Celebrity Process

It starts with structured interviews, recorded in private over several weeks. I ask the questions, you talk. From the recordings I write the chapters and send them to you to review, push back on, and redirect. We iterate until each chapter reads in your voice. The book comes together as the interviews progress, not as a single drop at the end.

That’s the entire job. I listen to how you talk, your rhythms, your phrasing, the words you’d use and the ones you never would, then write the chapters in that voice. You’ll know within the first chapter whether I got it right. If I haven’t, we recalibrate before going further. Most clients tell me the finished book reads more like them than anything they’ve put their name on.

Yes. I treat everything from the first conversation as confidential, long before any paperwork is signed. A formal NDA is part of the Statement of Work when we begin. Nothing about the work, your name, the project, or even the existence of the book, leaves the room without your permission. I’ve ghostwritten 54+ books and never disclosed a client who didn’t approve it. Discretion is the job, not a feature of it.

No. Most clients arrive with a sense that they should write a book but no clear answer to what, exactly. The interviews are where we find it. By the end of the first few sessions the structure is clear, and most clients are surprised, usually pleasantly, by what the book turns out to be about.

Most books run 4 to 8 months from the first interview to the final manuscript, depending on length and how much interview access I have. When a real deadline drives the project, a media tour, a launch tied to an event, or a publisher’s delivery date, I’ve turned manuscripts around in 90 days.

Yes, that’s the standard arrangement. I stay invisible unless you choose to credit me. Your name on the cover, your copyright, your royalties, and your decisions on everything from cover design to publication strategy. My role ends when the manuscript is finished.

Yes. A book works differently than anything else you publish. Posts disappear and interviews get buried; a book sits on a shelf for years, gets cited by journalists, and opens speaking engagements that pay multiples of what you charged before. Clients have used their books to raise over $30 million in venture capital, land a TEDx invitation, secure traditional publishing deals, and move into industries they couldn’t access before.

That works. About a third of clients arrive with something already written: notes, partial chapters, a finished draft they’re not satisfied with. I read what you have, identify what’s working and what isn’t, and build from wherever you are. Sometimes the existing material becomes the foundation; sometimes we keep the ideas and rewrite from scratch.

Experience and range. With 54+ ghostwritten books and 113+ authored under his own name, plus 33 years in enterprise technology including 20 years as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s, The Writing King understands the worlds public figures and executives actually live in, not just how to build a sentence. And the discretion is absolute. It has never been broken.