United Ghostwriters

How long does it take to ghostwrite a book?

September 4, 2018September 4, 2018
by Ginny Carter

One of the first questions we ghostwriters are often asked is: ‘How long will it take to ghostwrite my book?’ It’s an understandable question because you may have a deadline in mind – a conference you want to sell your book at, a business venture you’re tying it in with, or even just old-fashioned impatience to get your story out there. The short answer is: it depends. It depends on how long your book is, how much material you’re giving your ghostwriter versus how much research you want him or her to do, how quickly you can pull your thoughts together

August 21, 2018
by Ian Shircore

I haven’t had enough sex,’ sighed John Betjeman, from his wheelchair, when asked what he regretted most about his life. The bumbling, amiable Poet Laureate, dreamily enchanted by Miss Joan Hunter Dunn and her ‘strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand’, was actually a good deal less celibate than his poems implied. He got around a bit, chasing – and catching – quite a few women and even, according to legend, having brief gay affairs with WH Auden and a senior Labour Party politician. But still, at the end of it all, there was that insatiable yearning for more. Betjeman wished he had had

August 12, 2018August 12, 2018
by Martin Toseland

You walk into the coffee shop, searching intently for the person who matches the emailed description. In the corner, a person sits at a table looking around, fiddling with a bag of sugar. You make eye contact, fashion your facial muscles into a half smile and raise your eyebrows enquiringly. The person nods. You walk over, shake hands, look into their eyes again and ask yourself: is there chemistry? Is this someone I can spend time with, someone who will trust me, someone I can understand? Can we create something together? No, not a first date but a first meeting

July 30, 2018July 31, 2018
by Emma Murray

A big part of what we do as ghostwriters is to write in the voice of our clients. This is why interviews are so important because they offer us a chance to understand the person’s point of view, the way they talk, and the method in which they describe scenarios, or relay certain information. But now and then, we get approached by someone who prefers our voice over theirs. Not long ago, I was contacted by a businessman from Germany to write a business memoir. While he had excellent spoken English, he did not like the way his personality came

July 27, 2018
by PhilipWhiteley

While I nurtured vague ambitions to be an author as a young man, I made sure I combined impactful life experiences with learning the craft of journalism. After volunteering to help London’s homeless, I backpacked around Europe, taught myself Spanish in Chile, and worked in Nicaragua towards the end of the Sandinista regime. This was my apprenticeship. Or so I assumed. Yet while I was accumulating what I thought were valuable insights, and trying to earn a living wage from journalism, the fashion in literature changed. Since the publication of The Remains of the Day and Atonement in the 1990s,

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