Writing a book, like most things in life, appears easier than it is, but it really is a particular skill best left to the professionals—particularly busy professionals, who are short on that most precious resource, time. Even if you do have a way with words, there are advantages to hiring a ghostwriter to co-create your book with you.
Book Planning Is an Art unto Itself
You’ve probably heard the saying, oft-attributed to Abe Lincoln, that “if you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I’ll spend four sharpening an axe.” This is true also of book writing, for as any writer will tell you, writing a book entails a lot more than writing a book! Before you compose that first sentence, you must plan the book thoroughly, which means defining your thesis, figuring out the structure, and sketching out the content.
In the book planning stage, you clarify your vision and objectives for the book, and ask hard questions about what, really, it is that you want to say. You scrutinize whether that message has been reproduced a thousand times in other titles on the market. If it has, it’s time to find a new angle because you don’t want to produce another generic, cookie-cutter work.
Then you develop the chapter by chapter outline, which provides a roadmap to guide your writing. Diving in willy nilly without the requisite planning usually results in a book whose content and organization is haphazard, unfocused, and lacks clarity and flow. Inexperienced authors, or those who attempt the undertaking solo, tend to make this mistake.
Writing Well Is Not Easy
For whatever reason, people tend to overestimate their writing proficiency. I attribute this to the general human propensity for believing we’re better at a given task than we actually art, and also because of the simple fact that writing, unlike say open heart surgery or Olympic pole vaulting, is a universal act, something we all do daily. But just because one is literate does not make one “literary.” And even folks who possess dazzling verbal acumen in some contexts (business reports, speeches, etc.) may find that their gift does not necessarily translate well to writing a 200-page book.
Writing Is Also Marketing
Even if you’re not aiming for high sales volume – and there are many reasons why you shouldn’t even care about book sales – you do have to think of the marketability of your book. Ghostwriters help ensure that you keep this criterion at the forefront. It can be easy to lose yourself in a sea of ideas as you write, kind of forget the original purpose of the book, look up, and realize you have drifted off course. After all, you are writing not only for yourself but in service of the people who will read what you have to say.
Writing Takes Time
This may be the number one draw for entrepreneurs and professionals, whose schedule is perpetually stretched thin as they focus on what they do best: their job. Writing a book is a major time commitment, involving, roughly, a couple hundred hours, between planning, writing, rewriting/revising, and editing. Hiring a ghostwriter means you can outsource all that intellectual labor. For clients/authors, the time commitment is around 20-30 hours of their own time (which includes book planning sessions, interviews with the ghostwriter to procure source material, and reading and giving feedback on drafts.)
Two Heads Are Better than One
Your ghostwriter is not just a writer but an editor, collaborator, and consigliere. The author’s expertise, experience, vision, and unique perspective tangos with the ghostwriter’s creativity and verbal flair to produce a better book than either person could create individually, since it’s the output of two minds working toward one goal. A ghostwriter is also valuable in that he or she will give the needed pushback when some of your ideas aren’t working while offering praise when it’s due.
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