The Ghostwriter's Blueprint for Success | Phil Simon | 577

And welcome, welcome, welcome.

This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today should be interesting. My guest is Phil Simon, and he's hard to put in a, uh, or label. So amongst the things that he does, he is a writer, he is a ghostwriter, he's a speaker. He's a podcaster. But what I thought would be interesting today, given sort of where, where he sits, is really talk about a couple things. Number one, what he does, his platform, and then how he also helps others develop their nonfiction books and platforms and such to take out in the marketplace. 'Cause it's in, at least in my experience, fairly rare that someone's on both sides there. So welcome aboard, Phil.

Hey Peter, thanks a lot for having me and Yeah, that's a fancy way of saying that I'm either unable to focus or to use a 50-cent word, peripatetic.

Ooh, that's a Googleable word.

It is a Googleable word.

Cool. And for those of you under a certain age, there used to be things called the dictionary that we would go to and look those things up. But I don't even know where those are anymore. So give us a little bit of the Phil story because you and I were chatting the other day and it was really, to me, it was really interesting in terms of your your path, your career, how you got here? Because nobody wakes up and says, okay, here's the plan, and then bang, here we are.

No, you— when I was a college professor teaching in the business school Department of Information Systems up until about 4 years ago, I joked that no one had a worse pedigree in the department than I, because I've got a master's in industrial labor relations. I used to work in HR. I realized that I was horribly suited for that. My boss doesn't like me. Why didn't I get the promotion? Was so what they used to call left-brained, but I was pretty good at technology, data systems. I went to Carnegie Mellon, so there even the poets know how to code. So I decided to, in 2008, just start writing. It became my first book. I liked it. I thought it didn't completely suck at it. Good things happen. So I've written a few books and then decided to start a hybrid publishing company. And that put out 6 books, 2 of which were my own. And then I started another one when I left Arizona State University in 2020, and we've done 4 books, one of which I ghostwrote, 3 of which I wrote. I'm ghostwriting a book now. So yeah, I sit on both sides of the aisle, and as a ghostwriter/book coach, I want to help people avoid some of the mistakes that I've seen others make and that I've made over my career. So that's me in a Pretty big box.

Well, let's talk about the ghostwriting relationship experience, right? Because I've been around that world for a long time. And one of the things that just unlike in almost any other profession that's really strange is, you know, if on paper I was looking to hire an engineer, a coder, a CFO or whatever, you look at their pedigree, you look at their history, where have they done an interview? Go, okay, cool. They've got the chops. Let's rock and roll. What I've seen in the ghostwriting world is pedigree matters, like, ish, but it's that intangible, like, you know, I sit down with you and you remind me of my 7th grade history teacher and I don't like you and I don't know why. So therefore the relationship's shot. Or like there's an irrational reason for that type of relationship, what is fairly intense and fairly intimate. To work or not to work. That's beyond control to some degree. So can you touch on that, or am I nuts? Am I on point?

No, no, it reminds me a lot of my days as a software consultant in the aughts. And there were times in which I sat down first day and I immediately clicked with a client, right? They said, you're a straight shooter, you cut through the bullshit, you tell us what we need to do without the jargon. And It worked out well. And then there are other times in which I would bring the same person I thought, and it was within 2 weeks, get this guy out of here. He's exactly the wrong person. So my approach to ghostwriting is very similar. My goal is not to irritate you. Hopefully we can be friends, but you're hiring me to do a job. And I've said this dozens of times in the ghostwriting work that I've done. I'd much rather have you be angry at me before. When we can fix stuff. Sure. Or when we can't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what, what tips would you give someone that is in the market for a ghostwriter? And lemme, lemme just sort of expand on that question. So there, there's two pieces of that. One is how do you find fit? Like there is a kind of a dating piece to it. And then the other is, I think there's also confusion in the marketplace. Maybe this is two questions around, well, what does a ghostwriter do? Right from someone that I could leave voicemails to when they create a book to someone that I spar with. Like, talk to both of those maybe. How do you get the relationship to work? And then what are the expectations around?

