How Books Happen (And How They Sometimes Don’t!)

The hardest clients to satisfy are those who have been burned by a prior writer. Not only did they lose trust in the writer they had hired, but they had also lost trust in the whole concept of bringing someone in to work with them on a book.

Writers disappoint their clients in many ways. Some just don’t show up. They take the upfront fee and then good luck getting them to respond to an email or text.

Then you have the ones who do show up but do a lousy job. The client is stuck. The agreement may allow for refunds in the event of client dissatisfaction, but a lot of the time, writers just simply don’t have the money to payback. It is a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence for writers who are not established or who don’t have good financial skills. And if the client wants to sue them, what exactly will they win in court? The writer’s socks?

Then you have writers who show up, respond to phone calls and emails, and actually turn in a complete draft. The challenge here is that most ghostwriters are somewhat afraid of their clients. After all, the clients are older, richer, and far more accomplished. As a result, the writer questions exactly what they have to offer the client. They let the client drive the entire process, with predictably poor results. A writer must be able to step in and say, “Let’s talk about this, and let’s talk about that some other time. Right now, we need to focus on this.” But if you are afraid of your client, or in awe of her, how exactly are you going to manage that feat? The easiest course is to let the client lead the process, but that is not what they are paying the writer for. When successful people sense the person they are working with is inexperienced or, worse, fearful, their need for control kicks in. And now we are on a steep, slippery slope for a project that is either never completed or not completed well.

In these cases, the writer is sometimes too afraid even to suggest talking through an outline for the book. Instead, the client just starts talking, and the writer feels obliged to somehow keep up with the conversation. The writer, in this all too frequent scenario, will schedule endless meetings with the client, where they talk about pretty much anything that is on the client’s mind on any given day. This can go on for 20 or 30 hours, or even longer. At the end of it, the writer now has hundreds of pages of transcripts to wade through. He has the challenging task of trying to find a book in all that material. Six months later, the writer will present a manuscript to the client based on those meandering conversations, but unfortunately, neither the client nor the writer has any recollection of what they were talking about. The resulting manuscript has practically no value at all, even if the writer has managed the feat of writing in the client’s voice. It is a total waste of time and money. No wonder people feel burned when they get this kind of result.

So here’s a quick primer on what to consider when you are hiring a writer, whether it is me or anyone else. And after that, I will share with you my approach to organizing and writing books.

First, how well does the writer present herself on her website? Does the writer even have a website? Does it look professional, or does it look like something that hasn’t been updated since the early 90s? These days, it doesn’t take much time, money, or effort to create an attractive website, which is the most obvious form of self-presentation. My late, great Russian lit professor, Stanley Rabinowitz, used to say that you can judge a book by its cover. If a book is poorly designed and the cover is unattractive, chances are that the book (or the translation if it is something foreign) isn’t any good, either. It is the same thing with writers. You can judge a writer by their website.

On the website, note exactly what services the writer provides. Some writers list the fact that they do blog pieces, speeches, white papers, and books. Seriously? Books are a different animal. If the writer you are considering lists books as only one of the things that she does, be afraid.

Be very afraid. Jacks of all trades are typically masters of none. Book writing is simply different from other forms of writing. Don’t ask a sprinter to run a marathon. Don’t hire a generalist. Get someone who only talks about books, or maybe books and speeches, on her website.

Next, on the website, are there blurbs from past clients? The writer does not need to have best sellers on her website to be credible (although it never hurts). At a minimum, you want to see quotes from happy clients whose job titles are impressive to you. Yes, ghostwriting is typically confidential, but many clients will be happy to give words of praise to their writers if they have done a great job. If there are no blurbs from past clients, that is a serious red flag.

You also want to see if the writer has worked with people at your level. If you are the CEO of a Fortune 100, do you really want to work with someone who has never done a book for a high-level executive? Do you really want to be the first? It is entirely possible that a writer who has done a fine job for local businesspeople could step up in class and do a great job for you, but wouldn’t you rather work with someone who already has experience with people in your world? Something to think about.

Let’s say the writer has already passed these tests and they have a solid website with blurbs from enthusiastic clients like you. So, you reach out and have a conversation with the writer. Ask about their process. Make sure they have one!If it is simply, “We talk a lot, and then I write the book, and you get it six months from now,” then buyer, beware. Do they have a clear, detailed process for how they get this done? Does the process they describe inspire confidence? If not, there are plenty of other fish in the writing sea.

