“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want in the book.”
I say that at every kickoff meeting. On most books it’s a warning about memory, since months later I won’t remember which story you meant to keep private. For a book about prison or a crime, the same sentence can keep you out of a courtroom. I record every session and say so in the contract, so anything you tell me ends up in a recording.
Somebody who spent years inside and came out with something to say has material most memoirists would trade anything for, and readers can smell it. What makes me angry is the number of outfits happy to take that person’s deposit, crank out a lurid manuscript and never once mention a lawyer. The author is the one left holding the consequences.
Think of a crime memoir as taking the stand again. You’re under oath to your readers, everyone you name is sitting in the gallery, and the lawyers on the other side get to read the transcript as many times as they like. Prepare the way you’d prepare to testify, and the book will hold up.
Can I write a book about my time in prison?
Yes. In 1991 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s original Son of Sam law as inconsistent with the First Amendment, in Simon & Schuster v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Board. People have written about their sentences for as long as there have been prisons.
The legal trouble shows up around the edges: who you name, what you admit, and where the money goes. If you’re still incarcerated, your facility’s rules on mail, phone calls and business dealings also decide how the work gets done, so read them before you hire anyone.
Readers pick up a prison memoir to learn what it’s like inside and finish it for what prison did to you. The arrest and the sentence get them started, and the chapters they remember come after release, with the first job interview, the family that took you back or didn’t, and the morning you understood you’d changed.
If your kids are part of the reason for the book, write it knowing they’ll read every page someday, and let that decide how much detail the violence gets. A book can stay honest about what you did without turning the worst night of somebody else’s life into a set piece for strangers.
I deliberately probe for failures and setbacks in every book I write, because readers want the ups and downs and the recovery. Memoir clients drift toward one of two extremes, the hero or the self-flagellating sinner, and a prison story pulls hard in both directions. My job is to talk you toward the middle, where a reader can believe you.
Will a ghostwriter write the memoir of someone who’s been to prison?
A professional ghostwriter will. Once I’m contracted I write what the client wants, and I’ve written books whose views I completely disagree with. I’m not my clients’ priest, therapist, or judge and jury.
Expect a good ghostwriter to ask why you want the book, and expect them to listen hard to the answer. Ex-offenders write to warn kids off the path they took, to build a speaking career, to explain themselves to their children, or to set a record straight.
The interviews run long, and there are a lot of them, because writing in someone’s voice means becoming them for a while. I ask about the same event several different ways. People misremember, fold two years into one, and inflate or shrink what mattered. Mostly I ask indirect questions about the life around the events and pull the details out of the stories you tell me.
Revenge is where I stop. I decline revenge memoirs outright, and a crime memoir aimed at the witness who testified against you is a revenge memoir with a longer rap sheet.
I screen every prospect on a one-hour call. Never negotiate a book over email alone, with me or anyone else, because email-only negotiation is a scam signal from either side of the table. You’ll know within that hour whether the writer can hear your story without lecturing you.
Should I tell my ghostwriter about crimes I was never charged with?
Talk to your lawyer before you tell anyone, your ghostwriter included. A nondisclosure agreement keeps a writer from repeating your story to other people. It’s a contract between two private parties, so ask your lawyer whether a court could order the recordings and notes produced, and don’t say a word about uncharged conduct until you have that answer.
My contract keeps session recordings for three months after the project ends, and clients can get copies on request. That’s how my contract handles it; ask any writer what theirs says. Either way, your words exist in a file somewhere for a while. My article on what happens to ghostwriting interview recordings covers how they’re stored and deleted.
When a client drifts into material that can’t be published, I stop them and ask them to tell it in a way that can. On a crime memoir that habit protects you. You can describe who you were, what the life was like and what it cost the people around you, all without handing a prosecutor a signed confession with a dust jacket.
For the rest of what you say, trusting your ghostwriter with what you tell them comes down to the contract and the writer’s track record.
Can I make money from a book about my crime?
It depends on your state and your case, and you need a lawyer to answer it for you. Most states passed laws meant to stop people convicted of crimes from profiting by selling their stories. They’re called Son of Sam laws, after David Berkowitz, the New York serial killer known as Son of Sam, who drew national headlines in 1977 by earning large profits from a memoir about his murders.
New York’s original version put the profits from a criminal’s description of the crime into an escrow account for five years. In 1991 the justices held that the statute was content-based and threw it out. The First Amendment Encyclopedia says more than 40 states still keep Son of Sam laws on their books, and lower courts have struck down others since, including Nevada’s in 2004.
