Episode 095 - Finding and Being a Ghostwriter with Rob Archangel and Mikal Keefer
August 31, 2021
Rob Archangel and Mikal Keefer talk about FINDING AND BEING A GHOSTWRITER. Rob, the principal at author services provider Archangel Ink, discusses the different circumstances that lead a person to look for a ghostwriter, how ghostwriting varies based on the client’s needs and skills, and the variables that influence the cost of a ghostwriting service. Mikal, one of the ghostwriters at Archangel Ink, talks about how he matches the voice of the work to the client, and the pros and cons of ghostwriting as a career—and of working on someone else’s books instead of your own. And both share tips for how to make a ghostwriting engagement a positive experience for both the ghost and the client.
Rob Archangel is the owner of Archangel Ink, and author of THE PUBLISHED PROFESSIONAL: How Self-Publishing Can Help Build Your Brand, Attract More Clients, And Increase Sales. Rob founded Archangel Ink to help clients more effectively reach their audience, share their message, and build their brand. Rob and his team help busy authors, entrepreneurs, and business professionals self-publish their written work with quality and ease, so they can focus on their area of expertise.
Mikal Keefer is a freelance author who’s published more than 35 books and ghosted a half-dozen more. He’s a veteran copywriter, crafting advertising and brand collateral for dozens of brands and hundreds of product launches. Mikal has served as an Executive Editor at a publishing house, written hundreds of video and audio scripts, developed curricula, and for one glorious day was hired to write fortune cookies.
Mikal Keefer is a freelance author who’s published more than 35 books and ghosted a half-dozen more. He’s a veteran copywriter, crafting advertising and brand collateral for dozens of brands and hundreds of product launches. Mikal has served as an Executive Editor at a publishing house, written hundreds of video and audio scripts, developed curricula, and for one glorious day was hired to write fortune cookies.
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Part 1 - Finding a Ghostwriter with Rob Archangel
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Part 2 - Being a Ghostwriter with Mikal Keefer
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Part 1 - Rob Archangel on Finding a Ghostwriter
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today I have two guests and my first guest is Rob Archangel. Hey Rob, how are you doing?
[00:00:08] Rob: I am doing well, Matty. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:11] Matty: It is great to have you here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Rob Archangel is the owner of Archangel Ink, and author of THE PUBLISHED PROFESSIONAL: How Self-Publishing Can Help You Build Your Brand, Attract More Clients, and Increase Sales. Rob founded Archangel Ink to help clients more effectively reach their audience, share their message, and build their brands. Rob and his team help busy authors, entrepreneurs, and business professionals self-publish their work with quality and ease so they can focus on their area of expertise.
[00:00:39] And I wanted to thank Dale L Roberts for the introduction. Dale's like the matchmaker of the indy publishing community, and I met Rob through a forum that Dale hosts.
[00:00:49] So the topic that we're going to be talking about today is ghostwriting and we're actually going to be hearing from two perspectives. I think this is my first two guests episode. But Rob is going to be talking about hiring a ghostwriter, and then we're going to be hearing from one of Archangel Ink's ghostwriters, Mikal Keefer, and he's going to be discussing being a ghostwriter. So I think this will be great, people will get a wide-ranging perspective on this topic of ghostwriting by the time we're done.
[00:01:13] So, Rob, I wanted to start out asking you how ghostwriting became a service that Archangel Ink decided to offer.
[00:01:21] Rob: It really came out of a need. We had a client several years ago, we've been in business about eight years, and I would say five or six, maybe even seven years ago, we had someone say, hey, I've got an idea. I don't really have it fully fleshed out. I'm an okay writer, not a great writer. Is there any way that you can help me? Is that something that you offer?
[00:01:37] And we were working with another editor at the time who did that sort of service and reached out and said, hey, have you done something like this before? Is this something that you're interested in doing? At the time we actually had I would say two different levels of ghostwriting. These days we focus on the research focused and intensive version. But the two that I was made aware of initially was, one, a basic research-based ghostwriting project. And then a full kind of custom writing project that's really designed for thought leaders, people who have particular insight and expertise in an area and they really want to bring it to life.
[00:02:12] The former that we had learned about was writing for trends. So for example, somebody says, hey, intermittent fasting is really interesting, it's really hot. People are interested in knowing about this. I'd like to put out something to speak to maybe my audience or start to build an audience. But I don't really have the time or energy or wherewithal to do it.
[00:02:27] That was designed to be much more efficient, cost-effective, and you have a particular topic and maybe a handful of resources that you say, hey, these are the resources that I want you to pull from and learn from. And then put this book together, usually one or two drafts, pretty quick. You can obviously go through additional rounds of editing after that, but it's not highly tailored. It's not highly customized in the way that the custom writing projects that we tend to focus on these days are. It was really a quick and dirty, hey, let's research something, let's put something together and see if it flies kind of idea.
