Book Feasibility Intensive
Before you commit to a full ghostwriting engagement, get clarity on what book you should write, who it’s for, and exactly how it gets built. Ten hours of strategic work, a comprehensive book strategy report, and a 2,000-word sample chapter in your voice.
The Book Feasibility Intensive is a $5,000 paid session that decides what book you should write, who it is for, and how it gets built, before you commit to full ghostwriting. It includes ten hours of interviews, a strategy report, and a 2,000-word sample chapter, and the fee is credited toward a full engagement if you proceed in time.
How It Works
Most people who want to write a book have an idea, but not a plan. They know roughly what they want to say, but not who’s going to read it, how it should be structured, what’s already out there, or how it gets published. A ghostwriting engagement that starts without those answers wastes time and money on the wrong manuscript.
The Book Feasibility Intensive solves that. Over ten hours of interviews, I work through your expertise, your audience, the competitive landscape, your publishing options, and your business goals for the book. You walk away with a comprehensive Book Strategy Report and a sample chapter written in your voice, both delivered within five business days of the final session.
The strategy is yours regardless of whether you hire me to write the full book. If you do choose to proceed within sixty days, the $5,000 intensive fee is applied in full to the ghostwriting engagement.
Investment
$5,000
10 hours of interviews, strategy report, and 2,000-word sample chapter
Paid in full at signing via Zelle. If you proceed to a full ghostwriting engagement within 60 days, the $5,000 is credited toward that project.
What’s Included
10 Hours of Strategic Interviews
Conducted over Zoom or phone, split across multiple sessions to fit your schedule. We dig into your expertise, your business goals, what you want the book to do for you, and who the right reader is. Calls are recorded and transcribed so you never need to take notes.
Audience Profile
A detailed profile of who the book is for: their pain points, what they already know, what they need to hear from you specifically, and where they buy books. The audience profile is what keeps every later decision aligned with reader reality instead of author preference.
Competitive Landscape Analysis
A survey of the books already in your category, what they cover, what they miss, and where your book fits. The goal is not to copy them or avoid them. It’s to position your book where readers are already looking but not finding what they need.
Chapter-by-Chapter Content Framework
A complete outline showing what each chapter covers, what the reader takes away, and how the chapters connect. This is the spine of the book. If you proceed to a full ghostwriting engagement, this framework becomes the draft plan.
Publishing Recommendation
Traditional, hybrid, or self-publishing? Each path has different cost, control, timeline, and credibility implications. The report gives you a specific recommendation for your situation with the reasoning behind it.
Basic Marketing Strategy
How the book reaches its audience, what platforms matter for your category, and what positioning lets the book function as an authority asset instead of just a product. Marketing built into the book strategy, not bolted on afterward.
Implementation Timeline
A realistic schedule from outline to published book, including the major decision points along the way. You leave with a clear map of what happens when, whether you write it yourself, hire a ghostwriter, or coach through it.
2,000-Word Sample Chapter
A real chapter drafted in your voice, on a topic from your content framework, so you can see exactly what your book will sound like before you commit to the full project. Includes one round of revisions based on your feedback.
Who This Is For
The Book Feasibility Intensive is built for people who are serious about getting a book made and want to commit four figures instead of six before they know the strategy is right.
Executives and founders who know a book would build authority and open doors but haven’t pinned down what the book should actually be. The intensive turns “I should write a book” into a specific, defensible plan.
Coaches, consultants, and speakers who need a book as the credibility anchor for their practice. The intensive maps the book to your audience and your business model so it functions as an asset, not just a project.
Subject-matter experts sitting on deep knowledge who want to make sure the book reaches the right reader with the right structure. The intensive separates what you know from what readers need to hear.
People comparing ghostwriters who want to test fit before signing a long engagement. Ten hours of work together, a real sample chapter in your voice, and a full strategy on the table tell you everything you need to know about how the collaboration would feel.
Book Feasibility Intensive vs. Other Services
Book Feasibility Intensive (this page) is a $5,000 strategic intensive that produces a complete book strategy plus a sample chapter. One-time engagement. Fee credits toward a full project if you proceed within 60 days.
Full Ghostwriting is the complete book. Twenty thousand to ninety thousand words written for you over four to eight months. For people who already know what book they want and are ready to commit to the full project.
Book Coaching guides you through writing the book yourself, sold in ten-hour blocks at $200 to $300 per hour. For writers who want to do the writing themselves with experienced support across the whole project.
Writing Coaching is hourly help on specific craft problems at $200 per hour. For writers who have a draft and need targeted fixes, not a full strategy or a full project.
Not sure which fits? Start with a free discovery call.
Client Testimonials for Richard Lowe
How the Intensive Runs
- ► Day 0: Agreement signed, payment received via Zelle, scheduling opens.
- ► Sessions: Ten hours of recorded Zoom or phone interviews, scheduled to fit you. Sessions are transcribed using AI so the conversation flows naturally and nothing gets lost.
- ► Within 5 business days of final session: Comprehensive Book Strategy Report delivered, plus the 2,000-word sample chapter.
- ► Within 7 days of delivery: One round of revisions on the sample chapter based on your feedback.
- ► Within 60 days: If you choose to proceed to a full ghostwriting engagement, the $5,000 intensive fee is credited in full toward that project.
- ► Whether you proceed or not: The strategy report and sample chapter belong to you. No strings.
The entire intensive is typically completed within 30 days of signing.
