Tag: ghostwriting

  • How to Become a Ghostwriter, So You Can Land Ghostwriting Jobs

    How to Become a Ghostwriter, So You Can Land Ghostwriting Jobs

    Thomas Jefferson might as well have been describing how to break into ghostwriting when he wrote, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

    In the summer of 2014, I quit my job to pursue full-time self-employment as an author and editor. Knowing that a majority of my income would likely not come from my books, I focused on seeking editing work.

    In less than a year, I shifted my focus to ghostwriting, a professional avenue I thought would be forever closed to me because I simply didn’t have the connections. I knew no celebrities, political figures or rich business types, but I did have three key assets: experience, patience and luck.

    This isn’t just my story either. In taking an informal poll of online connections who also ghostwrite books, common threads of experience, patience and luck wove through every story of how they first got paid to help other people tell their stories.

    Why you should consider ghostwriting jobs

    Before I cover the practical aspects of how to become a ghostwriter, let’s consider why you should add “Ghostwriter” to your writing services:

    • You’ll get paid upfront. No more waiting on royalties like you would for writing your own books!
    • It’s lucrative. With the right clients, you can earn substantially more than other writing services you provide.
    • No need for marketing. Because your name isn’t on the book, you don’t have to do any marketing to sell the book, which means you can proceed to the next project ASAP. Authors who don’t enjoy marketing often see this as even more beneficial than how much they earn from ghostwriting projects. (Unfortunately, you will still have to market yourself to get clients, but that’s content for another post.)
    • You can keep emotional distance. Because the book is not your own child, you’ll be able to see its strengths and weaknesses clearly, bringing a helpful perspective to the client.
    • The subject matter is fascinating. When you choose the right clients, you learn as you write: about other people’s lives, their professions and industries you otherwise might not come across.
    • It will help you write better. Ghostwriting consistently challenges your writing skills. If you’ve ever had trouble meeting your daily word count goals, try ghostwriting a book for a client who has already paid you!

    With those considerations in mind, it’s little wonder that writers want to know how to break into ghostwriting, but the process isn’t easy or fast. Becoming a ghostwriter is equal parts patience, determination, experience, confidence, marketing, and, well, luck.

    It’s that last part that most aspiring ghostwriters don’t want to hear, but it’s true — and we’ll get to why luck is a necessary ingredient in a moment.

    How to become a ghostwriter

    So how do you get started in this lucrative profession?

    Here are some tips for how to become a ghostwriter.

    1. Gain experience

    Journal. Blog. Guest post. Write for publications like The Write Life. Send letters to the editor. Make insightful comments on websites. Self-publish a book (properly edited, of course). Create a family email newsletter. In whatever ways you can, write, write, and write some more.

    And don’t forget to read. “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write,” Stephen King wrote. “Simple as that.”

    Read high-brow, low-brow, classics, and today’s popular books. Alternate between fiction and nonfiction — nonfiction authors must know how to tell a compelling story. Read the best books on writing and storytelling, like King’s On Writing and McKee’s Story.

    Put in your 10,000 hours of reading and writing. Earn the right to write for others.

    2. Be patient

    Ten thousand hours is 1.14 years, but that means you’d have to be doing that one single thing every hour of every day. Let’s say that five days a week you read for an hour per day and write for two hours per day, a generous assumption for most writers with full-time responsibilities outside of writing. At that rate, it will take you 12.8 years to become an expert writer.

    My story witnesses to this Gladwellian opinion. I began to take my writing seriously as a freshman in college at the age of 18. Every one of my post-college jobs was related to reading or writing, but I also suffered serious doubts about my abilities and so let the blinking cursor blink for long stretches at a time. Sixteen years later, I was offered my first ghostwriting gig.

    By no means do I believe myself an expert. Hemingway, who one could argue was an expert, said it well: “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

    Patience doesn’t mean biding your time until the right person contacts you. Patience means constant practice until you’re ready for the right person to contact you.

    ghostwriter

    3. Prove yourself…and then get lucky

    Of the six online ghostwriters who responded to my question about how they broke into ghostwriting, every single one said they’d been working on smaller writing projects before “getting lucky” and breaking into ghostwriting:

    • Mike Loomis started in multimedia curriculum development and book and product marketing before realizing he could help authors through offering ghostwriting services.
    • Pat Springle wrote for two organizations who loved what he produced and helped others finish their manuscripts before launching into a successful 20-year career as a ghostwriter.
    • Alice Sullivan wrote web and magazine copy for Country Music Television (CMT) during an internship before being asked by a major publisher to ghostwrite two books.

