Why You Should Try Ghostwriting

Years ago, I decided there were a finite number of stories and articles and books that I could write from my own experiences. I've written personal experience magazine articles from my own life and published in various publications.  Also I've written many different types of books such as devotionals or biographies or how-to books.

For any writer, there are many different types of writing. In fact, I list the variety in the first chapter of Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams. The first chapter is free with this extensive list.  If you are looking to diversify your writing, I encourage you to look at this list and try a different type of writing.

Today I want to highlight one of the most overlooked types of writing called ghostwriting. When you write a book for another person is called ghostwriting. Cec Murphey is one of the most skilled writers in this area with over 140 published books to his credit and a number of New York Times best-selling books. Many writers have never attempted ghostwriting or co-authoring or collaborating to write the story of someone else. Murphey has tackled this type of writing over and over. He has recently published a new book called GHOSTWRITING.

Through a combination of his own personal experience, he takes the mystery away from this area and helps writers learn the value. He gives them a vision for how they too could earn good money but also help others birth stories which would never be written.

Murphey covers the gamut of topics in this well-written book. He defines the terms like book doctor or collaborator or ghostwriter. He goes into ethical concerns and where you find subjects and answers a critical writer question: how do you make money and what do you charge for this service.
I’ve got shelves of how-to writing books and only have one other book on this topic (written years ago). This new book is fresh and engaging. Also Murphey has tapped his wide network of other ghostwriters for their experiences and added it to enrich his book. The key application points for the reader are distilled at the end of each chapter into a series of bullet points called a Takeaway.

As I read GHOSTWRITING cover to cover, I found myself nodding in agreement at the wisdom in this book. I’ve written more than a dozen books for other people as a collaborator and rarely a ghostwriter. I highly recommend GHOSTWRITING for anyone who wants to learn the inside story about this much needed area of the writing world.

Many writers are trying to figure out how to make a living with their writing. One of the most lucrative and needed ways to earn a living and tell the stories is in this area of ghostwriting. I encourage you to get GHOSTWRITING to learn how to open up this possibility.

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The Unexpected Role Model

I loved to come into my California office on a Sunday afternoon. At the time, I had small children at home and I found it hard to write and meet some of my freelance deadlines. So I would often slip off to the office for a few afternoon hours. To give you the right timeframe, it was in the mid-80s and I rode a Honda Scooter back and forth from home to the office.

On one of these Sunday afternoons, when I came into the building, I noticed the lights were on at the director's office and since everything else was still, I walked past to see what was happening. A friend of the director, Jamie Buckingham, was sitting at the keyboard. He looked up and greeted me and said, "I'm a jungle pilot today flying planes in the Amazon." The writer of such bestsellers as Run Baby Run by Nicky Cruz, Jamie was a prolific writer and yet a couple of times a year, he wrote some material that never held his by-line and he didn't earn a dime. As a pure ghostwriting ministry, Jamie wrote all of the public material from our director.

When readers would rave to me about the director's engaging storytelling, I would always smile and say, "Yes the writing is terrific." I knew the director didn't write any of it but the words came from Jamie's pen.

Many readers of these entries might not remember Jamie Buckingham but millions of people are still reading his writing and his ghostwriting. He was a favorite columnist for Charisma magazine and died of liver cancer in 1992. I learned a great deal from his life and his teaching about writing--through his words and through his actions.

Here's a story that few people remember about Jamie but I write it to encourage you about second chances. Dean Merrill wrote this story about Jamie in a little book from Zondervan published in 1981 called Another Chance, How God Overrides Our Big Mistakes (long out of print but you can get as an inexpensive used book). On page 59, Merrill includes an excerpt from Buckingham's Where Eagles Soar, "Well-known author and speaker Jamie Buckingham describes how God painfully confronted him with a sin--not once but twice. He was a successful pastor in his mid-thirties at the time, but only after this canyon of embarrassment did his wider ministry as a writer emerge."

In October 1965, a group of 20 deacons in a large Baptist church in South Carolina confronted him with stern faces. They forced his resignation and he writes about calling his wife and asking her to come get him at the church. "She found me, the shepherd of the flock, crouched in a fetal position in a basement hallway, huddled against the landing of the stairs. 'It would be better for you, for this church if I were dead,' I sobbed." She comforted. She smoothed. She never asked for details. There was no need."..."There was a desperate reaching out for friends, only to find they had all deserted. I was like a leper. Unclean. I wrote letters--more than 90 of them--to pastoral and denominational friends. Only one man dared respond and that was with a curt, 'I received your letter and shall be praying for you.'"

The Buckinghams returned to his home state of Florida and led a small but growing church. "But as Vance Havner once remarked. It doesn't do any good to change labels on an empty bottle.Nothing inside me had changed. I was still the magnificent manipulator, the master of control, the defender of my position. I was still pushing people around. I was far more politician than a man of God."...:"Soon echoes from the past began drifting down to Florida...I continued to fight, to brave the growing onslaught of fact that kept building against me. It took 15 months of a stormy relationship before the Florida church cast me into the waves to calm the sea--just like Jonah."..."I had no choice but once again to slink home and huddle with my wife and children while the fire of God continued its purging work. Often, I have discovered, we can not hear God when we are busy. Hearing comes only when we have taken--or are forced to take--times of quietness."