Well, hopefully at a high level, Peter, your client likes your writing because I know that you can try to put yourself in the voice of another person, but I just would argue that for nonfiction, I don't want to speak about memoirs or about fiction.

Yeah.

There are certain rules, as you know, that you'd want to follow. Irrespective of the title of the book. So if you use a lot of passive voice and jargon, long confusing sentences, you're not gonna resonate with readers. And then if the book doesn't do well, then is it the ghostwriter's fault? And you don't want to have that constant back and forth. So in the most recent book that I completed, my client hired me specifically because she loved my book, Reimagining Collaboration. She said, I'd love to do that. Along the lines of our topic. So there's that. I, with Racket Publishing, my little hybrid outfit, I certainly can produce a manuscript and then you can take that to Greenleaf or Amplify or Page Two or one of the other large micro publishers. But I actually employ a team much like they do. So if you want to work with me the entire time, then yeah, I know a very talented couple of designers and a few editors editors and indexers and ebook conversion folks so we can scale up and scale down as needed. And then I can also manage the project because if you're trying to work backwards from a particular date, then the manuscript is an important part of it, but it's hardly the only part. Plus there's the marketing aspect as well. So to me, starting these hybrid publishing companies isn't that much of a stretch because I've done a lot of these things either independently or with traditional publishers. And I could tell you the pros and cons of each. I was recently speaking with someone on LinkedIn who had signed up with a traditional publisher, but this had an interesting wrinkle in the contract. So the royalty rates were pretty standard, but there was a 3,000-book minimum in the first year. And when I was speaking with this person—

Meaning, just to clarify, meaning the author had to buy it? Yeah. I've seen that. I call that the worst of both worlds clause where— Oh, 100%, because you're taking all the financial risk, right? And then on the royalty side, it's the crappy royalty of a traditional deal.

Now, if you're an acquisitions editor at insert name of big publisher and you're dealing with a first-time author, why wouldn't you do that? Right? Because it's basically heads, they win, tails, you lose. And then if the book doesn't sell beyond the 3,000, then you have to write a check. And even if it's discounted 50%, they're still going to make their money.

Yeah.

I'm explaining to this person that there are alternatives, which again, 15 years ago I didn't know nearly as much about, so I would've probably fallen for that. And you see this sometimes with Forbes Books, right? They're going to charge you $100,000 because they can put Forbes Books on the COVID when in fact you can work with reputable folks who charge a lot less. And yeah, you've got that brand, but I'll just ask you point blank, have you ever been to a bookstore and said Forbes Books, oh, I don't know the author or the title, but I have to buy the next. It's, it's not a car, right? Some people are very brand loyal, but I've never, I won't just pick on Forbes book. I've never walked into a bookstore and said, oh, I have to have whatever's next from Penguin.

Right. Well, but I, but I would also, I would say the same thing in that how are books read today? It's largely on an, on an electronic device. I think I'm one of the only dorks left that when I, open the Kindle to the book, I skim back to all the filler pages 'cause I'm curious who the publisher is versus 99.9% of the world just wants to get to, you know, they were the best of times, they were the worst of times. Why would they care about that? I'm curious, right? So it's not like, oh, well, oh, that's a Wiley author versus a Forbes author versus a Page Two author. Therefore they represent X in the marketplace to me.

Yeah. It seems like many authors Maybe get lured in at first to a standard book deal. But once they realize that, again, by and large, and we saw this a couple of weeks ago with that Publishers Weekly article detailing when the Department of Justice subpoenaed, I think it was execs from Penguin and Random House, just how few books earned out and how little authors actually could expect to receive in terms of marketing support from their folks there. Yeah. Not surprising to me that many of them kind of scurry over to the other side and they realize, to your point from before, Peter, if I'm going to take all the risk, I might as well get a lot more of the reward. Yeah.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com. /ltl and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. I want, I want to flip now to the other side because this is where I think you, you're really in a unique place. So, you know, we've talked about ghostwriting, you serving your clients as a ghostwriter. But now, you know, we've— let's talk about Phil World. You've got your own platform, you've got your own thought leadership, you've got your own IP. Tell me a little bit about where that came from and what you've done with it and what you're going to continue to do with it.

