Ghostwriting: Not Rocket Science, But Far from a Walk in the Park

How my struggles, curiosity, and unique approaches to transferring my prior knowledge turned tailored ghostwriting into a lucrative side hustle, exceeding my primary income and being a joyful hobby in

Memoirs and Life Lessons for Knowledge Transfer. Non-members of Medium can read this story for free using my friend link.

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I wrote this short story to save time since many freelance writers are curious about ghostwriting and have asked me to share my experience, which might guide them.

I want to make this story helpful, so I share my struggles and victories transparently to give the full picture without bias. As the title of my story refers, ghostwriting is a simple process but not easy as it comes with pitfalls and requires additional skills beyond writing.

Freelance writing provides an excellent foundation, but those skills alone won’t make you a successful ghostwriter. The two jobs are different, requiring distinct skill sets.

I will give you a glimpse of my journey, highlighting the key points, and offer some practical tips to help you avoid pitfalls and thrive in this unique line of work, which might be lucrative if done correctly.

My Accidental Entry to the Ghostwriting Journey

In the early 1990s, I developed a unique curriculum for my casual lecturing job at a technology university. This research institution aimed to connect with businesses and offer short courses to generate additional research funds and stay competitive. Government funds did not suffice for them to survive.

They scheduled my course on weekends, allowing businesses to explore emerging internet technologies. Although the World Wide Web was still in its conceptual phase and not ready for public use, older services, which I packed into my training program, were available. For example, teaching Usenet, Gopher, FTP, Telnet, and text-based browsers like Lynx for business use captivated my audience at the time.

As a person with a strong technical background, using these services was easy for me, but teaching them to non-technical people was challenging. To address this, I used my instructional design skills to simplify the concepts and test my course with some volunteers. I created step-by-step guides and used a modular approach to make the material more accessible to the public.

The first course was a great success, and the university wanted me to scale it by training several other technical trainers. They asked me to create a manual for other trainers to use. I charged trainers and trainees per unit. It was a good additional income to my tuition fee, but I did not know it was costly for the company.

While I understood business concepts theoretically, I was a young academic and engineer with no commercial skills at the time. The department head wanted to own my course material for their trainers and participants. They asked for my price. I froze. I had no idea what to charge. Silence filled the room. Finally, they offered $5,000. Would I be happy with that?

Five thousand dollars felt like a fortune in those days. I mumbled, “I guess so.” “Excellent,” he replied. “Let’s get this training started. You are our tenured contractor lead on this project. We trust you can help us scale this business.”

I didn’t realize it then, but I had just become an accidental ghostwriter as they kept asking me to develop new curricula and sell them. The contract, with its NDA and copyright transfer, made it official. This was my first step into a world I hadn’t known existed.

Within a year, the institute had hired several casual trainers to deliver the courses I had created. It quickly became the town’s most successful training center. The institute expanded, taking the course to multiple cities and venturing overseas.

While $5,000 for each course seemed like a huge amount at the time, I later discovered that the institute had earned a fortune from it.

A business mentor told me I had made a huge mistake, but I could use it to my advantage. He suggested I leverage the experience to get into the ghostwriting market. I had heard the term before but did not know its scope, even though it apparently dates back to the 1920s. My challenge was to turn it into a side hustle that I needed on those days, which later turned into a hobby for me.

He connected with an agency specializing in this service. During that time, I had only one book published and several training materials sold, so they convinced me I could do the job. The first assignment was writing a book related to my expertise area. We agreed on a three-month delivery for the completion of the manuscript.

After discussing the requirements, I thought I could do it easily. Each day after my full-time job, I allocated at least two hours to complete the manuscript within this timeframe. When I submitted the draft on time, the person said the content was good, but it did not reflect his voice.

The idea of “finding a different voice” in writing puzzled me. Thankfully, my mentor was good with words and provided clear examples.

I thought I could easily mimic his style. Nevertheless, with no experience, it felt unnatural. I was way out of my comfort zone. The writing became a struggle. I lost my enthusiasm and even felt so-called writer’s block. I got stuck, even embarrassed by my inability to deliver on time.

With desperation, I reached out to a writer, friend, and collaborator. He was a published author with over 20 books to his name. Relatively wealthy and older than me, he didn’t need ghostwriting as he wanted to own his content and leave a legacy.

He told me I needed to learn how to edit. “But I’m already an academic peer reviewer,” I opposed. “I edit papers all the time.” He explained that academic peer review was more like proofreading.

Ghostwriting requires a different skill set. I needed to learn how to truly edit, to shape someone else’s work into their own voice so that they could put their name on it. The critical point was the end product was not voice and does not represent me. It represents someone else.

