How Does the Ghostwriting Process Work?

You’ve been spinning your wheels on your book for years. Maybe decades.

You want to write a nonfiction book. You see people in your industry becoming authors all the time, and they’re reaping the benefits. More attention, more clients, more revenue—they’re killing it.

You want to leave a legacy for your children, and you know you have an incredible story to tell and helpful wisdom to share.

The only problem:

You don’t know how to write and publish a book.

Writing a book takes time—usually hundreds of hours—especially if it’s your first time. Embarking on this journey on your own is risky: just because you start writing a book doesn’t mean you’ll finish.

And let me tell you: there’s nothing more painful than an unfinished book.

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a business book or a memoir: sometimes, you need the help of a seasoned professional to guide you through the confusing and anxiety-inducing process of becoming an author.

Enter the ghostwriter.

What is a Ghostwriter?

In short, a ghostwriter helps you capture your stories and your unique wisdom in your voice, then they transform it into a polished, professionally developed book.

There are tons of benefits of working with a ghostwriter. For a start, you’ll save hundreds of hours—valuable time that you’d have spent toiling away, confused, at your computer.

If your ghostwriter is good, you’ll also get to work with a seasoned professional who’s seen it all and can guide you through the emotional journey of writing and publishing your book.

There is a payoff though. Ghostwriters can be expensive—their services range anywhere from $15,000 to more than $100,000 if they have some bestsellers under their belt.

And many ghostwriters have no defined process. If they don’t have a track record of bestsellers, it’s unlikely they’re following a proven process to get your ideas on the page.

So what does a successful ghostwriting process look like?

Let’s break it down in 7 easy steps.

Step 1: Positioning

Without clear goals for your business, you wouldn’t know which choices to make on a daily basis.

Similarly, without clear goals for your book, you won’t know which book to write.

That’s why any good ghostwriting process starts with positioning your book for the best results.

Which book should I write?

Ask yourself how you want your life to change after you publish your book.

Do you want more speaking events?

More clients?

To leave a legacy for your children?

Once you work with your ghostwriter to explicitly state your goals for your book, you can use those goals to determine your audience.

Who is my audience?

Your goals determine who you write your book for. If you want more clients, your audience is the type of clients you serve.

Don’t overthink this. For 80% of business book authors, your book audience is your current clients.

Get specific. One of the biggest mistakes I see authors make here is trying to write a book for “a general audience.” That doesn’t work. If you write a book for everyone, you’ll write a book for no one.

The narrower your audience, the wider your impact.

Ideally, pick an audience that’s smaller than 10,000 people.

Step 2: Outlining

Once your positioning is dialed in, you’ll get to work on your outline.

Most publishing companies and ghostwriters prefer to use a static outline—the type you lock in before content calls start. This is a waste of time and money.

For one, through the course of interviews, your content may change. In that case, you’ve spent a ton of time paying someone to create a static outline that will no longer serve you.

Secondly, a static outline is more of a creative straitjacket than a dynamic outline. We’ve found that a dynamic outline allows you and your ghostwriter to know where you’re going without being so narrow-minded that you miss content opportunities along the way.

This dynamic outline serves as a roadmap that lays the foundation for your book and the content interviews to come.

Step 3: Content Calls

Through a series of in-depth interviews, you’ll share your wisdom and stories with your ghostwriter. Your ghostwriter will help talk you through your content, record the calls, and transcribe them.

As you can guess, these interviews are very important.

Therefore, they should be goal-driven yet relaxed—you get to focus on articulating your ideas, and it’s your ghostwriter’s expertise to guide you through the conversations and make your spoken words sing on the page.

How Long Is Each Content Call?

90 minutes is the perfect balance between efficiency and effectiveness. Anything longer leads to burnout, anything shorter leads to superficial content.

Step 4: Writing and Revising Your Manuscript

After you finish content interviews, your ghostwriter will use the content call transcriptions to write the rough draft of your book.

In the meantime, you get to sit back and relax.

After they finish, you’ll revise the book together with your ghostwriter or an editor. This part of the process can be particularly challenging, especially if you’ve never written a book before. A good ghostwriter or editor will guide you every step of the way. 

*Warning*

This is the point where a lot of authors run away from their books. Seriously.

Your book may have been a dream for years. Finally seeing it on the page can be scary because your book is no longer the perfect idea you had in your head. It’s real and necessarily imperfect. That’s totally normal and valid, just know that you may want to hit eject at this point.

Will my voice be captured in writing?

Of course each writer has their own unique voice, but any great ghostwriter will act as a chameleon on the page. A world-class ghostwriter has experience capturing the voices of authors just like you, regardless of your industry.

Step 5: Cover Design and Interior Layout

As your ghostwriter is finalizing your manuscript, you’ll want to connect with a cover designer and interior layout expert. One benefit of working with a full service agency is that you’ll have a dedicated team of talented designers just for you, without having to hunt them down yourself.

Keep in mind that most traditional publishers take complete control of the design process. If cover design and interior layout design are important to you, you may want to choose your own designer or go with an agency that gives you creative control.

Sidenote

Many self-published business book authors neglect interior layout design. There’s no surer signal of mediocrity and amateur book creation than shoddy design. Your book's interior should be laid out with the same care and attention to detail as your cover.

Step 6: Publishing & Distribution

Whereas the rest of the book creation process should be highly collaborative and exciting, publishing & distribution is different.

Particularly for first-time authors, this is a great opportunity for you to step back and let a team of experts handle everything for you.

Once your book is fully written, edited, and designed, it will need to be copyrighted and registered, including all ISBN and barcodes necessary for retail distribution. Your book will then need to be formatted and published under an imprint, either through your publisher or one you create.

Most publishers retain a large percentage of royalties and rights. Some creative firms give you 100% ownership of copyright, royalties, and rights, including movie, audiobook, and television rights.

You have to decide which route is best for you given your goals.

For example, at Apollo Media, our authors retain 100% royalties and all rights for their books. We then distribute your book through Amazon and all other major online booksellers, including Barnes & Noble.

Step 7: Marketing

This is the fun part. It’s up to you how much work you want to put into marketing. Some authors want to become bestsellers. Some authors only want to share their book with their children and move on.

Once again, your goals will define your actions.

The marketing process is a lot like the book positioning process.

When you first started your book, you zeroed in on your goals and worked backwards from there to create your manuscript. You’ll want do the same thing with your marketing plan. Reverse engineer your goals to identify the ideal media outlets, messaging, and plan to spread your message and garner attention for your book.

Pro Tip

If you’d like to hit bestseller status, focus on getting as many preorder and first week book sales as possible. Roughly 5,000 sales in the first week is good enough to hit the bestseller lists, but this depends on many factors.

The Choice Is Yours

There are many different options for ghostwriting and publishing your book.

Your colleague may know a ghostwriter they like.

Someone in your mastermind group might refer you to a cover designer.

You could cobble together a team if you’d like, or you can work with a creative agency. Whatever you choose, the actions you take to write, publish, and market your book will roughly follow this 7-step process.