I love the fact that if I write something now under the Racket imprint or what was before the Motion imprint, it's mine. I can do whatever I want with it. If I want to work with a company like DropCap to try to arrange for international translations of the book, I could do that. If I don't like the terms, I can say no. When I'm working with a traditional publisher, depending on the deal, I might just get a cursory FYI email or in the case with—

But those are business issues. Where I was going is, is, is give me a sense of the essence of your thought leadership on collaboration.

Yeah, I was getting there, but in a circuitous way. So for example, with Reimagining Collaboration, which was book number 11, I didn't have to sweat if I wanted to record a Teachable course or work with some other company and I was violating the terms of my contract. If I wanted to do, and I've never really done a proper sequel to a book, but if I wanted to do Reimagining Collaboration again, I would not have the competing works clause, right? That you'd have to deal with. So I love the fact that I've got the freedom to do really whatever I want with my IP. Whereas when I've worked with traditional publishers, if I did want to put out some of my content for free, yes, they'd say, sure, put out a sample, an excerpt of a chapter or something like that. But I'd have to worry about violating that. But no, I have no qualms about turning my content into workshops, into online courses, even doing things like creating a bespoke version of one of my books. So my previous book, Low Code, No Code, No Code, Low Code, excuse me, the Citizen Developers and the Surprising Future of Business Applications. I reference a lot of software vendors there. If the VP of marketing or the CMO of Company X said, we'd love our own version of this with our CXO writing a foreword and then slap our company logo on the front. Again, that's something that I can do without having to clear it with either my agent or the acquisitions editor at my publisher. And I feel like it's a lot cleaner. So this whole notion of agency theory, I'm a big believer that if traditional publishers, and I think we've seen this with a few of them trying to get into speaking as well, but if I do a speaking gig for X number of dollars and I have books there that they bought in advance, the publisher typically isn't getting a cut of that speaking fee like a speaker bureau would. So if you remove those folks, then I feel like it's a lot cleaner. You don't have to ask for as much permission. It's a lot riskier. You have to wear a few different hats. Yeah, you also don't have to ask permission to get it.

So let's, let's stay with that for a second and just sort of expand on that from the standpoint of business models, right? So you've got an idea, you've got ideas, you put it in a book, you know, you know, whatever, rainbows and unicorns, the book becomes a success, right? For various reasons. What are the underlying business models that you're seeing today? So obviously speaking is a pretty standard model. Everybody wants to be a speaker, right? That's what you do. But what are the, how are you as an example, either firsthand or seeing with your clients that you go straight for innovatively monetizing their thought leadership?

I mean, you, you hit on some of the standard ones. The notion of a bespoke version of a book is really interesting. I feel like I'm certainly not the only person to have thought of it, but when I've worked with some clients, I said, look, this is another thing that you can do. For a relatively small amount of money with significant upside, certainly as a supplement to speaking. So let's say that you want to speak at a conference and you'd like to get 5 figures. Well, they're only offering an honorarium. Well, what if they either, A, bought a certain number of books, which you can discount because you've done it yourself. So if it's a $25 paperback, you could have it printed and shipped for $7 or $8 depending on a bunch of factors. But then if you charge them $12,000 or $13,000, they're getting it at a 50% discount, but you're still making money. And whether you get $12,000 for speaking or $12,000 from book sales, that money still spends. I also found that on a personal level, and again, I'm sure I'm not the only person to do this, but I wrote 14 books. I basically know where the bodies are buried. And I launched a software product about 5, 6 weeks ago called BracketHub. It's based on Notion. It's a very comprehensive book management system that I can either use with my clients, and it is kind of a lot at first, but there is a method to the madness. Or just in terms of a business model, I've actually had some conversations with some ghostwriters and some smaller publishers about basically licensing this. I will compare myself, Peter, on a much, much smaller scale to some, something like Amazon Web Services. So once Amazon circa 2005, 2006, figured out how to create all this compute power, all these APIs and powerful services for their e-commerce business. They could let all that vanish into the ether or wait for it, they could sell it. In which case they say that AWS generates 80 to 90% of Amazon's profits despite being smaller than the commerce or retail side of the business. So because I learned how to do books so well, I can charge what I think is a pretty fair rate.