[00:02:58] Yeah, that's a little bit of a meandering answer, but hopefully that kind of speaks to how we got involved with it. The editor that we were working with offered both of those kinds of services, and so we realized, okay, there's an interest, there's a desire for this. There are people who are in need of this. Let's see what we can do to provide for those people.
[00:03:15] Matty: When you're doing the research type of ghostwriting, how much of the research is done with the client and how much of the research is just on reputable sources that you find in other places? ...
[00:00:08] Rob: I am doing well, Matty. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:11] Matty: It is great to have you here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Rob Archangel is the owner of Archangel Ink, and author of THE PUBLISHED PROFESSIONAL: How Self-Publishing Can Help You Build Your Brand, Attract More Clients, and Increase Sales. Rob founded Archangel Ink to help clients more effectively reach their audience, share their message, and build their brands. Rob and his team help busy authors, entrepreneurs, and business professionals self-publish their work with quality and ease so they can focus on their area of expertise.
[00:00:39] And I wanted to thank Dale L Roberts for the introduction. Dale's like the matchmaker of the indy publishing community, and I met Rob through a forum that Dale hosts.
[00:00:49] So the topic that we're going to be talking about today is ghostwriting and we're actually going to be hearing from two perspectives. I think this is my first two guests episode. But Rob is going to be talking about hiring a ghostwriter, and then we're going to be hearing from one of Archangel Ink's ghostwriters, Mikal Keefer, and he's going to be discussing being a ghostwriter. So I think this will be great, people will get a wide-ranging perspective on this topic of ghostwriting by the time we're done.
[00:01:13] So, Rob, I wanted to start out asking you how ghostwriting became a service that Archangel Ink decided to offer.
[00:01:21] Rob: It really came out of a need. We had a client several years ago, we've been in business about eight years, and I would say five or six, maybe even seven years ago, we had someone say, hey, I've got an idea. I don't really have it fully fleshed out. I'm an okay writer, not a great writer. Is there any way that you can help me? Is that something that you offer?
[00:01:37] And we were working with another editor at the time who did that sort of service and reached out and said, hey, have you done something like this before? Is this something that you're interested in doing? At the time we actually had I would say two different levels of ghostwriting. These days we focus on the research focused and intensive version. But the two that I was made aware of initially was, one, a basic research-based ghostwriting project. And then a full kind of custom writing project that's really designed for thought leaders, people who have particular insight and expertise in an area and they really want to bring it to life.
[00:02:12] The former that we had learned about was writing for trends. So for example, somebody says, hey, intermittent fasting is really interesting, it's really hot. People are interested in knowing about this. I'd like to put out something to speak to maybe my audience or start to build an audience. But I don't really have the time or energy or wherewithal to do it.
[00:02:27] That was designed to be much more efficient, cost-effective, and you have a particular topic and maybe a handful of resources that you say, hey, these are the resources that I want you to pull from and learn from. And then put this book together, usually one or two drafts, pretty quick. You can obviously go through additional rounds of editing after that, but it's not highly tailored. It's not highly customized in the way that the custom writing projects that we tend to focus on these days are. It was really a quick and dirty, hey, let's research something, let's put something together and see if it flies kind of idea.
[00:02:58] Yeah, that's a little bit of a meandering answer, but hopefully that kind of speaks to how we got involved with it. The editor that we were working with offered both of those kinds of services, and so we realized, okay, there's an interest, there's a desire for this. There are people who are in need of this. Let's see what we can do to provide for those people.
[00:03:15] Matty: When you're doing the research type of ghostwriting, how much of the research is done with the client and how much of the research is just on reputable sources that you find in other places? ...
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[00:03:26] Rob: The way that we worked for those projects was the author would, the client would let us know the sources that they wanted us to base our research around. They might say, here's five other books on intermittent fasting and two other books on metabolism and then also I don't like this perspective, avoid working from such and such sources.
[00:03:46] And then the writer would kind of take it and run from there. And it was almost a way for the writer to flex their creative muscles and to be assigned a research project, a longer length research project, not just a 15 pager for your college intro class or something, but a full-length research project. Put something together. Let's see what you come up with. And then it can be revised and workshopped afterward, but it was very writer driven rather than client driven.
[00:04:12] Matty: Do you ever have to vet your clients to make sure that you don't have someone who's hiring you to write an academic paper that they're then going to pass off as their own?
[00:04:22] Rob: Knock on wood, we have not. We are very careful to vet our clients though these days, particularly because the custom writing projects that we really focus on the customer ghostwriting, are really thought leader level material. And there's a lot of close interaction that happens. And we're working with somebody in many cases for six months, 12 months, even longer. And the vetting process that we have, we want to make sure that they understand really well what we can offer, what the scope of our service is, and that they have very clear expectations. We have very clear expectations from them as well. What it is that they're hoping to accomplish from this book so that we can go in, both parties, eyes wide open and make sure that it's going to be a good collaboration. You know, the dollar amount really doesn't matter if you have to spend months and months with another person who you just don't jive with on a professional working relationship level.