    In my case, I proofread bills and laws for the Texas Senate, directed communications for a large church, wrote copy for a law firm, edited a content marketing website, and became a self-employed editor before breaking into ghostwriting through a fortuitous referral. At the time, I thought I was lucky to have earned the opportunity to write for someone else and be paid for it.

    That job has led to two more direct referrals, which makes me feel even luckier to have been granted that first step into the world of ghostwriting.

    But before getting lucky, I gained experience and practiced patience. The luck would never have been achieved without them.

    Looking for other writing work? Check out this article, where you’ll find more options to get paid as a writer.

    Perhaps this quiz can help you decide.

    This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

    Photo via GuadiLab / Shutterstock 

  • Getting Started With Ghostwriting? Use This Formula to Determine Your Rate

    Getting Started With Ghostwriting? Use This Formula to Determine Your Rate

    To us freelancers, time really is money. So why is earning what we’re worth such a challenge?

    Easy methods like charging by the word or the page seems great — until you get hosed by higher-than-average research requirements or a helicopter client who calls every hour to check on your status. Then suddenly an article that should have taken you eight hours to finish takes closer to fourteen and your fee-to-profit ratio has sailed down the drain alongside the Ty-D-Bol Man.

    I know my fees on a per-hour, per-page, and per-word basis, but I rarely bid them straight up.

    Alone, they almost never translate to the work an individual project will require. Instead, I use a formula I’ve refined over many years.

    It accounts for multiple factors including research, client communication, and other ghostwriting tasks. I share it so you, too, can use it. And if you improve on the formula, even better ⏤ drop me a comment and let me know how.

    My bidding formula

    As stated, there a several key factors in accurately estimating a ghostwriting project. The five factors I account for are as follows.

    Factors

    1. Hourly rate (HR): My rate varies from $75 to $200 an hour based on the level of expertise required, as well as turnaround time (yes, freelancers, you should charge a rush fee.
    1. Interviews (I): This accounts for live, in-person (phone or video) interviews. These are more often a significant factor in long-form projects than in shorter articles or blogs, but are overlooked only at the peril of one’s profit.
    1. Research (R):These are your Google searches, the articles you dig up in the library archives or the news clippings your client emails one-by-one like a slowly dripping faucet.
    1. Client communication (CC): Every email you read, every phone call you answer is an investment of your time. Plan for it.
    1. Hours per final page (HFP): I know how long it typically takes me to write a single page (250 words) of content. Like other freelancers, this is insight I’ve gained with experience. As I calculate by final page, I account for editing time in this number as, well. Typically, I reduce the time per page by 50 percent for each draft. For example, if I average one hour per page to write a first draft, I calculate 30 minutes per page for a second and 15 minutes per page for a third ⏤ or 1.75 hours of work per final page.

    Formula

    HR x ((I + R + CC) + (HFP x page estimate)) = Fixed fee estimate

    or

    HR x ((I + R + CC) + (HFP x page estimate)) / estimated word count = Fee per word estimate

    Putting the formula to real use

    I had a client contact me about co-writing a 50,000 word memoir.

    She was an established writer and had already done significant outlining and research.

    However, she was struggling to identify her core message and to gain sufficient distance from the work to tell an honest story. After discussing the work, she asked me for a fixed fee bid.

    Here’s how I calculated it:

    HR: $75. Knowing she was an accomplished writer in her own right, I knew that working with her was not going to be strategically or editorially heavy. I kept my hourly fees on the low end.

    I: Minutes into our initial meeting I could tell that my potential client was a talker! That’s fine, I enjoyed our conversation. But it did mean that getting the information I’d need from our interviews would take longer than usual. I added 25 percent to my typical estimate for interviews.

    R: The client had already done and compiled significant research, so I reduced my research hours by 25 percent.

    CC: The client asked several questions about how often she could call me and how often we’d touch base. She wished to be able to pick up the phone whenever she had an idea come to mind. Again, I don’t mind that, but it does affect my estimating. I added 15 percent to my estimate.

    HFP: The key challenge for this client was finding her core message, so I knew we’d have to invest time in initial outlines and drafts. However, her skill as a writer offset the additional time required for finding a message. I used my standard HFP.

