Unveiling the Art of Ghostwriting | AJ Harper | 553

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 today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is AJ Harper. She's an editor and publishing strategist who helps authors write transformational books that enable them to build relationships, grow their brand, and make a significant impact on the world. As ghostwriter and a developmental editor, she's worked with hundreds of authors from newbies to New York Times bestselling authors with millions of books sold. She teaches her method in Top 3 Book Workshop and the Must Read Editing Workshop. She's a partner and head writing coach for Heroic Public Speaking, which is the speaker and training program that, uh, Michael and Amy Port run. And she's been the writing partner of Michael Michael Hallowitz for many years. So without further ado, welcome aboard, AJ.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So let me, let me start with sort of what might be an easy question, but I think it's an important one, is when a new author or say maybe an inexperienced author is entering this sort of crazy confusing world of publishing and such, they get a little bit confused around ghostwriting, right? And I think, you know, you even in your bio, you're distinguishing sort of that developmental piece from ghostwriting and all that. I always view ghostwriting as on a continuum from the bad end of the spectrum is you write it, I'll put my name on it. But why don't you explain the different, you know, 50 shades of ghostwriting, if you will?

Well, it's just an umbrella term. So, and it's not a regulated term or industry. So you have to be aware of that when you're looking for a ghostwriter, but a good ghost can help you refine your concepts and your intellectual property. And realize your vision for the book. And ghosts— and when I started out, sometimes I had clients who just gave me the concept. I even wrote a whole book once for just from a table of contents. I had almost no interaction with that person at all. And, uh, that's a rare situation, but it does happen. Primarily what I did as a ghost and what So many ghosts do is help you refine your message, understand your reader, organize your content, make sure that the book is delivering on the promise. There's a fair amount of therapy happening there, and it's usually a collaboration to get that clarity around how is this book going to be organized? How is it gonna speak to the reader? How is it gonna meet the author's goals in terms of their business and thought leadership? And then the writer will then go and make that happen. But sometimes it's also, sometimes you have authors who have written some of it, or they have a bunch of notes or transcripts or training. So sometimes you have something to work with. It just depends on each person and how they like to work.

So I think, I think that's a great explanation. And I also think it's important for people to understand there is no stigma attached to using a ghost, right? In fact, Most people that are thought leaders, I don't wanna say they're not writers, but they're, you know, what they're trying to bring to the world is their expertise, their frameworks, their models, their methodologies, their perspectives, et cetera. And they haven't written as many as you've written, obviously. Right? So they're always gonna be, or not always, they're more of a novice and just tapping into someone that's been through that before. Right? Again and again and again. Brings a lot to the table and the process for an author, I think. I don't know how you'd respond to that.

Yeah, absolutely. There's no shame in that game. None at all. I will say I never was a ghost for fiction. So I do, I did draw that line in this. And so I feel like that's a different thing. That's, you know, coming from a different kind of place. But I never felt ownership of my clients' work because their stories, their ideas, their concepts, their proof of concept, that was all them. I just know how to put it together in a way that really speaks to readers. I do think it's important to note that just because somebody says they're a ghostwriter, they can't always be you. Yeah. So I think one of the reasons I was successful right away is because I was able to do the voice of the author and in fact help them sometimes enhance and find it. But that just comes from my unusual background cuz I was a playwright before that.

Yep.

So, so stay with that.

You mentioned playwright, you mentioned therapist, you mentioned lots of other things that are part of what you do. One of the things that I find interesting with regards to the sort of ghostwriter-client relationship is in most professions, if someone is super qualified on paper, that's pretty good, right? Like if I've got a plumber and they've got a license and I've got a plumbing need, That's awesome. You know, if I've got a dentist and a tooth problem, awesome. Right? But many times it just, it, it doesn't click. Right? Because it's such an intimate relationship. It's such a personal relationship. So when someone says, help me find my voice, that assumes that they know what their voice is and they can show you, I'm snarky, I'm funny, I'm thought— like, what does that mean? It's almost like If I say to someone, if I hire someone to paint my house and say, paint it blue, they could go sky blue, right? Or they could go navy blue. And if I wasn't specific, oops, like, weren't the odds of us getting the blue that we both thought we were getting is pretty low. So how do you, how do you deal with sort of that intimate level of the relationship and making sure you, you're in sync with the client? Because that's, I, I don't, I don't really understand how that's done so, so well by so many great ghostwriters.

