Ghostwriter: Your Silent Collaborator
Many people think that they want to write a book. But just because you believe that, should you? The answer is YES. Maya Angelo is quoted as saying, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” There are many reasons that you should write that book. One reason is that it affords an opportunity for you to write and publish something on a subject matter that is crucial to you and that you will have for the rest of your life. From a business point of view, writing a book is the quickest way to gain standing, establish yourself as an expert in your field, and build a specialized reputation. It can also be used as a publicity item and promotion tool for your business.
The question is, what is stopping you? The answer is that writing a book is really hard. It is perhaps one of the hardest things that you will ever do. No one is born a writer. How long have you been saying, I am going to write a book? If the response is a year or longer, you might want to consider hiring a ghostwriter. People hire ghostwriters for many different reasons, but the most common is that their business has grown so much that they no longer have time to write their own material or they have a wealth of proficiency or an exhilarating story to tell, but they do not enjoy writing, or they are not very good at it.
Ghostwriters are writers for hire who take not a bit of the credit for the work created. The original writer, or author, hires the ghost as a freelance writer to create copywritten work for a fee. The author takes the credit for all the artistic work produced, including all the creative writing produced by the ghostwriter. The ghost, who is typically paid in advance of finalizing the job, gets money as a work for hire job and accepts none of the credit for the ghostwritten work. Ghostwriters are hired to write literary works, speeches, or other writings legitimately credited to another person as the author. Memoir ghostwriters habitually pride themselves in disappearing when posing as others since such disappearance signals the quality of their expertise. Ghostwriters often work for a very significant sum of money. They are paid based on a price per hour, per word or page, a flat fee, a percentage of the royalties of the sales, or some combination thereof.
As the Master Storyteller, I am also an accomplished ghostwriter. When I ghostwrite a book or story, I endeavor to exemplify my client’s voice. I build upon my client’s genius. Even though I write the original words, we are very much co-creators. This is manifested in the fact that most ghostwriting clients leave the process with a sense that they wrote the book—only they characteristically save more than 300 hours in the actual writing process. The technique of ghostwriting a book more often than not involves a deep-rooted engagement by the author. While, yes, someone else does the work of putting words on the page, the procedure requires a high level of intellectual engagement from both parties.
The final question that you must ask yourself when it comes to your book is whether the investment in a ghostwriter makes sense to you. For high-level entrepreneurs, thought leaders, or celebrities, ghostwriting is a clear choice. If writing and publishing a book will catapult your business or brand to the next level, consider hiring a ghostwriter.