United Ghostwriters

How a business book brings you more clients

June 11, 2019June 11, 2019
by Ginny Carter

At United Ghostwriters we speak to many professionals and business people who want a book to promote their expertise. They’ve heard that if they want to raise their profile so they’re more in demand they ‘need a book’, and that without one they’ll find it hard to stand out. I can see their point – it makes sense. But how exactly does writing a book bring in more (and better) clients? What are the mechanics of it? It’s a fair question, because writing (or commissioning the ghostwriting of) a book is a significant investment. You don’t want to commit yourself

May 29, 2019June 7, 2019
by Ian Shircore

A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, according to the famous quote from Oscar-winning producer Sam Goldwyn. Never mind that Goldwyn always claimed it wasn’t his line (the joke had been around for decades before it was attributed to him). If he didn’t say it, he should have done. And as the leading Hollywood mogul of his day, he certainly knew more about contracts than most. But how much do you need to know about contracts before you sign a deal with a ghostwriter? Do you need to get your lawyer involved? Does everything need to be

May 22, 2019May 28, 2019
by Simon Rae

When a friend asked the other day ‘How’s the ghostwriting going?’ I just said, ‘Fine.’ As you do when someone asks ‘How are you?’ They really don’t want to know about the ingrowing toenail, that recurrent chest pain you get when you run for the bus, or anything else that may be intermittently worrying you. I certainly didn’t want to know how the accountancy was going. Maybe I was too casual, because my friend went on to tell me that a number of ghosted footballers’ memoirs read as though they were simply transcribed from interviews. In other words, a bit

May 17, 2019May 17, 2019
by Martin Toseland

Last week was quite a week for ghostwriters breaking cover. After the New York Times revealed that Donald Trump lost over $1billion in the decade from 1985-1994, Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter on The Art of the Deal, suggested that Random House either take the book out of print or re-classify it as fiction. If the book is to remain available, Schwartz went on to say, it should be re-titled The Sociopath. Ouch. Meanwhile, revelations by another of the president’s ghosts, Charles Leerhsen, took us directly into the deal-maker-in-chief’s office. Leerhsen wrote Surviving at the Top in 1990 — a point

May 8, 2019May 9, 2019
by PhilipWhiteley

I have two live projects at the moment: ghostwriting a book on teamwork in modern businesses, and doing the development edits for my third novel, to be published by Unbound in late 2019 (I would give the title a plug, but that’s currently under discussion …). They appear to be very different projects, but one issue is common to both: finding the right voice. On the ghostwriting side, the style obviously has to be my client’s, not mine; an early chapter draft was not quite there – which is to be expected. To this end, we make sure we chat

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How a business book brings you more clients

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