[00:05:07] And so we're really careful about that. And maybe just because that's the way that we work, we, knock wood, haven't been in a position where we’re tasked with accidentally writing somebody's master's thesis.
[00:05:18] Matty: What are the different circumstances that you've encountered that lead people to be seeking a ghostwriter?
[00:05:24] Rob: A couple of different instances. The most common I would say is they have some area of expertise that they want to bring to the world. What Archangel Ink tends to focus on are the published professionals, the people who wants to use their book to build their brand, to increase sales and so forth.
[00:05:42] For example, we've worked with physicians before, with exercise coaches, with people in the health and nutrition arena. And their goal is, they have something that they do that they're really good at, and they want to translate that into something digestible for the rest of the world. And our aim is to take what's in their head and convey it in a way that somebody just picking up a book, and not necessarily walking into the office or being served on an individual client basis by that other person, would still be able to get something out of it. So I would say that's the most common.
[00:06:12] But you did ask about the other type of writer who maybe they have a really good idea and they're okay as a writer, but they're not totally polished. They maybe need a lot of developmental work. And sometimes that deep developmental editing kind of crosses over into the ghostwriting arena. And we’re not just taking their structure, but actually helping them craft the words and flesh things out in a coherent way.
[00:06:32] So, I would say those are the two primary clienteles that we have when it comes to ghostwriting. Someone who is working on a book but really needs help in a deep, even in some cases more than development basis. And then the folks who they have great ideas. They're not as skilled writer or they just don't have the time. Maybe they're a physician, a busy professional. There's something that they're doing that's really taking up their time and energy and they need somebody to extract that information from them.
[00:06:57] And that's our goal. We try and make it as easy as possible. through recorded interviews. We would come up with an outline and they have the chance to review things kind of piece by piece. So that they can say, yeah, this sounds like me. This is definitely the information that I have in my head. This is what I know. This is what my area focus is. And ideally this is exactly as I would say it. But I'm not the one that's actually having to put finger to keyboard.
[00:07:19] Matty: What kind of goals do customers or clients or authors come to you with? Is it for like a book as a calling card? Is it for monetary benefit? What kind of goals are you seeing among your clients?
[00:07:33] Rob: So a couple of different goals. I would say in general, it is a calling card project. It's something that they want to expand the scope of their business and they see a book as an opportunity to do that. And they have either self-awareness about their own writing limitations or their own time limitations or what have you to say, hey, I know a book is going to be really helpful but I'm not going to be able to do it myself. Let's outsource it, let's bring on some additional help, bring it into the world and, and then use that to grow the business.
[00:08:00] The other type of clientele, which I would say is maybe 10 or 15% of what we do, those people who have an idea, but they really need that almost blend between the developmental and ghostwriting / editing work to happen in order to realize their vision. And in those cases many times, it's not financially based. It's not monetary based. They're not necessarily thinking about the ways that they're going to earn a positive return on that investment. But it's really about, in some cases, investing in themselves, becoming a better writer through that ghostwriting / developmental editing process and helping them maybe position themselves to do the next version, the next in series, as their own independent author. They're using it as sort of an education investment.
[00:08:41] Matty: Have you ever had the circumstance where someone has come to you thinking they need one service, but upon assessment it becomes clear they need another? So I'm thinking of someone who has written something and thinks what they want us to developmental edit when what they really need is somebody to overhaul it to an extent that it would be more like a ghostwriting assignment.
[00:08:59] Rob: Yeah. And that's the most common instance. Most times when people come to us and we end up doing something that's closer to that ghostwriting / developmental blend, some cases they think, okay, I just need a proof. I just need a proof. I mean, you know, we'll go through an assessment. It's like, well, we noticed some of these issues and based on our assessment, this is the scope of what we would recommend and would be looking at. So that does happen.
[00:09:19] And it's tricky. We do our best to be professional and forthright and transparent and work to the highest standards that we're capable of. But we're also one outfit, and we tell people, Hey, we're not hard salespeople. If you think that our assessment is off, if we just don't see the potential that's there, or we don't see the brilliance that's there, no hard feelings if you want to go and get a second and third and fifth opinion from other providers, other editors, other potential ghostwriting collaborators to find out if it's a good fit.
[00:09:42] We're fortunate and blessed really to have clients that really want to work with us. And again, part of that is, we focus on quality rather than quantity and making sure that the fit as much as possible is really strong and really present, so that both we as the provider, and they as the client feel like this is going to be a fruitful time over the next several months or potentially year plus that we're going to be working together.
