At an agency you interview the salesperson. That person is warm, confident, and good at the call, because that is the job. You get a good feeling and you sign. Then the agency assigns a writer. Sometimes from another country whose language you do not speak. Sometimes more than one writer, splitting the chapters.
What comes back is a book you do not recognize, and I have cleaned up what comes next more than once. It is the difference between hiring a contractor and hiring a general who sends crews. The contractor you met is the one holding the hammer. The general sends whoever is free that week, and the house shows the seams where the crews changed.
Why does an assigned writer produce a book you do not recognize?
Not because the writers are bad. Many of them write well. The problem is that the writer never sat with you. Never heard how you talk, never learned what you would refuse to say, never watched where you get quiet when the real material comes up. The salesperson heard those things and did not write them down, because the salesperson’s job ended at the signature.
With multiple writers it is worse, because the voice changes chapter to chapter. One writer builds arguments from examples, the next from principles. One uses short sentences, the next runs long. The reader feels the seams even when the facts are right, and the author feels them most of all, because none of the voices is his.
How important is the relationship with the ghostwriter?
Second only to the goal, after 54+ ghostwritten books. Once you have a clear goal, the relationship decides whether the book gets finished and whether it sounds like you. A good relationship survives almost anything: a slow month, a difficult chapter, a disagreement about structure. A bad one survives nothing, however well anyone writes, because the client stops answering and the project stops.
It resembles a good marriage in one respect. Everyone communicating and working together gets through almost any problem. Two people who cannot talk to each other do not get through the easy ones. So interview the writer. One conversation should tell you whether you can work together for six months, and that question outranks the portfolio.
Who should run a ghostwriting project?
Someone has to, and it is normally the writer. The client defines the project: what the book is for, who it is for, what it must say. The writer leads it, because the writer knows what breaks a book. Nobody reads past a childhood opening. You have one book in you right now, not six. That name in chapter four is a defamation exposure. The client gives a little to the expert because the expert knows the codes.
Two people running the project make it untenable. When the client manages the writing and the writer manages the client, nobody manages the book, and the book shows it. The architect and the homeowner is the frame I use: the homeowner says what the house is for, the architect decides where the load-bearing walls go, and the house stands because they did not swap jobs.
What about the high end of the agency world?
Exceptions exist. Some agencies put the writer on the first call, keep the same writer through the project, and charge accordingly. Most buyers never see those agencies, because most buyers arrive through a search result and a salesperson, and that path leads to the assignment model. If you are talking to an agency and the writer is in the room from the start, that is a different conversation and a fairer comparison.
With a solo ghostwriter, the person you interview sits in every session and writes every chapter. No handoff. No seams. The trade is that one person’s capacity is limited, and a solo writer will tell you when the calendar is full instead of assigning you to whoever is free.
The one question to ask
Who will write it, and can I talk to them now? An answer that names a person and puts them on the next call tells you what you need. An answer that describes a process, a team, a proprietary method, or a quality-assurance step tells you what you need too, in the other direction. A book is a relationship with a person, and you cannot have a relationship with a process.
Ask it before you sign. Ask it again if the answer changes after you sign. The guide to ghostwriting lists the other questions that belong in that first conversation, and the case studies show what the relationship produced when it was right.
What the first call with a writer should cover
The goal, before anything else. A writer who opens with his process before asking what the book is for is selling a process. A writer who asks what the book is for, who it is for, and what has stopped you so far is starting the project in the first ten minutes, and you will know by the end of the call whether the two of you can have that conversation for six months.
Then voice. Ask how the writer captures it, and listen for whether the answer involves you talking and him waiting. Then ask what happens when a project goes wrong, because a writer who has done this fifty times has a story about a project that stalled and what he did, and a writer who has done it twice has only good stories. You want the one with the bad story and the fix.
The crew seams
I keep the contractor metaphor because the seams are real. In a house they show where one crew stopped and the next began: a tile line that does not meet, trim that changes profile at a doorway. In a book they show where one writer’s habits gave way to another’s, and the reader cannot name what changed but stops trusting the page. A single builder leaves no seams. The house feels like one decision, because it was.
Interview the writer. If the writer is not available to interview, you have your answer. And if you want to interview me, the Book Discovery Intensive is one engagement, with the writer, that tells both of us whether it works before the project starts. Connect with me on LinkedIn, or send a direct message and tell me what you are working on. Part of The Ghostwriting Hub.
You will live in the house for years. Meet the person holding the hammer.
The Guides That Get Your Book Written, Published, and Sold
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