    75 x ((12 + 12 + 16) + (2 x 200)) = $33,000

    or

    75 x ((12 + 12 + 16) + (2 x 200)) / 50,000 = $.66 per word

    Giving a client an estimate in the tens of thousands of dollars is never a breezy conversation.

    However, performing due diligence in my estimates grants me the the confidence I need to defend my fee. And it gives my clients insight into the work I undertake on their behalf. Per-word and per-page fees are easy to give, but harder to defend. I feel I owe it to my clients to do better.

    I’d love to hear your formula for estimating your projects. What works for you?

  • How to Build a Strong Writing Portfolio When You’re a Ghostwriter

    How to Build a Strong Writing Portfolio When You’re a Ghostwriter

    I’ve been a successful ghostwriter for two decades, and even with a nice professional wind at my back, I struggled to build a portfolio representative of my skills.

    To be fair, I spent much of my career as a salaried employee, so I didn’t have to function with a freelancer’s mindset. But after leaving corporate life, I faced the thorny issues common to all contract ghostwriters.

    Namely, how can I prove I wrote what I say I wrote?

    It’s a layered problem. For starters, ghostwriters don’t put their names on their work. We get lots of writing experience, but we don’t get bylines.

    Then, too, there is the very real fact that many clients fear being “outed” for hiring a ghostwriter. As one of mine once said, “My name is all over the internet. I can’t exactly admit I didn’t write any of that stuff.”

    I was years into my freelance career, and I found myself with a hard drive full of well-written content, zero author cred and a client base who preferred I stay in the shadows. Before long, my work felt more like a theoretical exercise than a future. But, thanks to economic necessity and a handful of forced errors, I eventually freed myself from the ghostwriting hamster wheel.

    1. Include a portfolio permissions clause in every contract

    While this type of clause is standard for most types of freelancing, ghostwriting clients have anonymity concerns. Many feel embarrassed they’re not writing the content on which they put their name. I respect that. But it does not have to be a roadblock to business development.

    Ghostwriters should include a permissions clause in every contract.

    Mine is typically very simple. It states that I reserve the right to include the contracted work in part or in full within my professional portfolio.

    That is sufficient for most clients, though some stipulate additional parameters. For example, some clients allow me to use their pieces in my portfolio but request I remove their name. Others specify word count limits.

    2. Excerpt fee-based content

    The rise of ebooks and other fee-based content presents a new challenge.

    Long-form ghostwriters, for example, are currently in high demand to write self-help books, memoirs, and romance novels — all of which are revenue-generating products. Obviously, it’s bad form (if not outright theft) to freely distribute an ebook, for example, that otherwise sells for $10. And yet, contract writers still need to showcase the work.

    The solution is to provide excerpts.

    Product excerpts allow a ghostwriter to show relevant work samples without robbing a client of potential sales.

    When you’re writing a contract for a fee-based product, include a clause that grants you permission to use excerpts of that product in your portfolio. As stated previously, some clients may wish to stipulate additional parameters such as word count or other limits. In my experience, these requests are typically reasonable and easy to accommodate.

    If you find you didn’t secure usage permissions in your original contract, follow-up with the client.

    Include the excerpted text in your request and a brief statement about how you plan to use it.

    3. Maintain a client testimonial catalog

    On rare occasion, I’ve had clients withhold permission for the use of individual pieces, but instead, offer a testimonial on my behalf. I always take them up on it.

    In fact, I recommend all ghostwriters not only maintain a catalog of client referrals, but that they also include these statements in their portfolio.

    Even a handful of compliments can help a ghostwriter stand out from the competition. They also go a long way in justifying fees.

    The most compelling testimonials address the fact that ghostwriters offer more value than just the production of an article or ebook, etc. The best ghostwriters help clients clarify ideas and strategize arguments.

    They reduce customers’ workloads and relieve their content development headaches.

    Hiring a ghostwriter needn’t be anyone’s shameful little secret, and I’ve found that a few good conversations can go a long way in assuaging this fear for my clients.

    We ghostwriters provide a valuable service to our clients, but it is up to us to advocate for our own careers. Building a strong portfolio not only helps us land more work, it allows us to increase our rates, expand our expertise, and establish our professional standing. We can’t let something as singular as a byline stand in the way of earning what we’re worth.

  • This is the #1 Reason an Expert Will Hire a Ghostwriter

    This is the #1 Reason an Expert Will Hire a Ghostwriter

    Here’s the one truth every successful ghostwriter understands: We are the pain management pros of the writing world.