[00:10:06] Matty: If someone is listening to this and they're recognizing their own need in one of these categories, a developmental edit / ghostwriter or they just don't have the time, what are some tips that you would offer as they look for and then assess ghostwriting services? How would they find the pool of candidates to begin with?
[00:10:24] Rob: One, I would say, do your research, figure out what parties are reputable. Archangel Ink is fortunate to be a partner member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. I can speak from my personal experience that they have a very thorough vetting process when we were first applying. It's not just a matter of, okay, send us a PayPal payment and you're good and you're on our list. They actually have somebody to review, ask questions about the scope of what we do, the character of what we do, the pricing that we have, and make sure that we're actually acting with integrity. And so an outside, independent watchdog agency like ALLi I think is a good place to go to for finding reputable providers.
[00:10:57] Another good recommendation is if you have author friends, if you have people in author communities, ask for personal recommendations. In many cases the recommendations that you receive are not going to be affiliate recommendations. If you're asking them a Facebook group, they're not going to be financially motivated necessarily. And so there's a better likelihood that you'll have unbiased information.
[00:11:16] And particularly if you're writing in a certain type of genre and you're involved in reader groups or writer groups based on that, then you might be more likely to find editors or providers who specialize in that particular genre by speaking to other people in your cohort. So those would be some recommendations for finding and vetting the right sorts of parties.
[00:11:34] One thing I will mention as well, there may be good experiences and opportunities to find people on places like Fiverr and Upwork, but unfortunately, we have encountered others, I’m thinking of one client in particular who came to us after they had spent a relatively small amount of money on getting their project ghostwritten. We ran it through basic plagiarism software and said, hey, there's entire, almost like half chapters that are pulled more or less directly from other sources, like this is not going to pass muster and out of our professional integrity, we want to let you know that we found this. We obviously can't tell you what to do or not do going forward, but I want to bring this to your attention.
[00:12:08] And my experience with providers in general is in many cases, you get what you pay for. If you find a deal that sounds too good to be true, you know, somebody who's going to write your whole great American novel for $150 and have it done for you in a week, probably not going to be the quality that you're hoping for. Particularly for something like ghostwriting, it's a very time and labor-intensive process and the price is fairly significant.
[00:12:32] Just be aware of going into it that if you decide that this is a good fit for you, then you may want to prepare yourself for the investment that's involved and make sure that whoever you're working with is going to be quality, professional work and not just outsource it to somebody who is going to put it together and maybe pull paragraphs and chapters whole cloth from wherever else just to meet a deadline and make a couple of bucks.
[00:12:54] Matty: I really liked the recommendation for ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors, because that's one that I use. I've used them, for example, to vet potential guests for the podcast. So if somebody approaches me and I really don't know anything about them, I've gotten in touch with ALLi.
[00:13:06] The other resource would be Writer Beware, that's affiliated with Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but that you can use even if you're not a member of that organization. And I'll put a link to that resource as well in the show notes.
[00:13:19] So you've mentioned the price a few times. Can you give any guidance to someone who might be looking for a ghostwriting service about what they should consider? How can they assess whether a price they may be quoted is valid? Is it like plumbing where you get three quotes and then you pick the middle one?
[00:13:37] Rob: Yeah. I think it depends. For us, I would say that we’re probably right in line with what high level ghostwriters will provide. One of the similar services that existed shortly after Archangel Ink was formed was Book in a Box. Now they're Scribe Media. And their ghostwriting projects start at a six-figure investment. And I think it's $120,000 plus.
[00:13:58] And they're very explicit about the sort of clientele that they're looking for. You know, people who are many cases CEOs or business owners and professionals and so forth and they really want everything done for them. Archangel Ink operates in a similar sort of basis. Not quite at that same dollar figure. I do think it's probably worthwhile to look around, to do your research. Check on ALLi, see what providers offer ghostwriting services. And even if just for yourself, make up a spreadsheet and see, okay, this is going to start out at X number of dollars and go up to Y number of dollars. And, and then that gives you at least some grounding when you're talking with and interviewing your candidates.
[00:14:32] And for us, we're very careful about vetting because we want to make sure that the fit is really strong, and I think that should be important for you as a client as well. I wouldn't necessarily go with the least expensive, without respect to the feel, the vibe that you get and the level of shared values and ease of communication and all of that.
[00:14:48] And it's okay, it's totally appropriate, to ask for some time. Obviously, each provider has different things, different introductions that they offer. We offer a free introductory call, and we make ourselves available via email and in some cases, especially for a bigger project, if we have to get on a subsequent call after that, just to go over things, make sure everybody feels really good about it, we're happy to do that.
[00:15:06] And, there may be other providers as well. I would just encourage folks to make sure that the fit is really strong. In Archangel Ink's own business dealings, I've found that, what’s the expression, buy once cry once. Don’t go for the cheapest option and then cause yourself stress and hardship down the line.