Luckily, my author friend connected me with his experienced and articulate editor, who quickly trained me in editing at a minimal fee that I could afford. With this new skill, my struggles vanished. I felt confident tackling several book projects in my discipline and passion areas, which motivated me to research and enjoy the process.

My mistake, which caused my previous struggles, was assuming writing and editing were the same. They weren’t. Each required its own distinct skill set. A key principle in life is that we must validate our assumptions as they can be far away from reality.

My lesson was that the term “ghostwriter” was misleading. It implied that writing was the only requirement. The hidden expectation was that the writer needed editing skills, too, to capture the voice of the person who would own the content.

Fantasy vs Reality or Theory vs Practice

On paper, ghostwriting seems simple. You understand what the client wants, set a timeline, and write bit by bit. But the key is getting those requirements and expectations right from the start. This keeps the client happy, avoids wasted effort, and lowers the risk of burnout.

Writing a book can be stressful, demanding, and emotionally draining. Add editing to the mix, and it gets even harder. That’s why so many people fail and give up quickly.

Ghostwriting an essay, a story, or a blog post can be a good starting point. But tackling a book requires a whole different set of skills. Without them, success can be tough, and the ghostwriter’s quality of life might suffer.

My income as a book author was so tiny that it barely qualified as a side hustle. But structured ghostwriting with a business approach paid well.

Once I mastered the nuanced skills, like editing to match the client’s voice, and truly understood requirements and expectations with scope negotiation, it surpassed my full-time salary. Understanding the scope, requirements, and expectations early on was key to success in ghostwriting.

After ghostwriting many research papers, white papers, industry-based articles, and multiple books, I want to give you a few practical tips on how to enter this field, become successful, and turn it into a hobby that will not look like a job once we create necessary neuronal pathways with experience.

Summary of Key Success Factors and Pitfalls

Multi-skill development is crucial for ghostwriters. You need basic writing, editing, communication, contract negotiation, and project management lifecycle skills. Without these, the job can be extremely stressful, even if you are a good writer or book author.

The hardest part can be capturing the voices of new clients. During our early conversations, I had to go the extra mile by interviewing them, reviewing their past work, and even giving them sample paragraphs to rewrite in their own style.

For example, some clients prefer an active voice, while others lean towards the passive voice, which is common in scientific papers. Some want a conversational style, others a more informative or educational tone. These are all distinct voices, and it is not hard to identify them with a few samples.

But if we skip this step, the job gets tough. Even if the content is solid, the results might miss the mark if the voice isn’t right.

As a matter of principle, I always underpromise, deliver the essentials, and then go above and beyond to exceed my client’s expectations. This approach has served me well. Doing the opposite — overpromising and underdelivering — can be disastrous for building long-term relationships.

Building relationships is crucial in ghostwriting, just like any other business. I prefer long-term clients. It saves me the hassle of finding new projects, marketing my services, and relearning different voices which are time-consuming and tedious tasks.

The biggest benefit of happy, long-term clients is that they do marketing for us. They effortlessly bring in new business. People trust recommendations from others. That’s why I don’t bother with online ads that are open to many and can be very competitive. My existing clients keep me busy and save me time on tedious tasks that I don’t enjoy.

However, beginners with no client need to use these services. In this case, some testimonials can help. However, demonstrating skills like writing, editing, project management, communication, and negotiation by sharing some work as a portfolio is necessary and can be useful to find first clients.

So far, my proteges use Fiverr and Upwork, which are international companies making the process easy.

The Bottom Line

These fundamental skills are non-negotiable. But we must understand and see the bigger picture, which is the larger part of the iceberg. Our primary role as ghostwriters is to understand the client’s vision, needs, and expectations. We must put those first before our own artistic desires as creators.

Something we find creative and captivating might not resonate with the client at all. Keeping this big picture in mind at all times is the key to success factor in this arduous yet rewarding job.

From my experience, there is no shortcut to success in this field. Some people undermine it. Yes, ghostwriting is simple but not easy.

I stumbled into it by luck, turned it into a lucrative side gig by going above and beyond, and now, in my retirement years, it turned out to be a fulfilling hobby that adds meaning to my life.

I wrote this story as a give-back to the writing community as I owe my success to my mentors. Mentorship and collaboration can enhance our knowledge, make skill-building easy, and make the journey enjoyable. I wrote several stories like this and linked them to a list titled Writing, Content Development & Marketing Strategies.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

If you are a new reader, you may check out some of my topics, including the brain, mental health, cognitive function, significant health conditions, longevity, nutrition/food, valuable nutrients, ketogenic lifestyle, self-healing, weight management, writing/reading, including 100+ Insightful Life Lessons from My Circles for the Last 50+ Years.

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