Well, my, my system was pretty simple. I, I've, you know, I had to hear, so I do a lot of listening and conversation. So we have a lot of phone calls. That was back in the day. Now it would probably be on Zoom, but a lot of phone calls. And I listen really, really carefully and, and also record the calls so I can see what are the patterns of speech, what are the rhythms, how do they talk, what do they say a lot, what words don't they use. So that I could get their natural voice. And then I also always asked for, please send me a piece of writing that you love that feels really sounds like you. So I would ask them to give me something because often I was dealing with an academic or a person, a corporate person who had, had been trained out of having a voice because they couldn't really have it. So I had to help them find it by just listening to them. So you can't really expect a ghost to get it if you aren't talking to them on a regular basis.

And lastly, if I were to ask you for 3 or 4 tips to give to the author on how to optimize the probability of a successful outcome, successful relationship with the ghost, what, what would you say to them? Sort of the—

okay. Here's how I totally have it.

Your part.

Yep. I got it. Number 1, have your book fundamentals really clear. So in my book, Write a Must-Read, Those fundamentals are really clear idea of who your reader is and what's— what they want and what they perceive is standing in the way. Really clear transformational message and really clear promise of the book. Have that ready to go. You have— don't expect them to give it to you. Do that work yourself. Number 2, get in your contract an out clause after, say, 2, possibly 3 chapters. By then you should know if that person can nail your voice or not. So have it so that you can, after 2 or 3 chapters, get out of the contract. Of course, pay them for the work they did, but then move on to a different person. Don't wait to find the whole script.

So there's a point that you're saying it's not 1 chapter, it's not 5, 2 to 3 where you all have had a chance to dance together, see if it's working, and then you can go, you know, You're lovely, you're talented, I adore you, but we'll still be friends. And obviously you gotta get paid for your work. I like that idea, but I think people get stubborn, like, oh, just one more, you know, one more, one more, one more. But I like that 2 to 3 and, you know, giving it a timeline or a number of chapters or something like that to, and then reevaluate knowing what you know now, would you still hire this person to do the job that you've tasked them to do? And if not, let it go. And they're going to be frustrated because they wasted some money and time and all that. But I think that's really wise.

I mean, that was— I always had my contracts that anybody could pull out at any time. The reason being that you have to get to a point where you feel like, okay, I can do this person's voice. And sometimes people are just, you know, from my perspective as a ghost, I want to get that right up front to say, let's— that's our goal. And if we can't get there, we shouldn't move forward. So you wanna have that expectation. Sometimes the chemistry just isn't there. The third thing is I would build into, into the contract that your ghost will do rewrites until it's right, as long as the scope of the project doesn't change.

So you don't think you're in sometimes in conflict cuz then it's A, define a rewrite and B, define scope. Go deeper on both of those, because I think that's really important.

So remember I said fundamentals. So if your fundamentals change where you were gonna write a book on leadership, right? And now you're gonna write a book on finance. Those are different books. So they're not gonna write you two separate books for the same fee. But the point being, you need a person who will see you through the editorial process with your publisher. You don't want the ghost to disappear right when you turn it in, because you might need the ghost to actually help you with the revisions. I did a lot of that. Often I did it as a super stealth so that even their editor at their house didn't know I was doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, you need that ghost to stay with you.

Love it. Those are great, great tips. 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. So this is not your domain expertise where I'm going now, but I wanna get your insights 'cause you're, sort of there, you know, in the periphery. What is it that you see that are changes in the marketplace that authors should be aware of relative to getting the book out there? Marketing? Because writing a book is hard, period, full stop, whether it's with a ghostwriter, not, whatever. It's really important. There's intrinsic reasons. I mean, there's so much emotional investment, work, opportunity. It's expensive, right? Like, however you choose to measure that. And then the flip side of that is marketing and having a commercially successful book. Wow, that makes writing a book look easy, right? So what is it that you see on the commercial and marketing side that people should be thinking about?

You know, honestly, it's, it's not even so much trends, it's just getting them to do it. I, I don't think, I think people need to shift their mindset around the marketing of the book. They tend to all the buildup to the launch and then the launch is this giant fireworks display. And then after that, it sort of fizzles. And I think authors aren't prepared for the long game. You need to be prepared to support your book in terms of marketing 5, at least 5 years. And if you aren't thinking about—

I love that. So I, I wanna just stay there for a minute because the entire, my opinion, publishing industrial complex, if you will, exists for this sort of pre-launch, launch phase, call it 2 months before the book's out, 3, 4, 5 months after, and then everybody goes away. However, a book, and, and this is really critical, and I, you know, you picked 5 years, I'm gonna say has a shelf life, no pun intended, of 5 to 7 years. So why would you give up on it after 4 or 5 months? The data shows that most books, again, all I know is nonfiction, right? Sell better year 2 than year 1, right? But there's no Wall Street Journal list of books that did good 19 months after publication. So it's less sexy, but it's more important in terms of building your platform, building your business and all that. So I love that you're, you're where I am in terms of it's designed for the short game, but you've gotta play the long game.

