July Teleseminar on Tuesday, 7/6

I'm so excited about our next Association of Ghostwriters teleseminar, which is next Tuesday, July 6th at 7:00 pm EDT/6:00 pm CDT/5:00 pm MDT/4:00 pm PDT. During the 1-1.5 hour call, members will hear from a literary agent who specializes in representing ghostwriters. She'll be sharing with us what she's looking for, how to impress her and what most ghostwriters are charging these days.

Members, if you can't make the call, don't worry. You'll be able to download the MP3 file and transcript within the next week or so and listen or read at your leisure.

The equivalent of reading fees

With demand rising among corporate executives, national speakers, consultants, coaches and small business owners for ghostwriting services, businesses have been formed to connect professional ghostwriters with would-be authors. There are a handful of legitimate publishing companies that do a fine job of shepherding books through writing to design to production.

And then there are some that are not.

The ones I have heard of often prey on clients - taking their money and failing to produce anything close to a decent manuscript. But there may be a new business model making the rounds that targets ghostwriters. It involves requiring training in order to be considered for future ghostwriting work. Here is an example from a firm in Los Angeles that charges a fee for a 10-session course of some kind: http://losangeles.cajobz.com/looking-for-professional-ghost-writers-venice.html

I know nothing about this firm, but the fact that they charge a fee to ghostwriters in order to qualify be added to the company's database of writers is suspect. It is akin to literary agents charging reading fees to review manuscripts - the legitimate ones don't.

Granted, firms may need a way to qualify the writers they represent; requesting writing samples or recommendations is typically the way firms handle that. And I wouldn't have a problem with the practice of requiring a test or training if the firm were providing it gratis. But it is not.

Stick with firms that do not require a payment to qualify for ghostwriting work.

Finding Ghostwriting Gigs Online

Ghostwriting work can range from blog postings to articles, speeches, white papers, reports, books and just about any other kind of written document. Given the wide range of opportunities, it is smart to develop a strategy or plan for pursuing the kind of ghostwriting work you most enjoy.

I just spotted this blog posting from one ghostwriter explaining her approach to discovering ghostwriting opportunities and thought you might want to take a look: http://hubpages.com/hub/The-methods-I-use-to-find-online-ghostwriting-jobs.

The key to landing regular ghostwriting work is to constantly be looking.

Association Officially Launches

Thanks to everyone for your patience as we worked out the bugs during the official launch of the Association of Ghostwriters. Everything started out well Monday morning, but by the afternoon, the "Become a Member" button stopped functioning and no one could join. Maybe too many people tried to join at once? I don't really know.

Anyway, because we (and by "we" I mean my intrepid virtual assistant) could not get a response from tech support regarding the software program we purchased, we installed an entirely new system yesterday (Tuesday) and started over. As of today, everything works.

So if you tried to join and only got an error message, please try again. And if you're thinking about joining, I hope you'll stay tuned to learn more about the great member benefits we have planned. New members will soon be receiving the debut issue of the association newsletter as well as the audio file and transcript of last night's great call about using a virtual assistant to get more done.

Thanks again for your patience!

Ghostwritten New York Times Bestsellers

I think we all know that many - maybe even most - books authored by celebrities are ghostwritten. Many high-profile individuals with a message to impart don't necessarily have the time to sit down and put pen to paper day-after-day for several months. And yet they have information people want.

To overcome this dilemma, publishers often pair a well-known person with a ghostwriter - someone who has written books and is likely to deliver a manuscript the publisher can actually publish without having to rewrite it. This is not news to many of you, I know.

Books are produced everyday that have someone's name on the cover who did not actually slave over the words and phrases within. Not a big deal.

What was a surprise to even me, however, was that an estimated 30-50% of books on the New York Times bestseller list are supposedly ghostwritten. As many as half! That's a lot, at least to me.

The source of this statistic is Dr. X, a publishing industry insider who was interviewed by Scott Jeffrey for a program titled Everything You Need to Know to Become a Best-Selling Author. It was produced in 2004 but my sense is that the information, and statistic, is still valid today.

As a ghostwriter, this alerts me to the potential opportunity to partner with more would-be authors under contract at major publishing houses than I thought. Time to start checking in with my editor friends to see what exciting books may be in the works.