While you are on the phone, ask the writer if they have past clients with whom you can speak. If not, that is a red flag. Yes, as we have noted, ghostwriting is typically a confidential process, but any accomplished writer will have plenty of past clients who will be happy, even eager, to take your call and sing the writer’s praises. If that is not the case, there is probably a reason why.

So, by now, the writer you are considering has checked a lot of boxes. Their website is solid. They focus only on books, or perhaps books and speeches. They have great blurbs, and is willing to let you speak with past clients. He has a process that he detailed on the call with you, and the process is something other than wasting a lot of your precious time and hoping that a book miraculously emerges. Now it is time to talk about fees and agreements.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Does the writer have an actual standard agreement? Some do, many don’t.It is a huge red flag if they don’t. This is their business. Any business should have a standard agreement, which may be modified from case to case. Your writer ought to specify, in writing, the project fee, triggers for payments, how many hours of interview time you can expect, how long the book will be (measured in words or pages), refund terms, and so on. If your writer is savvy, the agreement will include a confidentiality clause that protects your privacy and a choice of venue clause that protects his right not to be sued out of state. If you don’t see most or all these things on the agreement, you have got to ask yourself whether you are really dealing with someone professional.

I’ve always offered prospects a “test drive” option of the book plan plus the first two chapters for a small fee, which will be applied to the overall project fee should the client decide to go forward. Test drives are great because they allow you, the client, to see what it is like to work with this particular writer. Do you like the process? Are you happy with the work? A test drive keeps you from having to make a big bet of your time, money, and hope. See if your writer offers one or is open to offering you one. From my perspective, although I don’t share this fact with the client, it is an opportunity for me to see what it is like to work with a given individual. My practice is limited to positive people with a positive message, but you can’t always tell from a sales call. Sometimes it takes getting into the project before you can see a person’s true colors. So the test drive phase allows me to find a respectful way to end an engagement without hard feelings or recourse to attorneys.

Now that you have seen all the different ways that writers can disappoint their clients, I can understand if you are a little squeamish about the whole idea of bringing on a writer. But at least you now know how to reduce the possibility of a bad outcome, because you know the red flags that flap in the breeze alongside writers you should never have hired in the first place. Okay. Time for some sorbet to cleanse the palate. Let’s move on to the question of the right way to get a book done. Or at least one right way … the way that has worked for me for all these years.

On the first call with a prospective client, I have two related questions. First, what is the purpose of the book? What do you hope to accomplish? And second, if we were talking six months after the book came out, what would have to happen for you to decide that the project was a success?

I ask these things because, many times, people simply don’t know what to expect when they do a book, or they have expectations that are simply out of line with reality. One of the hardest things in the world today is to sell books to strangers. Give them away? Easy button. Sell them back of the room when you are doing a keynote? Love that! Print them for $3 and sell them for $30. That is a nice day at the office. But when I hear, “I don’t expect this book to be a New York Times bestseller,” what I really hear them saying is, “I expect my book to be a New York Times bestseller, and if it isn’t, it is because you screwed the whole thing up.”

That’s a bright red flag.

I tell prospective clients I’m an attorney by training, and that in the field of ghostwriting or private biography, malpractice consists of creating false hope. Then, I explain to them what is possible and what is unlikely with a book they have in mind. Usually, they are very grateful for the reality check and are happy that someone is telling them the truth instead of blowing smoke and creating hype. So now we can have a serious conversation about the process because the client’s expectations about potential outcomes are in line with reality.

What can happen when you do a book? I always say that magic happens, but you can just never predict the direction from which the magic will come. You never know who will see the book. You never know who will reach out to you to be your client, your partner, your investor, or your friend. You have no idea when the news media will come across your book and want to interview you. Books are force multipliers. They get your ideas, your name, and your brand out into the world in ways that white papers, LinkedIn profiles, or social media never can. There is a certain cachet to being an author, a certain sense of dignity, uniqueness, respectability, and thoughtfulness. It is your opportunity to demonstrate preeminence, to remove yourself from the pit of commoditization, to capture your life story and experience for all time. Try getting that with an Instagram post.

So how are we going to accomplish this in the most effective way? I developed my process decades ago when a client referred me to a self-made tech billionaire who wanted a book to capture the culture of his rapidly growing enterprise. I remember actually hitting my knees in prayer in the elevator on the way to his Century City office, asking myself what on earth does a billionaire need someone like me for? And the divine answer came back quickly: “He needs a book, you moron!”

I got off my knees and got to work.