Yeah. You, so publishing is focused on front list, the books that are about to come out and the books that have been out for 6 months to a year. But that, that, so that I think authors tend to focus on that. Then they think that that's their journey, but you You need to nurture it. Uh, you mentioned 5 to 7 years. Behind me is Profit First, which I wrote with Mike Michalowicz. We're in year 10 on that. We've sold over a million copies. I still get a really nice royalty check twice a year from that book, and I will continue to get it.

So, you know, just to put it in context, I just, I just wanna, you're a little bit humble there, but a million units of a nonfiction book in this market, that if that was a movie, that would be Star Wars, right? Like the average business book is selling whatever, 2,000, 3,000 units. So the fact that you're, you know, sitting on your shelf is a book that you ghosted that's 10 years old, that's sold over a million copies. It would be interesting to look at what percentage of that million came during launch the first 90 days. I would argue, you know, 5%, you know, something.

Well, that's a little bit of a different story actually. Mike Michalowicz, who is my writing partner, we're actually writing book 11 now, our 11th book. Yes. He keeps all those stats, so he would actually know the answer to that question. Yeah. He's very numbers driven. But you have to remember that book was self-published first because our publisher rejected it. And we decided to go do it anyway because we knew it was the right thing to do. And then they eventually came back and said, oops, we made a mistake. We would like to publish it. So the one behind me is the revised and expanded edition.

Right.

The original one sold a lot of copies and they realized, uh-oh. So, uh, basically Uh, it depends, you know, when it's self-published, it's harder to get the numbers right out of the gate. So definitely picked up once we had the trade distribution that traditional publisher has.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's a whole nother conversation that we don't have time for today in terms of the publishing models and, and the difference between self and hybrid and traditional and how to choose the right one for you and your business. That's not a, one right answer for everybody question. So what, what are the things that if I were interviewing a ghostwriter today, what are the things I should be looking for, asking? It's a job interview per se, right? So assuming I, I, I look at the credentials and go, oh, here's 3 people. They all look pretty good, right? Like they've written great books and they show me their stuff and whatever. What are the questions I would ask that wouldn't show up on a CV?

Well, first of all, I— the only reason I can talk about Profit First and other books with Mike is because I have permission to do it.

Yeah.

So you need— so if a person is giving you their client roster, you need to actually be suspicious of that because they— I have so many NDAs, there's people I can never talk to you about, and I never will. So even my assistant doesn't know. So, you know, you need to be suspicious of people who are happy to tell you about every single book that they wrote when they probably shouldn't be admitting it. So that's number one.

Okay.

But so if they can't— sometimes they have permission. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes they have permission, but a lot of times they don't.

Okay. So then what else should I be— so if they say, hey, I can't tell you because NDAs, etc., etc., which you have to respect that, right? What other questions should I ask to find out? I mean, let's assume they could write, obviously, but like that you would be a good fit for me. Like, this is— there's a little bit of dating you know, voodoo going on here.

Almost all of my deals came from referrals. So you wanna check, you wanna check, ask for referrals to find your ghostwriter to begin with. So you wouldn't wanna do a ghost, uh, Google search. You would wanna ask people that, you know, can you recommend a ghostwriter that you loved, that you loved working with? Do you know someone? Always start there. I think that's really, really important. Then you can at least look for a ghostwriter who has deep experience in your genre. You don't just want any ghost, you want someone who understands. So if you're a business author, you need somebody who has written a lot of business books. Even if they can't give you the names, they can at least attest to that's their specialty. Then again, here is where having that little two-chapter dance comes in, so you can see, is this going to work or not, and what you really have going on. But yeah, I mean, there's, you have to, there's an element of trust there that is a little tough, which is why I always gave people an out so that they knew they could pull out anytime they wanted and that helped them to have trust.

Yeah, I like that. I think that's really cool. Well, this has been great. I appreciate your insights and your wisdom and coming on today and sharing with us your experience. I think it's really good stuff. So thanks for coming on today, AJ.

You bet. Thanks for having me.

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