That's unique to you because on the publishing side, what I'm saying is put on your other hat, Phil the thought leader. How, you know, let's, so let's say I fell in love with Reimagine and collaboration.

How could you not?

Of course. How would I not? Right? And then, and I reach out to you and I'm an SVP in a financial services company and said, wow, that was awesome. And we need to do that here and it's costing us money 'cause we're not growing or we're not getting the best stuff to market. As a result of the lack of collaboration internally. How can you help me, Phil? And the answer isn't just buy a bunch of my books, right?

Like, absolutely not. I mean, I just submitted a quote to a company a couple of weeks ago to do some custom training, maybe a webinar, consulting. And if you already offer those services but you've written a well-received book, and think about it this way, Peter, and again, it's nothing I'm sure you haven't discussed with your own clients. Person A, smart cookie, decent website, you know, some nice videos. Person B has all that stuff and a book, right? Which person do you think in theory has got that credential? And not to mention things like passive income. I am ceaselessly amazed at the randomness of the queries I will get sometimes over LinkedIn or my website, and sometimes they're not even in the same country. I was a couple of, couple of days ago, I finally received the international one of the translations, um, Korean, from my book No Code, Low Code. So I've spoken in South Korea, right, The Age of the Platform, back in 2012. So I, I guess that you have to be, as an author, willing to embrace the chaos of it, because I find that success tends not to be linear. It would be great if you followed some sort of playbook, right? Or build up my website, my author platform, I'm going to get a lot of followers. Build a big Substack, turn that into a book, book parlays into speaking, speaking leads to da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I just, on a personal level, haven't gone through that route. And I, it's one of the reasons I actually took the job as a college professor. I wanted to get more stability with the income. So I say there are things that you can do to increase your batting average, but if you're—

I mean, I think there's a couple of variables there. So one is luck is a variable and nobody likes to talk about that.

100%.

You know, it's all about, it's in my control. So luck is a variable. And the other place is, I think a lot of thought leaders and authors are really lousy listeners when it comes to what the market is telling you. Right? So for example, what did you say? I'm kidding.

Tough crowd. Folks, you know, try the veal.

Tip your servers. So what I mean by that is, okay, so why, you know, did somebody want the rights in South Korea? Right? So to me, that would be worth exploring. There have been times where books that do okay here in the States or North America, whatever, all of a sudden they take off like crazy in Poland or something. Like there's some unpredictable thing that wouldn't have been on your radar to say, okay, and step 5 is I'm gonna be a rockstar in Poland. But if you don't have the mechanisms in place to listen to the market and the signals, you miss them. Maybe it's, you know, I don't know the South Korean piece, but there's a reason why somebody went to—

Yeah, and I wish I could tell you what it is. I remember, um, when I was writing Slack for Dummies, I thought there might be a Japanese translation because Slack, for whatever reason, is huge in Japan. There's a great book that came out maybe 6 to 8 months ago called Fluke by Brian Klaas, K-L-A-A-S. And I remember reading it. The basic premise was that everything is connected. We, we love to— and I've read other books like this, like Everything Is Obvious in Hindsight by Duncan, um, Watts, I think it was of my—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we, we really want this formula. I mean, go to, I used to write for ink.com. I, I guarantee any listener go to ink.com right now, the top 10 articles on their website, of them probably 7 have a number. They're listicles, right? And we get that. We want that. We want the shortcut. It's natural. But in reality, there isn't one. So I can't tell you, and it's one of my biggest pet peeves that I have this disclaimer in basically all my books. You can follow all of my advice and fail. And you could ignore it all and be wildly successful. But kind of like if you and I are playing poker and you constantly play deuce-seven and I only play a pair of kings, you'll beat me sometimes. But if that's your strategy to play bad hands and my strategy is to play premium hands over the long term, I will eat your lunch.

Yeah, exactly. Well, this has been great. Appreciate the insight. Appreciate you sharing your story with us, Phil, and thanks for coming on board today.

Peter, I enjoyed it.

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