Some Ghostly Advice

It's no secret that the members of the consulting profession who excel quickly are generally strong verbal communicators. Their writing skills, however, vary widely. Certainly, there are some excellent writers. Peter Drucker in his prime, for instance. But for every Drucker title, let's face it: There are dozens of business books that give Nyquil a serious run for its money. In fact, physicians may want to prescribe certain consultant books for their narcoleptic properties.

Even if you can write as well as Drucker, you might still want a ghostwriter. Typically, it's cheaper to hire a writer than become one. Writing a book takes time, and time — it should go without saying — is money. An average writer of middling speed might turn out about 10,000 words per month. Based on that rate, writing a 200-page business book will consume five or six months, without taking the research into account. If you've got that kind of unscheduled time, a book is the least of your worries.

Still, there are plenty of consultants who pound out books on nights and weekends. It's doable, but it has its disadvantages. Between working and writing, you can forget about a personal life. It's tough to maintain the continuity and flow a book requires between writing sessions. Finally, you can take years to write a book part-time, but understand that its contents may well have a fixed shelf life. You wonder: How many e-business manuscripts have been gathering dust since the Internet bubble burst?

Three Guidelines for Ghost-hunting

It's never been easier to find a ghostwriter. Enter the phrase "ghostwriting services" in Google, and the search engine returns hundreds of hits. The key to separating the wheat from the chaff is framing your search in a way that identifies the right ghost for your book.
The first guideline for finding the right ghost is simple and often ignored: The writer must understand business. One writer recalls being hired a few years back to complete a two-book project for the training and development consulting division of a major media company after the creative-writing professor at a community college originally hired repeatedly missed his deadlines and finally failed to deliver the first book. You might wonder why he was hired to begin with. He was a short story writer who was conflicted about selling out to corporate America — he refused to meet with or speak to the company's consultants because he felt it would compromise his "artistic freedom," but he took the money. No kidding: Consider getting a business writer for a business book.

The second guideline is to find a writer who will produce a work in keeping with your perspective and beliefs. Recently, after one month on a six-figure book project with an ex-Fortune 100 CEO, one writer was forced to recommend its termination. The client had strong religious beliefs, but had started the collaboration by insisting that they would not play a major role in a business book based on his career. Indeed, religion was barely mentioned in the many clippings and videos the writer was sent.

After work started, however, the "author" demanded that the book reflect an intense religious orientation (prayer is the key to business success, biblical quotations, etc.). There is nothing inherently wrong with such a book, but it was not the book the writer had been hired to write, nor one he felt well suited to write. The lesson: Be true to yourself and up-front with your ghost.

Finally, find a writer who can get your personal style on paper. There is a very successful East Coast ghostwriting firm that made its reputation with one best-seller; now, everything they produce follows that book's bright, marketer's style and fixed, case study–based formula. Be aware that with certain publishers, you can tell that a book is theirs just by reading the  first few paragraphs. And that's the problem — it's their book, not the client's. A ghostwritten book is your book. You're going to promote it; you're going to answer the media's questions; you're going to talk to the potential clients who read it. It should sound like you.

A Contract That Won't Haunt You

If you want to learn about management, Alfred Sloan's My Years with General Motors is one the best books of all time. It was ghostwritten, in the '50s, by a talented Fortune editor by the name of John McDonald. If you want to learn about ghostwriting contracts, read McDonald's A Ghost's Memoir (MIT Press, 2002), the story of the creation and publishing of the My Years.

McDonald portrays himself rather ingenuously, but he was obviously no slouch when it came to contracts. He cut a sweetheart deal with Sloan, who virtually invented the modern corporation and built GM into the world's largest manufacturing company to boot. McDonald was paid for the time he spent writing the book (which stretched into years), and he also retained 50% of all its publishing rights.

In 1959, GM, worried about the antitrust implications of the finished book, convinced Sloan to back out of his publishing deal with Doubleday. Sloan then paid McDonald another $60,000, a gift in lieu of lost income. But McDonald still owned half the book, and in 1962 he sued GM for damages in its suppression. After a couple of years of lawyer's fees, GM caved in and the book was published. Without McDonald, we never would have gotten the chance to read Sloan's story, but from GM's point of view, that contract was a nightmare.