I learned back then that highly successful people are extremely busy, and they typically don’t get less busy as time goes on. Highly successful individuals, and I’m sure that you will identify, attract endless numbers of opportunities in their work lives and in their personal lives. When they think about doing a book, the idea hasn’t come to them just now for the first time. They have probably been thinking about it for years, but they just never found a way to get it done.The idea of locking themselves away for endless hours and doing the work themselves never appealed, and perhaps they never met anyone who had a process that would make only a small imprint on their schedule.

At least, until we met.

I was extremely excited when I got a fax (I told you it was back in the day) from the tech mogul’s assistant saying my proposal had been accepted and that I had gotten the job. I had visions of myself hanging out with my billionaire in the back of his Gulf stream, sipping champagne, and having the kind of leisurely conversations that I could brag about to my friends (without mentioning his name, due to confidentiality concerns, of course), that would ultimately lead to a brilliant, brilliant book. That is when I learned how busy billionaires are. And that is when I developed my process, which I have now used to create countless books over the years.

We start off by avoiding the initial mistake that most writers make, which is to focus on what the book needs to be about. This is a fatal error that practically every writer makes, but it seems so obvious. If we are going to write a book, don’t we start with what we are going to put in the book?

No.

I will say it again, no. Definitely not.

Instead, we first decide on the core audience for the book. That is the real starting point.

Think of a target at a shooting range. There’s a bull’s eye surrounded by increasingly large concentric circles. The bull’s eye in our case is the specific core audience for whom the book is meant. A book is a tool of influence. That sentence is so important I will repeat it: A book is a tool of influence. So the starting point for a successful book is not “What do we put in the book?” it is “Whom are we trying to influence?”

Maybe it is friends and family, in the case of a memoir. Maybe it is potential clients, investors, new hires, legislators, or other stakeholders. Maybe it is others in your field, and you want them to grasp and apply your way of thinking about problems. There may be multiple audiences—those are the concentric circles around the bull’s eye. Those people are welcome to read the book and benefit from it, but the starting point for any book is the simple question:Who is in the bull’s eye? Who exactly are we trying to influence?

You cannot write a successful book if you don’t start with that question in mind.

Then you ask, where are those people now, and where do you want to take them? A book makes a case for a certain way of thinking, a certain way of acting. The lives of the readers—their business lives, their personal lives, their spiritual lives—whatever the topic—will be better if they follow your guidance. So where are they now … and where do you want to take them?

Only once we have identified the core audience for the book, where they are now, and where you want them to go, can we begin to discuss contents for the book. Any successful person could probably write a dozen different books right now. I like to say, which book will give you CPR? CPR, of course stands for Cash in your Pocket … Right now. That is my kind of CPR! Or if you are not writing the book to make money, what outcome do you want? Out of all the possible books you could write, that is the book to write right now.

So now we have identified the audience, where they are, and where they want to go. I will then ask what I call theOprah question, which is this:

“Hi! I’m Oprah. Welcome to the show! Tell the audience why you wrote the book.”

I’ve got to tell you, everybody loves this Oprah question. For years, while Oprah had her talk show, it was the dream of countless of my clients to make it to her couch (some did, I’m excited to report. You get a book … and you get a book … and so on). But there is something magical about Oprah. She represents the pinnacle of success for authors, and at the same time, she has been considered the premier interviewer for decades. Prince Harry and Meghan talked to Oprah first. So, the idea of going on Oprah’s show, triggered by my Oprah question, puts readers in a very happy, almost trance-like state. They just relax. I can see their shoulders dropping if we meet in person or on a Zoom call. They begin to ask themselves, why am I doing this? And their answers become the foundation of the table of contents for the book. Let me explain. For the next hour or so, I’m just sitting back and letting the client do most of the talking. I’ve asked the most critical question a writer could possibly ask a client— why did you write this book? The fact that it is in the past tense takes some of the tension out of the process because the client is coming from a place of the work already being complete. What a relief! It is already done; I didn’t have to do anything! What fun!

So now the client talks, and I’m listening for potential chapter ideas. The call is recorded, of course, but I’m taking notes feverishly and organizing a table of contents on the fly, which I will then polish over the next couple of days and present to the client typically within 48 hours of the call. My goal at this point is to listen for a potential title, subtitle, chapter titles, and a paragraph or two of description that will explain what goes into each chapter.

We are creating what I call an itinerary for the journey. If you ever backpacked across Europe, you might have planned to spend three days in London, three days in Paris, three days in Geneva … and then you met someone in Paris, and the two of you went to Spain. Boom. It is the same thing with a book. The table of contents can and will be adjusted over the course of the writing. That is fine. It is just that both of us—the client and I—need to see, on paper, a clear sense of the flow of information from the author (the client) to the reader. That is what the table of contents is for. We will sign off on the table of contents in a second, typically much shorter call, and then get into the interviewing.

