One planner answers the three questions people ask before they commit to a book: how big it is, how long it takes, and whether to hire a ghostwriter or write it yourself. Enter the kind of book, its length in words or pages, and when you can start or when you need it. The planner shows your book, the ghostwritten schedule with its payment plan, and the write-it-yourself schedule side by side.
Not sure how the book should get written at all? Open the five questions at the top of the planner, and it fills in the plan for the path that fits. Every number comes from the schedules and lengths I work to, and nothing here asks for your name or email.
Book Planner
Why does writing a book yourself take so much longer than ghostwriting?
A first draft is the part people plan for, and it is the smallest part of the job. A book written alone goes through false starts, an outline that stops working halfway, a draft generated with AI that reads like nobody wrote it, weeks when the day job or the family wins, and chapter one written for the fourth time. Then come the rewrites and the edits. Add those up and a finished manuscript usually takes two to three times the first draft, and the range is wide.
Writing it yourself loops back on itself again and again. A ghostwritten book runs in a straight line from interviews to manuscript.
A ghostwritten book runs on a schedule instead. The interviews and the outline come first. The chapters arrive in parts each month, you review each part, and the manuscript is done when the last part is approved. The planner shows both roads side by side for the length you enter.
How long does a ghostwritten book take?
When I write the book, your part is talking and reviewing. You don’t write a word. The project starts with interviews and an outline, about 30 days for a typical book and less for a short one. Then I write the chapters in parts of 2,500 to 5,000 words, one to four parts a month. The pace follows the payment plan: 20% down, then one payment a month while the chapters are written, with 18 months as the longest plan. Pick a pace in the planner and it shows the parts, the months and the number of monthly payments.
A 70,000-word memoir at each writing pace: about a month of interviews and outline, then the chapters.
Your own time scales with the length. For a typical book, plan on thirty to sixty hours across the project, most of it in interviews and the rest in reading each part and sending back comments. A 50-page book needs a handful of conversations. The calendar holds only while interviews happen on schedule and parts come back reviewed. The planner puts those ranges on a calendar, with publishing added.
How long does a ghostwritten book take from interview to publication?
The manuscript is only half the calendar. Self-publishing adds weeks. A traditional publisher adds more than a year, and that part of the schedule belongs to the publisher, so nothing you or I do will shorten it once the contract is signed.
A typical-length ghostwritten book reaches readers in about 5 to 9.5 months self-published, or about 16 to 26 months through a traditional publisher.
For anyone with a fixed date, that gap decides the route. A typical-length book meant for a conference a year out can be self-published in time. The same book sold to a traditional house comes out long after the conference ends. My article on publishing a ghostwritten book covers what happens after the manuscript is done.
What pushes a book to the slow end of the range?
Length and pace set the plan. Everything around the writing decides whether the plan holds, and it holds only while the author keeps up.
Source material. A book built on talks, articles and recordings that already exist moves faster than one where every story has to come out of interviews from scratch.
Interview availability. An author who keeps a standing weekly session keeps the book moving. One who cancels every other week doubles the calendar without adding a word.
Review turnaround. Each chapter goes back to the author for comments. A chapter that waits three weeks for a reply pushes everything after it back by three weeks.
Changes in direction. A book that changes its argument halfway through needs chapters written again, and that work was never in the original schedule.
The final read. The last stage asks the author to read the whole manuscript, which takes a solid block of time. Authors who put it off lose weeks at the very end, when the book is otherwise finished. My article on how long ghostwriting takes goes through each stage month by month.
How far ahead should you start a book for a deadline?
Work back from the slow end of every stage. A book you need at a conference next fall, published through a traditional house, needed to start well over a year ago, and the planner will say so plainly. Self-publishing is the route that fits a hard date, because the time between final manuscript and a book in hand is measured in weeks.
Start from the deadline and subtract the slow end of each stage to find the latest safe start.
If the date is too close, three things buy time back: a shorter book, the self-publishing route, or an AI-assisted book with its shorter schedule. Trimming the length is the most reliable of the three, because it shortens the interviews, the drafting and the reviews together. For the full picture of how a ghostwritten project runs, see my ghostwriting service.
How long is a typical book?
The lengths are the ranges I work to. A memoir runs 60,000 to 80,000 words, a business book 40,000 to 50,000 words, and a typical nonfiction book about 50,000 words. An AI-assisted book is shorter, at roughly 30,000 words.
Typical lengths by kind of book, with printed pages at 250 words a page.
A printed page holds about 250 words, so a 70,000-word memoir comes to about 280 pages. Trim size, font and margins move that number, and so do photos and white space, so treat the page count as an estimate. Reading time assumes 250 words a minute, a typical adult pace for nonfiction.
How long does a book take to write yourself?
Divide the length by the words you write in an hour, and you have the hours of drafting. Then be honest about the week. Writer’s block, emergencies and interruptions from the day job all take a share of the hours you plan to write, and the planner subtracts them before it counts the weeks. Put in your own numbers and watch what lost time does to the finish line. For the rewrites and edits, a finished manuscript then takes two to three times the first draft in the planner.
The starting numbers in the planner come from published research. Typing new prose runs about 19 words a minute in lab tests (Karat and colleagues, 1999), but a whole book drafts far slower: novelist Jennifer Ellis logged every hour of one first draft and averaged 336 words an hour, so the planner starts at 350. In a BookBub survey of 566 authors, most wrote 6 to 30 hours a week and about 15 percent wrote fewer than five, which puts a first-time author with a job near the low end, so the planner starts at 8.