If you want to sleep more soundly, remember this phrase: "work-for-hire." A work-for-hire contract gives you complete control over your book. The ghostwriter is paid for work at an agreed-upon fee, and that's that. Any income from the sale of the book's rights is yours alone, and more important, you are the sole owner of the finished product. You can cut your own deals or cut it into paper dolls without being haunted by the ghost.
Work-for-hire is a best-case scenario, and you may have to compromise if you have your heart set on a major talent. Jeff Cox, for example, who specializes in business novels and fables like The Goal and Zapp!, has gotten to the point where he retains complete control over his work in addition to a quarter-million-dollar fee. But even Cox, who has retired from business books with the publication of The Cure (Wiley, 2003), which he wrote for consultant Dan Paul, says: "As a client, you want either the copyright if the writer is willing to give it to you, or you want a license to be able to use the work in your business, to promote your business. That is why you're doing it."

There are two other important contractual elements: payment and delivery schedule. The traditional publishing contract calls for half the money on signing and half on acceptance, but as a client, you abdicate a lot of control with that schedule. Many writers prefer monthly payments. It keeps them working — no progress, no payment. It also limits their financial investment in the early months, when projects are most likely to derail.
A regular chapter delivery schedule provides the opportunity for steady feedback. The creation of a book that accurately reflects your content and style is a process of adjustment and revision. If you are reading and providing feedback on the book's chapters as they are finished, you'll be able to make revisions on the fly. Better yet, the writer can apply what he or she has learned to the rest of the book, thus producing better copy going forward. This is much more efficient than getting a complete manuscript that requires major reworking at the end of the contract.

Working With a Ghost

Every ghostwritten book is, or at least should be, a unique work, and thus the working relationships between clients and writers are always different. Nevertheless, there are some basic rules of thumb that can help you get the best book for your money.

For starters, the more people you involve in the writing process, the less efficient it will become and the less coherent the final product. Believe me, books don't get written by committee. Here's why: People's responses to books, even business books, are highly subjective. Everyone has a different, often conflicting, opinion about every word. Together, those opinions create a tower of babble. Expecting your writer to somehow reconcile that noise and turn it into a single, melodious language is beyond the bounds of reason.   

That said, external opinions are a valuable source of feedback … as long as you use them constructively. First, that means never letting anyone get between you and your writer. Second, it means acting as a buffer. You sift through the advice and criticism in an objective way, identify those ideas that make sense, and then consider them in a constructive conversation with your writer.
Next, the more you participate, the better the finished book will reflect your ideas and style. Some books don't require a lot of client participation. One ghost recalls writing a book based on a customer service seminar in which the credited author was the training firm itself. He sat through the seminar, fleshed it out with research, and a few months later turned in a finished book. But if you are going to put your name on the cover, you should likely participate.

Participation means providing raw material. At the start of a project, you'll want to inundate the ghost with as much information as they can take — white papers, brochures, transcripts, clippings, etc. The more, the better. It's how they learn about your business and you, and it provides the basis for a rough outline.

Participation also means spending a few days with your ghost. Why not invite the ghost to your home or someplace where you can guarantee an uninterrupted brain dump? He or she will likely record you talking the book through chapter by chapter. Those tapes, which contain all the great thinking that never made it onto paper before, usually provide the core content of the book.
Lastly, participation means getting involved in the nitty-gritty work of revision. You'll want the ghost to send each chapter to you as it is completed. You'll want to read it and note his or her responses. Then, usually by telephone, you can together revise the chapter section by section, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, if necessary. It's worth the work. When the ghost incorporates the revisions, the chapter will have your voice, not theirs.

The last rule of thumb: The more specific your input becomes, the more effective you will be in shaping the book. You have to constantly be challenging clients to be specific with their responses to the work. Writers need that specificity in order to write your book. Ghosts are not mind readers. If you don't tell them what you want, they won't keep writing until they stumble across it — your time, as well as theirs, is too valuable for that. That's why you hire a ghost in the first place, right?

Writer Theodore Kinni has participated in seven business books as ghost, coauthor, or author.