I mentioned earlier that the typical approach for writers is to do big stream-of-consciousness interviews with their clients and hope that a book somehow emerges from the mist. And as I’ve said, great books typically don’t materialize from this process. Instead, a jumble of thinking that has no benefit to the client or to readers is usually what emerges.There is a better way, which I developed back when I worked with the first of my billionaire clients, the tech mogul I mentioned a moment ago.

I need one hour of interview time for each chapter. In that hour, the client and I will have a broad-based conversation that I will lead with open questions. Typically, I may not have to ask more than six or eight questions over the course of the hour. I just want the client to download everything in her head about the topic without concern for what goes in front of what, where stories are needed, and so on. Some of that can be filled in later. I just want the client to talk.

At the end of the first hour of interviewing, I explain that every hour of interviewing I do leads to 12 to 15 pages of the book. I explain they will have the chapter within two weeks of the call, and at that point, I will be expecting comments, like “I like this, I hate that, that doesn’t sound like me, that is great, do more of this, do less of that,” and soon. If I waited until the manuscript was done, I would be making a terrible mistake. I wouldn’t be giving the client a chance to correct the material immediately. Since I deliver the chapter within two weeks of the call, I can present the remainder of the chapters to the client in what would be a second or third draft. This saves everyone—the client and me—enormous time and effort. Delivering chapters one at a time, and getting comments from the client, allows me to edit that chapter and then do the rest with what I’ve learned about their guidance regarding word choice, sentence structure, and so on.

I also warn my client, as that first hour ends, that they will probably go into a state of panic once we get off the call. Accomplished people are used to accomplishing things. Typically, in an hour, a highly successful person will have answered 20 emails, closed a deal, reached out to a prospect, met a patient, created a financial plan, ordered labs, or done something else tangible. Here, they can panic (we just talked for an hour! Nothing happened! What on earth?). I warn them that is how they are going to feel, and that the relief will only come when they get the first chapter in their inbox. This way, they can head off some of that sense of panic (although typically not all of it). And then they get the first chapter, and they see how I transformed that conversation into a solid, exciting, enticing first chapter of their book, and now they can trust the process.

And then it is wash, rinse, repeat, through the end of the book.

Research? Yeah, I’ve got people who can do research and get us specific facts and figures, but as I advise my clients, what will matter most to the reader is what is in the client’s brain already. It is the client’s work or life experience that will make the difference, and statistics will just buttress the conclusions that the client has already reached.

Some clients are very modest and don’t really believe that they have a book in them, so I put it this way:

“I understand that a book sounds daunting; however, what if we thought of it as ten or twelve conversations, one for each chapter, about the things that matter most to you, about the ways you serve people, about the ways you run your business or your practice, or about how you think about your field? Couldn’t we have ten or twelve interesting one-hour conversations about ten or twelve topics related to what you do?”

At that point, most of them shrug and say, “You are probably right.” And then, they find that they really enjoy the interview process, because they have never been listened to in this way, and they have never had a chance to clarify their thinking. This is an incredibly important point, so let’s pause and go more deeply into it. We live in a world where practically no one listens. Indeed, conversations these days amount to two people standing next to each other, or on aZoom call or a phone call, essentially formulating what they are going to say and waiting for the other person to stop talking so that they can say what they want to say next. There is practically no listening today; wouldn’t you agree?

When you get home from work, how much interest does your spouse or partner truly have in what you did today? It is limited, let’s be honest. They are glad you had a good day at the office, but they have got their own stuff going on.Do they really want to sit down with you for an hour and just listen to everything you think regarding a specific topic that is part of your work life, or an earlier chapter in your personal history if you are doing a memoir? That is a big lift for even the most dedicated of spouses or partners. The short of it is that most of us go through our lives, and no one is listening to us.

Sometimes, people ask whether I consider AI a threat to what I do. I don’t. Not in the least. That is because whatever AI is good for, it cannot listen to what you are saying and realize that there is something you want to say but you aren’t quite saying, something that is incredibly important to you, and that something is what no one else in your field is saying. How do I know that no one else in your field is making that critical point? Because I’ve read everything else that has been written in your field. I’m a bookstore and library nerd. I’ve been in bookstores and libraries on average twice a week since I was 12 years old. And if I haven’t read the key books in your field, I may well have written them! So, I’m listening for what you are saying that no one else in your field is saying. I’m listening for what you are saying that is so important to you that you might not even express the idea fully, for fear of being rejected or ridiculed. That is my gift, the ability to hear what is behind your thinking, to stop the presses and say, “Wait! What did you just say? Can we just talk a little more about that?”