Interruptions cost more than the minutes they take. Gloria Mark’s research found office workers switch tasks about every ten and a half minutes and take an average of 23 minutes to get back to interrupted work, so the planner starts at 2 lost hours a week for interruptions, plus 1 for writer’s block and 1 for emergencies. With those defaults a typical memoir takes a first-time author two to three years to finish, which matches the two to four years a first book often takes from blank page to final draft. And finishing is the exception: in 2010, 37,479 of 200,530 NaNoWriMo writers reached 50,000 words in the month, fewer than one in five.
The same 140 hours of drafting takes 14 weeks with no lost time and about 47 weeks when 7 of 10 weekly hours are lost.
The pattern in that chart is the reason most self-written books stall. Losing two hours a week barely shows. Losing five doubles the draft. Losing seven turns a few months of work into most of a year, and a project that stretches that long usually stops. If your numbers come out there, fix the week before you start the book. Plan fewer hours and keep them.
AI-assisted book. A shorter, focused book on a faster schedule. Your interviews become the prompts, AI produces the draft, and I edit the result by hand. It suits self-publishing and comes with tradeoffs covered below.
Book coaching. You write the book yourself, with a coach who keeps you moving and reads every chapter.
A place to start. When the book is still a feeling more than a plan, the Book Discovery Intensive works out what it should be before anyone commits to writing it.
The five questions follow this tree: where the book is now, who writes it, and how it will be published.
What do the five planning questions decide?
Where the book is now. A finished manuscript skips the writing paths entirely, and the only question left is how it reaches readers. A book that is still an idea or a pile of notes needs someone to write it, so the next question is who that is.
Who writes it. This question carries the most weight. Writing the book yourself points to coaching, handing it off points to ghostwriting, and not knowing yet points to the Intensive, because a wrong decision here costs months.
What kind of book it is. A memoir, a business book and a novel need different interviews. A memoir asks about a life in order. A business book asks about methods and results. A novel asks about characters and a story that may not exist yet. The questions send each one to the page that covers it.
How it will be published. A traditional publisher means an agent first, and agents read the proposal before anything else, so the proposal shows up as the second option. A traditional goal also rules out the AI-assisted path.
How soon you need it. Speed only changes the answer when you plan to self-publish. Then the AI-assisted book, at about a month for every 30,000 words, comes up as the faster route. The planner turns any of these paths into dates.
Should you hire a ghostwriter or write the book yourself?
Write it yourself when the writing is part of what you want out of the project, and you can protect a few hours every week for months. Hire a ghostwriter when the book matters more than the act of writing it, and your time is worth more spent on the work the book is about. Either way, your name goes on the cover.
The hours are the honest test. The planner shows how many hours of drafting a book of your length takes, and how far writer’s block, emergencies and interruptions stretch them. If those weeks look impossible next to your calendar, that answers the question.
Who should choose an AI-assisted book over full ghostwriting?
An AI-assisted book runs roughly 30,000 words and takes about a month for every 30,000 words, so about a month at the usual length. It fits an author who wants a credible, focused book quickly and plans to self-publish. Three tradeoffs come with it. Copyright covers only the human-written parts. AI use has to be disclosed when you register the copyright. And some traditional publishers will not take AI-assisted work at all.
If you want full copyright or a clean shot at a traditional deal, full ghostwriting is the better path. The questions only suggest the AI-assisted book when you need speed and plan to self-publish.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I start a book to have it out by a specific date?
Count back from the date using the slow end of every stage. For a ghostwritten book of typical length that is 4 to 8 months for the manuscript plus the publishing time, which is four to six weeks when self-publishing. The planner on this page does that arithmetic for you, at the length you enter.
Can a ghostwritten book be finished faster?
Yes, within limits. Fast feedback on drafts and interviews that happen on schedule keep a project at the quick end of the range. A shorter book or an AI-assisted book, which runs about a month for every 30,000 words, shortens it further.
How does a ghostwriting payment plan affect the timeline?
The down payment, 20% of the total, covers the interviews and the outline. After that I write the chapters in parts of 2,500 to 5,000 words, one to four parts a month, and you make one payment a month. More parts a month means fewer payments and an earlier finish. Fewer parts a month spreads the same book over a longer calendar, up to the longest plan of 18 months.
How many pages is an 80,000-word memoir?
About 320 pages as a trade paperback, at roughly 250 words to a page. The trim size, font and margins move that number up or down.
How many hours does an author spend on a ghostwritten memoir?
For a memoir or other book of typical length that I ghostwrite, plan on thirty to sixty hours of your time across the project. Most of it is interviews, and the rest is reading drafts and sending back comments. A short book needs only a few interviews.
Is it better to hire a ghostwriter or work with a book coach?
A ghostwriter suits you when you want the book written for you, in your voice. A book coach suits you when you want to do the writing and need structure, deadlines and an honest reader. The five questions at the top of the planner sort out which one fits.
Can an AI-assisted book go to a traditional publisher?
Some traditional publishers restrict AI-assisted work, and copyright covers only the human-authored parts. An AI-assisted book suits self-publishing. For a traditional deal, full ghostwriting avoids both problems.