[00:15:22] Sometimes it makes sense to invest in that quality. Okay, yeah, it's going to be an investment and it's going to be something that hurts a little bit maybe if you didn't have the expectation of paying whatever amount, but if the experience and the final product ends up being a lot stronger than it would otherwise, in many cases, that's the route to go. At least that's our professional experience and my recommendation as well. Just make sure that you're satisfied with what you're hearing and on the same page, because you're going to be working with your ghostwriter for a really long time potentially. Make sure that you're not going in with reservations and off feelings.
[00:15:55] Matty: What is the scope of or the variability of time that an engagement can last?
[00:16:02] Rob: It depends. I would say that for us, our ghostwriting process, we budget about a year. In some cases it will finish in eight to 10 months or so, but for the writing portion, depending on the availability of the author, as well as the writer that we're working with, the writing process might take four to six months.
[00:16:19] And the way that we do it, we have recorded interviews. We'll come up with our introductory call, develop a general outline, a general scope. And then we'll have these recorded interviews. We'll transcribe them, and then work on translating that information into a chapter that reads well, that sounds like it's in the author's voice, that actually conveys what we're hoping to accomplish with that chapter. And then we'll send it back to them for review and they say, okay, this sounds great. This is exactly me. Or hold on there, over on page 15, we were talking about such-and-such, that wasn't exactly what I meant, and we'll workshop it, because we want to make sure as much as possible as we get to chapter two and three and four and 10 and 20, and the end of the book, that we're not having to go back and retrace things from the beginning.
[00:16:59] If we write the whole book from scratch, we have one interview and a month later, the whole book is done, it can be really hard to backtrack and correct any of the issues that are there. If we're going chapter by chapter, the scale is a lot more manageable, it's bite size. And it also is really helpful for the writer to get a sense of, oh, okay. I know this particular perspective, or this turn of phrase or this style of delivery that the author, that the client is looking for, and I can incorporate that going forward, rather than proceeding along with, with a type one error from the beginning, going all the way to the end, and then having to deal with it a hundred times rather than a couple of times in the first few chapters.
[00:17:36] Matty: Yeah. It's reminding me of the experience I just had with the audio book of one of my novels. And fortunately, one of the very early chapters had almost all the characters in it talking on a Zoom call, in fact, and it was great because the audio book narrator could just do that one chapter and then send it to me and say, okay, here's pretty much everybody. Let me know if you want any changes. And similar kind of thing, if you start with a sample that's going to represent the different types of things that are included in the project, that's probably a good way to start out.
[00:18:09] Rob: That writing process will happen, and then we'll actually go through, for Archangel Ink, the rest of the scope of service. So we'll have another editor working on it, doing the line editing, doing the copy editing, in some cases, maybe even a party doing the proofreading at the end. Because we want to make sure that everything is really tight and crisp.
[00:18:24] And in that first stage where we're focusing on the writing, obviously we want it to be good. We want it to sound like you, we want to get the outline of what's there onto the page. But we're not worried about crossing all of the T's and dotting our I's We liken it to building a house. We want that foundation. We want the walls to be there. We want the roof to be there. We want it all to be sound. We're not necessarily thinking at that stage about the interior design and what paintings we're going to put on the wall once everything is painted and taken care of.
[00:18:48] All of that happens in sequence, and there may be other processes out there. I can just speak to our own. But because of that, and because of that emphasis on the detail and quality that we really try to aspire toward, it's going to take, in many cases, eight months to a year. I think that's a reasonable turnaround to anticipate.
[00:19:05] Matty: I would think that a possible red flag for avoiding the bad players would be if somebody wants the whole payment upfront or a big payment upfront, as opposed to, we’re going to do the research portion, we're going to do the outlining portion or whatever, and there are going to be milestones along the way, and you'll make a payment as you reach those milestones. Is that true in the ghostwriting world?
[00:19:26] Rob: Yeah. I think that's pretty typical. For us, we do have a payment plan set up for almost all of our projects. And so we'll stagger it out. One thing I will say from the provider standpoint is sometimes there are delays that don't have to do with us. So there could be the client gets busy at work and all of a sudden, they drop off the map for three months, you know, we still have our process going. Everything is moving forward. And we're careful about our service agreement and how we word it and late payments and anything like that.
[00:19:52] But yeah, I do think it's reasonable to have different benchmarks, that have milestones, to have payment plans in place. I don't think it would be fair or reasonable, for example, for Scribe Media to say, okay, cut us a check for 120 grand and we promise we'll get to your book at some point.
[00:20:05] I think that would alarm most people, and for due cause. So have transparency. Discuss that with your provider, if you do end up going the ghostwriting route. Try to understand that for us, we have our structure in place and we're happy to answer your questions. And, in some cases, if we need to make some alternative arrangements where they say, hey, I'm concerned about A, B, and C, can we consider something else? We're always happy to discuss that and figure out if we can come up with a workable solution.
