Congratulations! You have decided to work with a ghostwriter, which is an enormous step. By doing so, you have decided to put your faith in yourself and your work, and you have taken a step closer to being a published author. But, before collaborating with your ghostwriter and signing the ghostwriting contract, make sure to read ghostwriting tips available over the internet for a successful endeavor.
A book takes months to write, and hiring a ghostwriter is an expensive investment. Indeed, you may have heard horror stories of writers failing to deliver on their promises, spirits disappearing, or other such nightmares. Unfortunately, many of those stories are real.
So, based on our expertise as a ghostwriting service, here are a few ghostwriting tips that every author should think about in order to get the most out of the ghostwriting services.
Make the Planning Phase a Priority
You hired a ghostwriter to save time, which it will, but if you want a compelling book that reflects your vision, you must indulge extensively in the process before writing a single word. Of course, you wouldn’t start building your dream home without first sketching up a precise plan, and the same goes for your book. As a result, schedule in-person meetings to go through your project, style, and publication goals in detail.
You should have established the following at the end of your planning sessions:
- The book’s placement (its standpoint, target audience, and distinguishing features)
- The reader’s assurance
- A thorough framework with chapter headings, subheadings, and content descriptions
- A clear understanding of the main concepts and statements
- The book’s estimated length
- A timeline for the project and a meeting calendar for the future
- A marketing and public relations strategy in general
- A strategy for reaching out to agents or publishers.
If you are writing a novel or a memoir, you must include:
- The story arc, plot, and character arcs are all important aspects of a story.
- Description of the setting
- Tense and point of view
- Character drawings
In addition to discussing these issues, you should create a clear strategy, including an interview schedule, for the following months to ensure that you both stay on track and have enough time to complete the task.
Do the Preparation Work
Your book-planning meetings will be far more fruitful if you prepare ahead of time. Do the following homework to assist your writer in preparing for your meetings. Make sure you get this material to your first meeting at least a week ahead of time.
Create a Schedule
If you don’t have one already, create one and share it with your writer or writing team so that you may cover all of the aforementioned areas.
Discover Your Preferred Voice and Style
Read a few of your favorite novels and determine what kind of writing appeals to you the most? Provide a list of novels that come near to expressing your voice, style, sense of humor, and so on to your ghostwriter.
Collect Writing Samples, Recordings, Videos, And Other Relevant Material
Allow your writer to get insight into your personality and assist them in capturing your own voice.
Share Your Research
If you have any books or articles that might help you understand your subject better, share them with your ghostwriter. Your ghostwriter will want to know as much as possible about the subject before the preparation sessions.
Keep It Professional and Stay On Topic
During the book-writing process, authors are often astonished at how well they come to know their ghostwriter, and it’s easy to get carried away with casual banter about numerous topics.
However, it’s critical to establish professional limits, so you don’t inadvertently waste your writer’s time. While it’s crucial to get to know one another and form a strong relationship, going off-topic too often can slow down the process and may irritate your ghostwriter, especially if they are paid on a contract basis rather than by the hour.
Encourage Them by Offering Some Credit
The majority of ghostwriters’ work is kept completely confidential, which makes it difficult for them to develop a portfolio of clients for reputation.
While confidential writer partnerships are acceptable, providing a testimonial, cover credit, acknowledgment, a small share of the publisher’s advance or royalties, or other kinds of recognition is extremely useful. It will motivate the writer to go the additional mile.
However, if you don’t want to admit that you hired a ghostwriter, you might thank them for anything else, such as book consultation, editing, or general assistance with the book.
Make it clear to the ghostwriter from the start that you want to credit them at the end of the writing project. You could even want to use it as a bargaining tool to achieve a better price.
Avoid Going For A Community Review
Yes, we understand that having your mother’s friend’s second cousin’s author friend review and provide the expert judgment on your book, as well as feedback from all of your friends and coworkers, is appealing. However, be mindful that a random community review method can drag your editing process in a million different directions, always resulting in a disaster.
When we undertake beta testing for full-length manuscripts at Writers Clique, we frequently get several different perspectives on the same text. Still, we have a single editor examine, assess, and aggregate the comments into a cohesive evaluation based on the combined feedback of the reviewers. Giving feedback to your ghostwriter requires a similar strategy.
So, select a single person to examine and synthesize everyone’s input, whether you are a bunch of C-suite executives coauthoring the book or a single author seeking feedback from your 20 best friends.
Final Thoughts
Our most crucial recommendation is to be friendly to your writer simply. Be patient with yourself during the process as it is pretty difficult to capture someone else’s voice and style, and it might take a long time. Ghostwriting is a thankless and demanding profession, and most ghostwriters put in many hours to make the basic word choices in order to impress you.
Yes, you hired them to perform a job, but making art isn’t always easy, and being nice and understanding will not only give the writer the confidence to keep going, but it will also earn respect and drive them to do wonderful work for you.
Ghostwriting a book is a lengthy and often complicated process. Still, with these significant ghostwriting tips, you can make it a gratifying journey that will help you achieve your goal of becoming an established author.
