book, and will they take royalties?

Pricing is typically by the word, with a down payment, often around 25 percent, and the balance spread across monthly installments over the writing period. A 60,000-word book at 50 cents a word runs about $30,000, mid-range for the profession. Royalty or outcome-based deals are almost universally declined, because promotion, which drives sales, is outside the writer’s control; the rare exception is a client whose name alone guarantees strong sales.

What does the author have to do while the book is being written?

Build an engaged following. A traditional publisher’s first question is how many engaged followers you have, and a self-publisher needs them to buy the book. The advice is to pick one channel that suits you, LinkedIn for business, Facebook for consumers, YouTube or Instagram for video and images, and build a genuinely engaged audience over the months the book is being written.

How long does a ghostwritten book take?

Usually six months to a year. The writer targets a set number of words per month, so a 60,000-word book at 5,000 words a month is about a year including the first month of strategy rather than writing. A shorter timeframe is possible but means higher monthly payments; the total works out the same. Most clients choose eight months to a year to keep the monthly cost lower.