[00:20:27] And we're also happy to say, hey, this is just kind of what we need. These are our terms. If this doesn't work for you, that's fine. No hard feelings. We're not hard salespeople. And we have our integrity to back us up. But I recognize that people have different needs as well. And we’re happy to figure out if we can come to a good place together.
[00:20:43] Matty: The last question I wanted to ask you is when I'm also going to ask Mikal. So I want to get both the perspective from the person who's managing these engagements and the perspective of the person who's executing the engagement. And that is what tips do you have for people who are engaging a ghostwriter to make the experience as optimal as possible for both parties.
[00:21:02] Rob: Yep. So the first thing, most important thing I would say is figure out what your goal is with your book. What are you trying to accomplish? If you go in with a north star, with a guiding light and a sense of, hey, I have Y revenue in sales every year. I own this business. I'd like to get to Z revenue in sales and this book is my avenue to do that, it makes it a lot easier to assess, after the fact, whether you've accomplished your goal and also during the process, whether you're working toward that goal. Continually reach back and figure out, is this helping me to accomplish my one big goal or my two big goals? Then that makes the writing experience easier, the editing process easier, the motivation portion easier because you've identified what it is that you're trying to do. And so when it feels like drudgery and you just don't want to go over review the next chapter and you're like, wait, okay. I remember I invested in this because I had this vision, this something, then, it's easier to do that.
[00:21:49] The second thing I would say again, going back to the early stages, vet your provider, make sure it feels like a good fit. If you have a good, free flowing, easy conversation from the outset, and the person is vibing with you, they understand what you're getting at. Maybe they're not an expert in your subject matter. In most cases, they're probably not. But if they are asking intelligent questions, if they're able to follow up with good responses and imagine different scenarios that can help put you at ease, that's really helpful.
[00:22:16] Make sure that your working relationship is going to be something that you feel good about. And again, you don't necessarily have to be best friends with your writer. Obviously, we love forming relationships. That's a big part of why we do what we do at Archangel Ink anyway.
[00:22:27] We don't all have to be super chummy, but we have to have a good professional working relationship and be able to say, okay, I pick up what you're throwing down. You know, I grok it. Let's move forward. And, so if you can get those couple of things in place, as well as the logistical issues of budget, timing, scope of service, what your expectations are as the client, what their expectations are as the provider.
[00:22:47] What you do in different scenarios. If a particular benchmark isn't met, whether on your end or their end, get clear about all of that, those technical issues. Then I think that the stage is set for success. If you ignore that, if you go in blindly, if you think, wow, this person seems okay, let's just do it. Or there's the cheapest one, let's just do it, the likelihood that you're going to run into something that throws you for a loop I think increases.
[00:23:07] Matty: Great. Well, Rob, thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing that perspective from the managing of the engagement perspective.
[00:23:14] Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and Archangel Ink services online.
[00:23:20] Rob: Yeah, absolutely. So ArchangelInk.com. And you can find all of our social media on there. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram. We're on Twitter. We have a YouTube channel, and you can find all of that on our website, but our website is the best way to reach us.
[00:23:37] We do offer a free initial consultation. If you think you might want to work with us on ghostwriting or anything else, or if you just have some questions, you know, hey, I'm not really interested in working with a provider at this time, but I’ve read some of your free resources, which again are on our website, and I just had a couple of questions. Would you mind getting on the phone for 20 minutes and chatting with me and maybe pointing me in some helpful directions, we're happy to do that too. That's the hub. That's the way to reach out to us. And if there's anything we can do to help any of your listeners and viewers out there, we're very happy to.
[00:24:05] Matty: Excellent. And, listeners, please stay tuned because right after this, you're going to be hearing from Mikal Keefer discussing being a ghostwriter. So, Rob, thank you again.
[00:24:14] Rob: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:46] And then the writer would kind of take it and run from there. And it was almost a way for the writer to flex their creative muscles and to be assigned a research project, a longer length research project, not just a 15 pager for your college intro class or something, but a full-length research project. Put something together. Let's see what you come up with. And then it can be revised and workshopped afterward, but it was very writer driven rather than client driven.
[00:04:12] Matty: Do you ever have to vet your clients to make sure that you don't have someone who's hiring you to write an academic paper that they're then going to pass off as their own?
[00:04:22] Rob: Knock on wood, we have not. We are very careful to vet our clients though these days, particularly because the custom writing projects that we really focus on the customer ghostwriting, are really thought leader level material. And there's a lot of close interaction that happens. And we're working with somebody in many cases for six months, 12 months, even longer. And the vetting process that we have, we want to make sure that they understand really well what we can offer, what the scope of our service is, and that they have very clear expectations. We have very clear expectations from them as well. What it is that they're hoping to accomplish from this book so that we can go in, both parties, eyes wide open and make sure that it's going to be a good collaboration. You know, the dollar amount really doesn't matter if you have to spend months and months with another person who you just don't jive with on a professional working relationship level.
