Why Hire a Ghostwriter? To Get Your Book Finished
Marcia Layton Turner
In 2006, the Wellesley Hills Group published a report titled “The Business Impact of Writing a Book,” which is no longer available, that analyzed data from 200 authors regarding the benefits of publishing a business book. The firm’s principal, Mike Schultz, shared that 96% of the authors surveyed realized a positive impact on their business from having published a book and would recommend it to others.
The Indirect Benefits of Authoring a Book
While the book itself may not have generated millions in revenue, since few books ever sell more than 10,000 copies, the intangible benefits from being able to claim author status were many, the authors reported. From being seen as an instant expert, to qualifying for speaking engagements, to educating the market through the material shared in the book, authors felt the investment of time and money in a book was well worth it.
In many professions, publishing a book is considered the pinnacle of success. In academic circles, you have to “publish or perish”—meaning produce a book or respected scholarly articles or you’ll need to look for another job. In the business world, experts with a book to their name are frequently quoted in the media and, perhaps as a result, generally perceived to be more skilled than those who cannot yet refer to themselves as an author.
The benefits of writing a book are many, though the major advantage isn’t the creation of a new income stream but, rather, the increased demand for the author’s products and services. In some cases, as with Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek, books can completely transform an author’s career trajectory and create unexpected business opportunities. (Kondo now has her own Netflix series, coaching business, speaking career, and follow-on books while Ferriss has regular speaking engagements and more books.)
How a Ghostwriter Can Help
So if the benefits of being an author are so clear, why don’t more people write books? There are a number of obstacles, it turns out. The good news is that you can hire someone to deal with them all.
A professional ghostwriter is your ticket to getting your book done and published. Some of the roadblocks they can help you overcome include:
Finding the time to write. Skilled experts are often so in demand that they can’t afford to set aside hours during the day or on the weekend to put pen to paper. So they don’t, and their book sits unfinished and unpublished or remains trapped in the author’s head.
By hiring a ghostwriter, you can spend your time doing what you do to earn an income, whether that’s running a company, advising clients, or in the operating room. You don’t need time off or to take time away from your day job with a ghostwriter working in your place.
Knowing where to begin. While most people have a clear idea of their desired end product—namely, a book—knowing how to begin and what steps are involved is less clear.
By hiring a ghostwriter, you’re partnering with an experienced editorial consultant who can advise you on your publishing options, help you choose a target market, advise you on how best to organize and present your material, and serve as a coach as you begin to talk through your message.
Staying on schedule. Some experts start the process of writing a book with excitement but, over time, their focus wanes. They get distracted by work and the book’s progress stalls.
A ghostwriter, on the other hand, can help create an outline to organize your thoughts and then manage the project for you, creating a schedule for information gathering and deadlines for responses that will keep the process moving forward.
Ensuring quality writing. Let’s be honest, anyone today can write and publish a book. With the rise of self-publishing platforms, it’s become easy to package words into a book format. Unfortunately, without the layers of editing and proofreading that a traditional publisher provides, many of those books are of poor quality. The ideas may be great but the bad writing can become distracting. Bad reviews can result.
An experienced ghostwriter, who has likely worked with traditional publishers, knows how to present your material clearly and concisely, in a way your reader will understand. If you follow the guidance of your ghostwriter, you can feel confident that your book will look and sound much like other books on the shelves of bookstores and libraries.
In trusting a ghostwriter to produce your book, you gain all the advantages of authorship without having to invest time and attention yourself in preparing it. Once completed, you can establish yourself as a thought leader, gain almost immediate visibility for your brand, and be assured the writing will be of publishable quality.
The use of a ghostwriter allows virtually anyone to enter the book world and gain all the advantages being an author provides, without having to take a sabbatical to get the book written.
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