    Thought I was going to say something more profound? Consider this example.

    “Lydia” is a therapist with a thriving practice. Her clients tell her, “No one has ever been able to help me the way you have.” They say, “I thought therapy was a scam until I came to you.” They say, “You ought to write a book.”

    Lydia nods and thinks, I’d love to write a book. She sees the way the Dr. Phil’s of the world have turned basic ideas into multi-million dollar platforms. Even better, her ideas are unique. She has great client success stories to tell. She should write a book. Or a blog. Or a weekly column.

    In my experience, though, most Lydias never start those writing projects. Or if they do, they don’t see them all the way through to completion. Why? Because of the painful process of writing, editing, submitting and publishing.

    That’s where ghostwriters come in.

    The great news for ghostwriters is that the Lydias of the world turn the adage, “No pain, no gain!” on its head.

    Lydia already sees the benefit of a well-written book, blog or article. She knows that great content will act like fertilizer on her growing brand. We don’t have to sell her on product.

    What she wants is all gain without the pain. She wants assurances that we’re going to help her reach her goal faster, more easily, and with a greater guarantee of success.

    In my experience, there are three sources of pain for my ghostwriting clients: time, skill, and industry know-how.

    In fact, one of the first questions I ask prospective customers is this: What’s preventing you from writing this project on your own? With that information in-hand, I’m already several steps down the road to winning their business.

    Here’s a glimpse of what I mean.

    Pain point #1: Time (Or, “I’ve had this idea for years.”)

    More than any other issue, clients like Lydia lack the time needed to write. They have big jobs and growing families. They’re too busy living the life they want to write about to sit down and get typing.

    When I know that the client’s main obstacle is her lack of time, I can build a customized proposal that stands out because of its value, rather than just its price. I can say …

    • If you hire me, you will regain X number of hours per day because you’ll no longer have to spend it writing.
    • I can reduce your content time to market by [(current development speed)-(my development speed)].
    • Hiring me now reduces the risk that competing messages or ideas will enter the market before yours do.

    Pain point #2: Skill (Or, “If I were capable of writing this on my own, I would have done it by now.”)

    Clients who fall into this category aren’t necessarily unskilled writers, and many of mine vary widely in ability.

    This type of customer will, however, be the first to admit that he hates to write, or doesn’t know how to organize his thoughts, or has trouble maintaining a discipline.

    As one customer put it, “If I were capable of writing this on my own, I would have done it by now.”

    Customizing a proposal with a “skills” management bent looks something like this:

    • Hire me to do the stuff you don’t like — the writing and organizing and editing — while you remain focused on what you love: sharing your expertise.
    • It’s my job to make you stand out by developing a written voice that’s as dynamic as your brand.

    Pain point #3: Industry know-how (Or, “I don’t even know where to start.”)

    Many clients come to me and admit they don’t know the first thing about how to get something published. To which I respond, “Have you written anything yet?”

    Most often, the answer is no.

    Clients with big ideas tend to be big idea thinkers — they know what the goal looks like, but they’re not overly interested in reading the maps to get there. That’s our job. And we freelancers are especially good at easing this type of pain because we navigate “the system” every day. We have to know it to profit from it.

    To ease a client’s “process” worries requires little more than confirming your skills as a navigator.

    • You have great ideas, and I am expert at distilling complex concepts into a single, compelling message.
    • You have a worthwhile story to tell, but it needs to be packaged correctly to reach your [audience].
    • I like to develop long-term relationships with each client so that I can see you through from pitch to published.

    Time, skill, and know-how ⏤ none of us has a perfect balance of all three across the spectrum of our professional lives. That’s why I’ll never fire my bookkeeper; I’m terrible with receipts, and she thrills at organizing them.

    But I do like writing. I like bringing ideas to life on the page. And I like to be the one offering a moment of relief to my clients, a respite from the pain they experience when doing what I love.

    Anyone who’s ever rifled the medicine cabinet for a bottle of Excedrin knows the value in that.

  • Becoming a Ghostwriter Depends on This Skill. Do You Have It?

    Becoming a Ghostwriter Depends on This Skill. Do You Have It?

    “I could hear your voice on every page.”

    When a client tells me that’s what they’re hearing from readers, I know that I’ve done part of my job as their ghostwriter.

    The other part of the job is to craft an artful, compelling narrative with drive that makes a reader want to turn the page to know what happens next.