In his idleness, Jamie picked up a copy of Guideposts and learned about their first contest for writers. He submitted a first-person 1,500 word story about a young man who prepared to go to South America as a missionary pilot. "Since I had nothing else to do. I wrote the story and sent it in. On October 1, 1967, "I was stretched out on the bed in the back room of our little rented house when the phone rang. It was the Western Union telegraph office. Jackie took the call and copied the message on a scrap of paper. It was from Leonard LeSourd, editor of Guideposts, stating I was one of the 20 winners--out of more than 2,000 submissions."

At that workshop, Jamie learned more about how to write the stories of others and met the publisher who was looking for someone to write Run Baby Run for Nicky Cruz. His career as a ghostwriter and co-author was born.

It was my privilege for those few years to see Jamie on a regular basis and watch him work. He even taught a several day writer's workshop for our staff during the early days of my own writing life. It was way before I co-authored any books with anyone. In many ways looking back, Jamie served as the unexpected role model for this part of my writing life.

The Forgotten Path

The blonde-haired writer sat across from me at a small table during a writers' conference, leaned into the table and poured out her frustration. She had a journalism degree, spent her season working for newspapers and now had published a series of magazine articles. At first the publications had modest pay but now this writer was beginning to write for higher paying and more well-known publications.

Yet her book ideas were rejected and she understood the reasons. In the nonfiction areas, she had no "platform" or market visibility. While her standing was rising among magazine editors, she recognized that few readers knew her and her work.

This writer had dreams of writing a novel but had realistically looked at the market and understood the huge hurdles that she faced to get a novel published. While she could spin an excellent tale, she wondered how she could devote the time and energy to writing a 80,000 to 100,000 word novel with the speculation that some publisher "might" bring it into print. She had no interest in self-publishing and producing a garage filled with books which never reached readers.

Now during our brief session, this writer was searching for answers about how to break into book publishing. She wanted to write longer works than magazine articles and was unsure where to turn.

If the story sounds familiar to you, then keep reading because I'm going to show you a forgotten path for book publishing. This path has endless possibilities and can provide financial security and a lifetime of publishing.

If you don't have a platform, one of the quickest ways to gain a platform is to use the platform of someone else. Some of you are wondering how you get attached to another person's platform. It's called co-authoring or ghostwriting. If you don't personally lead a large organization, can you write for someone who already leads a large organization? I call it the forgotten path because many of these busy people have aspirations of writing a book but will never get it done because of their own schedule. Yet they could make time to meet with a writer on a regular basis, tell you the stories then you could write the book for them. The writer doesn't have to have the platform but the writer brings the skill of crafting words and storytelling to the project.

Many years ago I discovered that I have a finite number of books that I want to write during my lifetime yet there are an infinite number of books that I can co-author or ghostwrite for someone else.

If you have never tried co-authoring or ghostwriting, I suggest you try a shorter magazine article for your first experience. It is better to experiment with a shorter assignment than a longer book project. Can you capture another person's stories and voice? Are you willing to be a co-author or a ghostwriter as a long as you are fairly compensated for your work?

Often you can find these longer book projects when you write a shorter magazine article. I've started my relationship with someone through a magazine article then it has developed into a longer book project. Also I've seen many other writers have this experience where they get with someone who is high profile to write a magazine article and start their relationship. Then that relationship takes a leap to a new level and they are co-authors for a longer book project.

From my experience, it is rare for an agent or an editor to put a writer with an inexperienced co-author or ghostwriter. You can gain the necessary experience collaborating on some shorter magazine articles.

Through my collaboration and co-author experiences, I've been able to write about some remarkable people who are now my friends. It has enriched my life and provided work. I hope you will consider this forgotten path.

Jenna Bush's First Book

The current issue of The New Yorker includes a short and excellent article about Jenna Bush and her first book. I always enjoy reading these entries about new authors and in particular someone who has been out touring and promoting her book. I caught a few minutes of her interview on the Today Show recently.

Reading this article, in the opening, you can see a bit of how the book came to Harper Collins from the lawyer and literary agent, Robert Barnett.

The detail that fascinated me was about whether Jenna Bush wrote her own book or not. Even Clay Aiken's first assumption was that she used a ghostwriter but she didn't (according to the article). It shows again how often high profile people will turn to someone else for writing help. Some times this writer is mentioned in the book and some times they are not. People tell me that the mention of the writer or not is often a marketing decision as much as anything. The writer can still count the book in their list of published books. Interesting to me that many writers don’t want to write other people's material even though it is a huge and ongoing need in the market. Guess it takes the right sort of person to be willing to write for the joy of writing the story--and not for any by-line.