Ghostwriting looks like easy money from the outside and rarely is. These posts trace the real path into the career — how Richard went from enterprise IT to 100-plus books, what making a living actually takes, and why certifications do not make a ghostwriter.
I did not set out to be a writer. I set out to understand my grandfather, and the writing followed, more than forty years and 113+ books ago. The path was never a straight line. Here is the real story of how a quest to know one man turned into a life built entirely on words.
My ghostwriting career started with my grandfather, a guarded man who said nothing about the war until the right question opened decades of it, the capture, the march through Manila, the four years in a POW camp. That project showed me what a book can do. Here is exactly how I ghostwrite one now, from the first interview to the finished manuscript.
I charge $1 a word, which puts a typical book between $50,000 and $80,000. When prospects hear that, some of them simply disappear. Rejection is part of this business, and almost no one talks honestly about it. Here is how it actually feels, why it is rarely personal, and how I handle it.
The more you read, the more you know, Dr. Seuss told children, and Richard Lowe built a whole career on the line. From a kid haunting libraries to a 20-year tech career at Trader Joe’s to 54+ ghostwritten books and 113+ of his own, this is how the path actually unfolded, from book lover to The Writing King.
For two decades I ran computer operations at Trader Joe’s, came home drained, and had nothing left for the writing I wanted to do. I had the skills and the ideas but not the bandwidth. Making a living from self-publishing is possible, but here is the honest version of what it actually demands.
I once wrote 25,000 words for $1,000 at a ghostwriting shop. Now a single book project runs $50,000 or more. In this interview I walk through exactly how that shift happened, from the confidence to raise rates to the business decisions that made six-figure ghostwriting sustainable.
Right now someone is watching a webinar promising a six-figure ghostwriting career, run by a presenter who got rich selling courses, not writing books, and the certification costs thousands. After 54+ client books and 113+ of my own, I can tell you the graduates are not ready, not even close. Ghostwriting takes years to learn, not weeks. Here is what the certifications get wrong, and what the work really requires.
One month after my blog went live, it landed me a $15,000 ghostwriting project, and that was the moment I understood what a blog could do for a service business. This interview, updated for current pricing, tells the full story of how blogging built a ghostwriting career, and how you can do the same.
In late 2013 I walked away from twenty years as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s, overworked and trading my health for a job that had stopped giving back. I had savings and a dream I had carried since junior high. Here is the full story of becoming a ghostwriter at the age most people stay put.
At seventeen, my grandfather handed me his World War II diary and asked me to turn it into a book. He had served on the USS Panay and survived being marched through Manila as a prisoner. That first project became a career of 54+ books. Here is how it started, and where it led.
Yesterday a client stood up at an event and thanked me publicly for his book, and I got tears in my eyes, because in 54+ projects the clients who have done that fit on one hand. The recognition is rare precisely because the work is invisible by design. Here are six things about a ghostwriter’s life that only the job teaches.
The industry is saturated with content mills and writers willing to work for almost nothing, which makes commanding fair rates hard, but hard is not impossible. If you treat writing as a profession, you deserve to be paid like one. Here are ten tips so you stop settling and stop working for free.
Author Bjorn Larssen self-published his first graphic novel at six: a limited edition of one, handcrafted with crayons, staples, and paper torn from a notebook. The road from there to working author ran through injury, doubt, and nineteen drafts. Here is his full story, in his own voice, as a guest on the blog.
I have ghostwritten 54+ books for CEOs and leaders, but the story that mattered most came on my grandfather’s back porch in 1977. For seventeen years the family called him difficult and gruff, yet he cooked meals that felt like love. At 17 I finally asked him why, and a WWII POW’s untold story poured out. That conversation is why I became a storyteller.
In this Business RadioX conversation, I talk through how a book can showcase expertise, build credibility, and tell a story worth telling, for businesses and individuals alike. Drawing on 113+ authored books and 54+ ghostwritten, including two Kindle bestsellers, here is the full discussion of the ghostwriting craft and the business behind it.
At seventeen I ghostwrote my grandfather’s war story, a man the family called a curmudgeon and told me to avoid. Sitting down with his account of Corregidor, the Manila Death March, and 42 months as a prisoner changed everything I understood about people and writing. Here are ten lessons that first project taught me.
At 64, after 113+ books and a tech career, I learned I am autistic and have ADHD, and probably always was, which rewrote my entire life story. For decades I thought something was wrong with me. The same wiring that wrecked small talk turns out to be what makes me a better ghostwriter. Here is what that has to do with the book you are afraid to write.
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