    If you’re writing a business or how-to book, the author’s voice must still be be imbedded into the pages, but the other task is to give the reader takeaways and clear, concise examples that come out of an author’s opinions and arguments.

    For purposes of this discussion, we can limit my comments to the memoir genre.  

    A memoir by definition is a discussion or biography of your client’s life written from personal knowledge.  

    With this in mind, the final writing piece needs to read as if it is coming from their thoughts and accounts, without completely losing your personal writing style.

    A memoir is one of the most difficult types of writing in which to capture a client’s voice, both because of the sheer amount of personal knowledge as well as the perspective of the piece.

    Start with a conversation

    So, how to capture your client’s voice? For starters, when you’re writing a memoir for a client, you want to always begin the process with a series of interviews which are recorded and transcribed.

    These interviews can often last for several days, depending upon the length of the story and the number of experiences that your client can describe to you.

    You can then listen to the recordings and compare them to the transcribed material. You’ll also want to take notes along the way, which will serve as prompts when you sit down to write.

    Try not to interrupt the flow of storytelling, but do guide your client to stay on point if they wander too far into the weeds — which often happens. There are times when I lose the train of thought and have to say, “What were we talking about?” Hopefully, we both laugh.

    Just the act of listening to their recorded voice gives you many clues for how to replicate that voice in your writing.

    Elements of a client’s voice

    What are some of the elements of a client’s voice that should end up on the page to ensure the authenticity of a memoir?

    Here are a few basic examples:

    Sentence structure, cadence and tempo

    Much like a piece of music, the pacing of a person’s storytelling is part of their voice.

    Expressions

    Try to incorporate the sayings and metaphors your client likes to use in telling a story. “Their Sundays were longer than their Mondays,” is something my mother used to say when seeing a woman with her slip hanging below her hem. Or, for example, “She’s no oil painting,” when sizing up a woman’s looks, for better or worse.

    Or “What’s the worst that can happen?” which was a common reaction to a situation from a ghostwriting client who survived Auschwitz and the Bataan Death March. You couldn’t argue with that, because he had seen and survived the very worst.

    Regional expressions and foreign words

    Finding those special regional expressions and using them judiciously can make writing sing.

    Think William Faulkner and take it down a few notches.

    Or listen for those foreign words — used authentically — that a client frequently relies upon when English is not their first language. Don’t be afraid to use them. Trust the reader will figure out or look up the meaning.

    A sense of humor

    Not everyone is a barrel of laughs, but there are storytellers who have an amazing array of jokes (many of which they have told and retold) that can spice up the writing and strike a familiar note.

    Aphorisms

    I have rarely met a person who doesn’t like to quote a well-known adage. I even worked with a client who asked that we include a special section on expressions that inspired them.  Aphorisms help to balance out the expressions that a client uses themselves with more well-known expressions that affected or inspired them indirectly. Using these phrases or quotes in strategic places can serve to directly retain your own writing style and voice in the piece.

    Look for opportunities along the way. For example, “A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine.” There are thousands upon thousands, and readers enjoy running across them because they have heard them said by your client (and many others) before.

    Noting the features above, along with simply spending time with the story, will ensure that the client’s voice influences the final piece without being overbearing.

    Choosing which ones to employ and which ones to jettison are what keeps your voice in their narrative. Make sure you take the time to listen to the story and become a part of it in your mind before sitting down to write.

    Ghostwriters, what techniques can you share for preserving and sharing your client’s voice?

  • Become a Ghostwriter: Here’s How to Write in Someone Else’s Voice

    Become a Ghostwriter: Here’s How to Write in Someone Else’s Voice

    “A ghostwriter.”

    “So, do y—”

    “No, I don’t write about ghosts. And I don’t wear a sheet with holes cut out for eyes while I write.”

    “That’s not what …”

    “Yes it is, and you know it.”

    “OK. You got me. So what do you actually do then?”

    “I write books for other people. Their ideas, my words.”

    “Isn’t that cheating?”

    “No. My clients have great ideas. They just don’t have the time or the know-how to finish writing a book. It’s a win-win.”

    “But how do you write it so it seems like they wrote it?”

    “I’m a ghost. It’s what I do.”

    I’m a nascent ghostwriter, with just one title to my resume and two more nearing completion, but I want to do more. Consequently, I’ve been marketing myself as a ghostwriter. Because of that, I’ve had some variant of the conversation above more times than I can remember.

