At an agency you interview the salesperson. That person is warm, confident, and good at the call, because that’s the job. You get a good feeling and you sign. Then the agency assigns a writer. Sometimes from another country whose language you don’t speak. Sometimes more than one writer, splitting the chapters.
What comes back is a book you don’t recognize, and I’ve cleaned up what comes next more than once.
It’s 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.
This model makes me angry, because the client does everything right. They ask good questions, like the answers, sign in good faith, and get a book from somebody who was never on the call. I’d almost never recommend an agency to anyone who asked me. I’d send them to an experienced solo writer, the kind of person they can interview, argue with and call on a Tuesday.
Why does an assigned writer produce a book you do not recognize?
It isn’t 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’d refuse to say, never watched where you get quiet when the real material comes up. The salesperson heard those things and didn’t write them down, because the salesperson’s job ended at the signature.
With multiple writers it’s 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.
The author gets cheated worst here. He paid for a book in his own voice, and he’s the one who has to stand on a stage or sit across a desk from a prospect and hand over something that sounds like three strangers wrote it.
How important is the relationship with the ghostwriter?
Second only to the goal, after 54+ ghostwritten books. Once there’s a clear goal, a good working relationship is how you end up with a finished manuscript in your own voice. 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 can’t talk to each other don’t 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’s normally the writer.
The client defines the project: what the book is for, who it’s 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 didn’t swap jobs.
A writer who hands the wheel to the client to keep the peace is ducking his job. One uncomfortable conversation in the first month costs far less than a book that falls apart in the fifth because nobody would say who was in charge.
Which ghostwriting agencies are worth using?
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’re talking to an agency and the writer is in the room from the start, that’s a different conversation and a fairer comparison. A packaged, done-for-you book service can make sense too, if you want a fast book, don’t care who writes it and just want it out. As of 2024 those ran around $20,000. I wouldn’t recommend one to anyone, but I can see the case for it.
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. I’ll take that limit every time. A client who hears my calendar is full can wait or hire someone else, and either way they know exactly who’s writing the book.
| Factor | Assignment-model agency | Solo ghostwriter |
|---|---|---|
| Who you interview | A warm, confident salesperson | The person who writes the book |
| Who writes it | An assigned writer you never met, sometimes more than one | The person you interviewed writes every chapter |
| Sessions | The writer never sat with you | The writer sits in every session |
| Voice | Can change chapter to chapter; the seams show | No handoff, no seams |
| Full calendar | Assigns you to whoever is free | Tells you the calendar is full |
| Answer to who writes it | A process, a team, a method or a QA step | A name, on the next call |
I run into prospects who’ve already been contacted by ten ghostwriters before they talk to me. I still get the business sometimes, and the reason they give is that I’m a person. They don’t want an agency. They want to talk to the writer, and they don’t want to talk to a salesperson. They trust me because I have the conversation myself and I have the background.
What is the one question to ask a ghostwriting agency?
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 can’t have a relationship with a process.
An agency that won’t put the writer on the phone before you sign is showing you whose interests come first. I’d walk away from that call, and I’d tell anyone I cared about to do the same. 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 should the first call with a ghostwriter cover?
A book is a relationship with a person, and you can’t have a relationship with a process.
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’s for, and what has stopped you so far is starting the project in the first ten minutes, and you’ll 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.
Goal first, then voice, then the bad story and the fix: the order a first call with a writer should follow.
My take
Agencies sell you a warm salesperson and hand your book to a stranger. The person writing your book is somebody you’ve never met, and you can’t build a working relationship with a stranger hidden behind a sales rep. Before you sign, ask who will write it and whether you can talk to them now. If they offer a process or a team in place of a name, find a writer you can call directly. I’d tell anyone I cared about the same.
What do the seams in a multi-writer book look like?
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 doesn’t 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 can’t name what changed but stops trusting the page. A single builder leaves no seams. The house feels like one decision, because it was.
That loss of trust is the main cost of the multi-writer model. The client never sees the handoff, the reader never knows what went wrong, and the author’s name sits on the cover of a book that lets both of them down.
Interview the writer. If the writer isn’t 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. That’s 10 hours of interviews with me, and you’ll get to know me. By the end you’ll know whether I’m a jerk or a good guy who can write your book.
Connect with me on LinkedIn, or send a direct message and tell me what you’re working on. Part of The Ghostwriting Hub.
You’ll live with this book for years, so meet the person who’s going to write it before you sign anything. Selling someone a relationship with one person and delivering a book from another is a lousy way to treat people who trusted you with their story, and no discount makes up for it.
Before you sign with anyone, read The Ghostwriting Advantage. It explains how to get your book written for you and why the person you talk to should be the person who writes.