[00:05:07] And so we're really careful about that. And maybe just because that's the way that we work, we, knock wood, haven't been in a position where we’re tasked with accidentally writing somebody's master's thesis.
[00:05:18] Matty: What are the different circumstances that you've encountered that lead people to be seeking a ghostwriter?
[00:05:24] Rob: A couple of different instances. The most common I would say is they have some area of expertise that they want to bring to the world. What Archangel Ink tends to focus on are the published professionals, the people who wants to use their book to build their brand, to increase sales and so forth.
[00:05:42] For example, we've worked with physicians before, with exercise coaches, with people in the health and nutrition arena. And their goal is, they have something that they do that they're really good at, and they want to translate that into something digestible for the rest of the world. And our aim is to take what's in their head and convey it in a way that somebody just picking up a book, and not necessarily walking into the office or being served on an individual client basis by that other person, would still be able to get something out of it. So I would say that's the most common.
[00:06:12] But you did ask about the other type of writer who maybe they have a really good idea and they're okay as a writer, but they're not totally polished. They maybe need a lot of developmental work. And sometimes that deep developmental editing kind of crosses over into the ghostwriting arena. And we’re not just taking their structure, but actually helping them craft the words and flesh things out in a coherent way.
[00:06:32] So, I would say those are the two primary clienteles that we have when it comes to ghostwriting. Someone who is working on a book but really needs help in a deep, even in some cases more than development basis. And then the folks who they have great ideas. They're not as skilled writer or they just don't have the time. Maybe they're a physician, a busy professional. There's something that they're doing that's really taking up their time and energy and they need somebody to extract that information from them.
[00:06:57] And that's our goal. We try and make it as easy as possible. through recorded interviews. We would come up with an outline and they have the chance to review things kind of piece by piece. So that they can say, yeah, this sounds like me. This is definitely the information that I have in my head. This is what I know. This is what my area focus is. And ideally this is exactly as I would say it. But I'm not the one that's actually having to put finger to keyboard.
[00:07:19] Matty: What kind of goals do customers or clients or authors come to you with? Is it for like a book as a calling card? Is it for monetary benefit? What kind of goals are you seeing among your clients?
[00:07:33] Rob: So a couple of different goals. I would say in general, it is a calling card project. It's something that they want to expand the scope of their business and they see a book as an opportunity to do that. And they have either self-awareness about their own writing limitations or their own time limitations or what have you to say, hey, I know a book is going to be really helpful but I'm not going to be able to do it myself. Let's outsource it, let's bring on some additional help, bring it into the world and, and then use that to grow the business.
[00:08:00] The other type of clientele, which I would say is maybe 10 or 15% of what we do, those people who have an idea, but they really need that almost blend between the developmental and ghostwriting / editing work to happen in order to realize their vision. And in those cases many times, it's not financially based. It's not monetary based. They're not necessarily thinking about the ways that they're going to earn a positive return on that investment. But it's really about, in some cases, investing in themselves, becoming a better writer through that ghostwriting / developmental editing process and helping them maybe position themselves to do the next version, the next in series, as their own independent author. They're using it as sort of an education investment.
[00:08:41] Matty: Have you ever had the circumstance where someone has come to you thinking they need one service, but upon assessment it becomes clear they need another? So I'm thinking of someone who has written something and thinks what they want us to developmental edit when what they really need is somebody to overhaul it to an extent that it would be more like a ghostwriting assignment.
[00:08:59] Rob: Yeah. And that's the most common instance. Most times when people come to us and we end up doing something that's closer to that ghostwriting / developmental blend, some cases they think, okay, I just need a proof. I just need a proof. I mean, you know, we'll go through an assessment. It's like, well, we noticed some of these issues and based on our assessment, this is the scope of what we would recommend and would be looking at. So that does happen.
[00:09:19] And it's tricky. We do our best to be professional and forthright and transparent and work to the highest standards that we're capable of. But we're also one outfit, and we tell people, Hey, we're not hard salespeople. If you think that our assessment is off, if we just don't see the potential that's there, or we don't see the brilliance that's there, no hard feelings if you want to go and get a second and third and fifth opinion from other providers, other editors, other potential ghostwriting collaborators to find out if it's a good fit.
[00:09:42] We're fortunate and blessed really to have clients that really want to work with us. And again, part of that is, we focus on quality rather than quantity and making sure that the fit as much as possible is really strong and really present, so that both we as the provider, and they as the client feel like this is going to be a fruitful time over the next several months or potentially year plus that we're going to be working together.
[00:10:06] Matty: If someone is listening to this and they're recognizing their own need in one of these categories, a developmental edit / ghostwriter or they just don't have the time, what are some tips that you would offer as they look for and then assess ghostwriting services? How would they find the pool of candidates to begin with?