    When I talk with other writers, they often want to know about two specific issues: how to break into ghostwriting and how to write in another person’s voice. The first issue requires equal parts hard work and luck, but the second can be learned — although it tends to require a significant amount of trial and error.

    I learned the significance of finding the right voice after one of my clients pitched his half-written book to an agent. The agent replied that it was too academic in tone to reach a popular audience, which the author wanted to do. After I was hired to rewrite and expand his initial book, we focused on “popularizing” his book without leaving behind the important information he wanted to convey.

    Through this process, I learned a number of methods on how to write in another person’s voice. (In fact, with proper modification, these methods can be used to find a company’s voice for marketing and to discover characters’ voices in novels.)

    1. Listen

    The simplest and most effective way to write in someone else’s voice is to listen to that person’s voice.

    For instance, this client had 10 hours of video from a conference he’d led using information that would ultimately be in the book. He sent me the video and I transcribed every word. Painstaking? Yes. Worthwhile? Quite.

    In being forced to listen to the way he spoke about his book’s topic, I discovered his voice hiding in plain sight. He wasn’t academic; he was understandable. He wasn’t dull; he was funny. His spoken-word, real-life delivery was much more engaging than what he’d written.

    But you don’t have to rely on your author speaking about his or her topic (though, of course, that’s ideal). You can glean their voice from the conversations you have with them. With their consent, record your conversations, then jot down a few notes after the fact about what struck you: Did he use large words? Did she seem confident in what she was saying? Did he pause for long periods of time? Did she often quote others? What did his body language convey?

    In asking other ghostwriters about how they listen to learn an author’s voice, they offered a number of excellent suggestions for instances when a meeting may not be possible:

    • “Read everything you can from that person: books, speeches, even emails, and any notes-to-self that they’ll share.” — Jennifer Harshman
    • “Write out physically something the author has written. Do it over and over until you get a feel for how things are worded. Talking like that person out loud can help too.” — Jim Woods
    • “Watch videos they may have. Record your calls. Skype if possible so you can also learn their body language. Visualize them speaking, then pretend to be that person as you write.” — Alice Sullivan
    • “Try to never do a ghostwriting project without an in-person meeting. Also, if the client is a speaker, discuss the difference between spoken and written word.” — Mike Loomis

    Essentially, you’re searching for the ways in which they best engage an audience. If you can capture that aspect of your author’s personality in writing, you’ve accomplished much of what’s required of a ghostwriter.

    2. Write

    Robert Frost wrote, “I can see no way out but through.”

    Once you start hearing your author’s voice in your head at night, that’s just about the right time to begin ghostwriting on their behalf. If you never begin writing, you’ll have no idea whether your idea of their voice will translate well to the written page. You must go through to get out, and it will be a laborious process of questioning every word choice, every transition and every edit.

    With the best clients (and I’ve been fortunate to work with all “best clients” so far), you can write and submit a chapter, then receive feedback within an agreed-upon timeframe. This has vacillated between a day and a week with my clients.

    Remember, these are busy professionals who hired me precisely because they’re so busy. Consequently, I have to be flexible with their timeframes, though they still have to be responsive to my needs so that their respective books can be finished on deadline.

    Mike Loomis offers two superb tips for the writing phase: “Ping-pong one chapter until it feels right to everyone” and, “Try to get feedback from a spouse (or someone close to the author) when possible.”

    Feedback is when you’ll really learn whether or not you’ve captured the author’s voice.

    And that moment right before opening your author’s first email reply after you’ve sent the first draft? It’s enough to make any writer want to hide under a sheet.

    3. Bow

    Lastly, be humble when you receive feedback. Though it is your book, it’s not really your book.

    As the client paying you to write a book on her behalf and in her voice, if the author says, “I wouldn’t use that word,” you must delete all instances of that word without hesitation. In fact, the more you can discover about the particular words and turns of phrase the author prefers, the more you’ll be aligned with her voice.

    Quick tip: To prevent yourself from inadvertently using a word the author wouldn’t choose, use a text expansion app like aText (or one of these Windows options) to essentially autocorrect any unintentional word usage.

    Ultimately, you must realize what’s supposed to be on display isn’t your talent — it’s your author’s voice. Like a ghost, the best writers for other people disappear behind the author’s needs.

    If you’re a ghostwriter, what practices and strategies do you use to get inside your author’s mind? If you haven’t tried ghostwriting, will you?

    If you’re exploring other writing careers, check out this article, where you’ll find more options to get paid as a writer.

    Perhaps this quiz can help you decide.