Those state laws aren’t all written the same way, and a lawyer in your state is the only person who can tell you what yours reaches. Ask that lawyer about any restitution order or civil judgment you still owe a victim, too, and whether book income could go toward it. I’d hate to see anyone sign a publishing contract first and ask those questions second, because by then the money’s already spoken for.
So have a lawyer in your state read the publishing contract and check your restitution and any civil judgments before you sign it. Would you bet your rent on royalties from a first book? Don’t. I tell every client they’re very unlikely to earn back what they spent through book sales, and the return comes from what the book opens up: speaking, consulting, a business, a second chance with an employer who read it.
The companies that promise an ex-offender a bestseller and a movie deal, take a deposit and never say a word about any of this are running a con on people who’ve already paid plenty. That’s bullshit, and I’d tell anyone who’s been pitched that way to hang up.
Can I name people in my prison or crime memoir?
You can, and every real name raises the risk. Co-defendants, informants, guards, cellmates, the cop who arrested you and the family of the victim are all real people who can sue for defamation or invasion of privacy. Some of them are dangerous in ways no lawsuit can fix.
The biggest offer I ever received was for a book that named names, and I turned it down because of the danger to myself. That was a lot of money to walk away from. If the people in a book are dangerous enough to scare off the writer, consider what they’d do to the author whose name is on the cover.
Go back to the witness stand. The gallery is full of people you’ve named, and some of them have lawyers. A good ghostwriter briefs you on the legal risk the way a trusted advisor would. Then they show you how to change details: a composite character, a different city, a name that belongs to nobody, a scene told without identifying the other person at all. My guide to writing about living people without getting sued goes through those techniques, and writing a book about your ex, your boss or your old company covers the defamation line.
Some authors decide the safest move is to take their own name off it. A pen name protects your family and your job prospects, though it won’t hide you from anyone who knows the case. My article on writing a memoir under a pen name explains how that works with a ghostwriter.
Can a ghostwriter help me write about being a crime victim?
Yes, and victims deserve the same care as anyone telling a hard story. A book about surviving an assault, a robbery, fraud or the murder of someone you loved is a book about taking your own story back.
I have no patience for the corner of the true crime business that treats victims as props. Podcasts and paperbacks turn somebody’s worst day into content, and the family learns about it from a stranger’s review. Nobody asked the family. A victim who writes their own book gets to decide what the reader sees and what stays private.
Clients cry in interviews all the time, and a victim’s interviews are harder than most. When it happens I steer us into easy, unrelated conversation and come back once they’re calm. I let clients approach the worst material over several sessions and offer to leave it out entirely, and the decision stays theirs. What to do if your story is too horrible to say out loud goes further into that.
Victims face their own legal questions. Print the word criminal next to someone who was never convicted and you’ve taken on a defamation risk. If there’s an open appeal or civil case, your book could become evidence in it. Have a lawyer read it before it goes anywhere.
Does a crime memoir need a lawyer to review it before publishing?
Every one of them does. Hire a lawyer who knows publishing and media law to read the complete manuscript before it goes to a publisher, a printer or an upload page, and budget for it the way you’d budget for editing.
Your lawyer will look at what you admit, who you name, whether the book violates any probation or parole terms you’re still serving, and how your state’s Son of Sam law treats the income. They’ll mark passages to cut or change. Do what they say, even when it hurts to lose a scene you love. What’s an afternoon of a lawyer’s time next to a lawsuit or a parole violation?
My job ends with a solid manuscript draft. I refer clients to trusted editors for editing, proofreading and formatting, and the legal read is yours to arrange. Build it into the schedule from the start so a deadline doesn’t tempt you to skip it.
What should I do before I start writing a prison or true crime memoir?
Call a lawyer first. Tell them you’re planning a book, what it covers and who’s in it, and ask what you can’t say and where the money can go. That hour of legal advice will shape every interview that follows.
Then write down, in one paragraph, why you want the book to exist. If the paragraph is about getting even, stop there. If it’s about your kids, your work, the kid on the corner who’s about to make your mistake, or getting the truth on paper, you have a book.
After that, talk to a ghostwriter on a real call. My ghostwriting service covers the full book, and the Book Discovery Intensive is a shorter first step if you want to settle what the book covers and where the legal risks are before you commit. The Ghostwriting Hub has the rest of the questions people ask before they hire.
I’ve got nothing but contempt for the people who sell ex-offenders a fantasy and leave them to face the consequences alone. You’ve already stood in one courtroom. Take the stand this time with a lawyer at your elbow and a writer who knows where the line is. Say it once, on the record, the way you chose to say it, and step down.