Your Strategist
Richard Lowe has authored 113+ books under his own name and ghostwritten 54+ for executives, founders, coaches, and public figures across 13 years of practice. His clients have raised over $30 million in venture capital using ghostwritten books, sold 15,000 copies in three days, and earned a TEDx invitation. The book strategy decisions clients face in the Feasibility Intensive are decisions he has worked through hundreds of times in his own practice.
Full professional background at thewritingking.com/professional-background-eeat.
More information:
Full Professional Background · Testimonials · Code of Ethics · Case Studies
Case Studies
Real client projects, the goals, the work we did together, and the results that followed. Each one documented in detail.
Straight Answers to Real Hesitations
Paying for strategy before committing to a book raises fair questions. Straight answers:
“Why pay $5,000 for what other ghostwriters call a free consult?”
Because a free consult is a sales call and this is a deliverable engagement: ten hours of structured interviews, a complete book strategy report, a publishing path analysis, and a 2,000-word sample chapter in your voice. You end holding work product you keep either way, and the fee credits toward the full engagement within sixty days. Free consults produce opinions. This produces the plan. Read more: Why a Paid Intensive Beats a Free Consult »
“What if the verdict is that I shouldn’t write the book yet?”
Then you will have that answer in writing, with reasons, from someone with no incentive to flatter you into a $40,000 mistake, and you keep the strategy report showing what would need to change. That outcome is rare, and it is worth every dollar when it happens. Read more: Is My Story Worth a Book? »
“Can’t I just figure out the strategy myself?”
The strategy questions are answerable alone in the way legal questions are answerable alone: technically, slowly, and with expensive blind spots. Audience, positioning, scope, and publishing path decided wrong at the start are the leading causes of stalled and failed books. Ten hours with someone who has made these calls across 160-plus books is the shortcut. Read more: why books stall »
“Will you secretly use AI on my book?”
A fair question in 2026, and it gets a written answer, not a verbal one: my AI policy goes in the contract. Your book is written by me, AI serves as a research and checking tool only, and your material never trains anything. Mills that generate manuscripts and charge professional rates are exactly why you should demand this clause from anyone. Read the full answer: Will My Ghostwriter Secretly Use AI? »
“Is my story actually worth a book?”
The doubt measures against the wrong scale. The real criteria: experience specific enough that a stranger could not research it, a findable reader whose situation the book changes, and enough transformation to sustain an arc. Fame is not on the list. Read the full answer: Is My Story Actually Worth a Book? »
“How do I know you’re not one of the scams?”
You should not take my word for it; verify what cannot be faked. I have 113-plus books under my own name you can read tonight, a hundred-plus podcast appearances you can listen to, named case studies including a book adopted at Purdue, and reviews attached to a checkable identity. The mills cannot produce any of that. Read the full answer: How to Vet a Ghostwriter »
Go Deeper on Any of These
Why a Paid Intensive Beats a Free Consult
A free consultation is a sales call wearing a friendly face; the intensive is a deliverable engagement that ends with you holding a strategy report, a publishing path analysis, and a sample chapter regardless of what you decide next. The full article makes the case plainly: why paying for strategy produces honest advice instead of a pitch, and why the fee crediting toward the engagement makes it the lowest-risk first step in the industry. Read the full answer »
Is My Story Worth a Book?
Underneath the price and time objections sits the quiet one almost nobody voices: who am I to take up two hundred pages? The full article gives the honest evaluation criteria, none of which involve fame, explains why the people who ask this question overwhelmingly have book-worthy stories while the ones who never ask often do not, and covers the rare cases where the honest answer really is not yet, and what that diagnosis means. Read the full answer »
I’ve Started My Book Three Times
Three attempts feels like a verdict about you. It is not, and the evidence says the opposite: abandoned manuscripts are the debris of motivated people hitting structural obstacles, almost never discipline failures. The full article names the four mechanical reasons books stall, why attempt four run the same way would land in the same drawer, and the two professional routes from stalled to finished, along with what your existing drafts are actually worth to the process. Read the full answer »
What Ghostwriting Costs and Why
Professional ghostwriting runs from $7,597 at the budget tier to $65,000 for full executive engagements, and the full article breaks down what actually drives the number: the hundreds of hours of skilled labor, the interview and revision process, and what separates a professional quote from a mill’s teaser price. It also frames the investment against what the book is for, because a business asset and a vanity purchase should not be priced with the same math. Read the full answer »
How to Vet a Ghostwriter
The better a ghostwriter is at the job, the less evidence they can show you, and the scam operations exploit that gap deliberately, with fake writer profiles claiming the same unverifiable bestsellers real writers cannot prove. So you vet around the NDA wall instead of through it. The full article walks through what cannot be faked, the writer’s own published books, years of public history, named case studies, the questions only working writers can answer, and the red flags that should end a conversation on the spot. Read the full answer »
You Have a Manuscript. Now What?
A manuscript is not a book; between the two sit editing, cover design, formatting, the publishing path, and launch, and a contract that ends at delivery ends at the moment you need the next map. The full article lays out the honest anatomy of what comes after the writing, how my engagements handle the handoff, why the publishing conversation happens during strategy instead of at the end, and the one question that instantly separates working writers from mills. Read the full answer »
Frequently Asked Questions
Book Strategy Library
The thinking behind book strategy, and why it comes before writing:
Ready to See What Your Book Should Be?
Ten hours of strategic work. A complete book strategy. A sample chapter in your voice. Four thousand dollars, credited toward a full project if you proceed within 60 days.
No pitch. No pressure.