When that happens, half the time, clients are surprised. They figure that “everybody knows” what they know or what they think. That is so not true! (Pardon the grammar, but that is how I felt, so that is how it is staying.) Why is it so not true? Most people are very humble about their thinking, even people who are arrogant about everything else. They figure that if they know something, everybody knows it. If they are thinking something, everybody is thinking it. And what really makes them so successful is the fact that no one else is thinking those thoughts. No one else has those ideas. Only they have those thoughts, and they don’t even recognize just how breathtaking, different, and potentially earth-shaking they are for readers. So, it is my job to listen and listen and listen, and then when I hear one of those extraordinary ideas mentioned, either in part or in full, pull the red cord and say, “Stop! Let’s talk this through!”

I belong to an entrepreneurship training program called The Strategic Coach, led by Dan Sullivan. It is a brilliant program, and I cannot say enough good about it. I’ve been a part of the program for 20 years. One thing that Dan teaches is that every person has a Unique Ability, and that we should identify our Unique Ability and spend as much time as we possibly can just working in our Unique Ability. Others say, get better at your weakness. Not Dan. He says that you should delegate the things you are bad at and even the things you are excellent at if they are not your Unique Ability because those tasks are probably someone else’s Unique Ability.

I went through the extremely thoughtful process Strategic Coach offers for identifying Unique Ability many years ago. As I did so, I thought to myself, this is a waste of time. My Unique Ability is writing. Why am I doing this? Wrong. My Unique Ability turned out to be listening. A lot of people are terrific writers. Few people are terrific listeners. And for me, it is not just listening. It is listening with love. That is my unique ability—to listen with love. To listen without boredom, without envy, with total concentration and focus. That is the gift I bring my clients. That is something they typically don’t experience at work or at home.

And they love it.

As a result, the books my team and I create are, if I may be allowed a moment of immodesty, a million times better than practically anybody else’s books, because they are rooted in deep listening—listening with love—to what the client has to say. That, above all things, is what I bring to the table.

Okay, that was a bit boastful, but as the expression goes, it ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up. Let’s talk about a related topic—the question of just how much an author (you) should talk about yourself in your book. Here’s what I tell my clients:

People don’t read books. It is so shocking that I will say it again: People don’t read books. Instead, people use a book asa screenplay for a movie that is going to play in their head. In that movie, they play two people. They play themselves as student, and they play the role of you, the author, as teacher.

Isn’t that interesting? I think it is! The point is that when they are being you in that movie, they need to know just enough about you so they can play the role of you effectively. If you are overly humble and modest and you don’t say enough about yourself, the reader will feel bewildered. And if you talk too much about yourself, the reader will be bored(oh my gosh! Stop talking about yourself already! I know who you are!).

So it is my job to help the client find the sweet spot between saying too little and saying too much about themself. You can call it a Goldilocks zone kind of thing. And by the way, Chapter 1 is never about the author, and it is never about the history of the topic. Instead, Chapter 1 is typically about the problem the reader faces that this book will solve. I will say that again because it is so important: The goal of Chapter 1 is to lay out the problem or problems the reader faces that this book will solve for them. The hero of the journey is not the author; it is the reader!

The reader doesn’t care a whit about the author until the reader knows the author understands the problems the reader is facing better than anyone on earth. So, unless we are talking about a memoir, which is a slightly different animal, typically, in Chapter 1, we focus on the problems the reader faces that the author most enjoys solving. At that point, the reader looks up and says, “Wow! This author has been reading my mail! This author really gets me! Who is this person?” And then comes Chapter 2, which typically tells the author’s story. Great! Now it is time to provide the reader with the information necessary so that when she is playing you in the movie in her head, she knows exactly who she is being at the moment when she is being you. And then comes the rest of the book, which is either your process, or your story, or your thinking about a given topic. And that is how we get it done.

Let me be clear. There are a lot of really outstanding ghostwriters in the world, and they do things differently from howI do them. And that is fine. I’m simply providing you my methodology, which has been proven successful over more than 1,000 books that my team and I have done over 35 years. If you are a writer, you are most welcome to adopt any or all the ideas I described in this chapter, from the process of selling through the process of getting a book done. And if you are thinking about getting a book done, well, I hope I’ve made my process clear and attractive. It has worked for a lot of other people so I have a fair amount of certainty when I claim it will work for you, too.