Peter Winick breaks down what ghostwriting actually means: it's not one thing. A ghostwriter might write your whole book, or just brainstorm and shape your ideas, or edit while you do most of the work. The fit matters more than the title.
I don't want anyone to write my book. Like, they can rewrite it, they can edit it, but I'm gonna write it because, dude, I would hate to say I wrote this book when I did not.
Well, so, 2 things. Everybody's different, and that term ghostwriter is a generic term. So there's ghostwriters on one end of the continuum that they've written everything and your name is on their words. Then there are others that are sparring partners with you to say, hey, let's play with this, let's work with me here. And then there's stuff in the middle where you're doing some of the heavy lifting on the writing, but they're doing more of the editorial. So it really is about finding the right fit for you and your needs and the amount of time that you've got and all that. There are, I mean, anything from, there are people using systems like you can just leave them an audio file every other day for 50 days and they'll stitch together a book. There are others that'll sit down with you and do the strategy. It's matchmaking like anything else.
So it's a pretty intimate sort of connection.