[00:10:24] Rob: One, I would say, do your research, figure out what parties are reputable. Archangel Ink is fortunate to be a partner member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. I can speak from my personal experience that they have a very thorough vetting process when we were first applying. It's not just a matter of, okay, send us a PayPal payment and you're good and you're on our list. They actually have somebody to review, ask questions about the scope of what we do, the character of what we do, the pricing that we have, and make sure that we're actually acting with integrity. And so an outside, independent watchdog agency like ALLi I think is a good place to go to for finding reputable providers.
[00:10:57] Another good recommendation is if you have author friends, if you have people in author communities, ask for personal recommendations. In many cases the recommendations that you receive are not going to be affiliate recommendations. If you're asking them a Facebook group, they're not going to be financially motivated necessarily. And so there's a better likelihood that you'll have unbiased information.
[00:11:16] And particularly if you're writing in a certain type of genre and you're involved in reader groups or writer groups based on that, then you might be more likely to find editors or providers who specialize in that particular genre by speaking to other people in your cohort. So those would be some recommendations for finding and vetting the right sorts of parties.
[00:11:34] One thing I will mention as well, there may be good experiences and opportunities to find people on places like Fiverr and Upwork, but unfortunately, we have encountered others, I’m thinking of one client in particular who came to us after they had spent a relatively small amount of money on getting their project ghostwritten. We ran it through basic plagiarism software and said, hey, there's entire, almost like half chapters that are pulled more or less directly from other sources, like this is not going to pass muster and out of our professional integrity, we want to let you know that we found this. We obviously can't tell you what to do or not do going forward, but I want to bring this to your attention.
[00:12:08] And my experience with providers in general is in many cases, you get what you pay for. If you find a deal that sounds too good to be true, you know, somebody who's going to write your whole great American novel for $150 and have it done for you in a week, probably not going to be the quality that you're hoping for. Particularly for something like ghostwriting, it's a very time and labor-intensive process and the price is fairly significant.
[00:12:32] Just be aware of going into it that if you decide that this is a good fit for you, then you may want to prepare yourself for the investment that's involved and make sure that whoever you're working with is going to be quality, professional work and not just outsource it to somebody who is going to put it together and maybe pull paragraphs and chapters whole cloth from wherever else just to meet a deadline and make a couple of bucks.
[00:12:54] Matty: I really liked the recommendation for ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors, because that's one that I use. I've used them, for example, to vet potential guests for the podcast. So if somebody approaches me and I really don't know anything about them, I've gotten in touch with ALLi.
[00:13:06] The other resource would be Writer Beware, that's affiliated with Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but that you can use even if you're not a member of that organization. And I'll put a link to that resource as well in the show notes.
[00:13:19] So you've mentioned the price a few times. Can you give any guidance to someone who might be looking for a ghostwriting service about what they should consider? How can they assess whether a price they may be quoted is valid? Is it like plumbing where you get three quotes and then you pick the middle one?
[00:13:37] Rob: Yeah. I think it depends. For us, I would say that we’re probably right in line with what high level ghostwriters will provide. One of the similar services that existed shortly after Archangel Ink was formed was Book in a Box. Now they're Scribe Media. And their ghostwriting projects start at a six-figure investment. And I think it's $120,000 plus.
[00:13:58] And they're very explicit about the sort of clientele that they're looking for. You know, people who are many cases CEOs or business owners and professionals and so forth and they really want everything done for them. Archangel Ink operates in a similar sort of basis. Not quite at that same dollar figure. I do think it's probably worthwhile to look around, to do your research. Check on ALLi, see what providers offer ghostwriting services. And even if just for yourself, make up a spreadsheet and see, okay, this is going to start out at X number of dollars and go up to Y number of dollars. And, and then that gives you at least some grounding when you're talking with and interviewing your candidates.
[00:14:32] And for us, we're very careful about vetting because we want to make sure that the fit is really strong, and I think that should be important for you as a client as well. I wouldn't necessarily go with the least expensive, without respect to the feel, the vibe that you get and the level of shared values and ease of communication and all of that.
[00:14:48] And it's okay, it's totally appropriate, to ask for some time. Obviously, each provider has different things, different introductions that they offer. We offer a free introductory call, and we make ourselves available via email and in some cases, especially for a bigger project, if we have to get on a subsequent call after that, just to go over things, make sure everybody feels really good about it, we're happy to do that.
[00:15:06] And, there may be other providers as well. I would just encourage folks to make sure that the fit is really strong. In Archangel Ink's own business dealings, I've found that, what’s the expression, buy once cry once. Don’t go for the cheapest option and then cause yourself stress and hardship down the line.
[00:15:22] Sometimes it makes sense to invest in that quality. Okay, yeah, it's going to be an investment and it's going to be something that hurts a little bit maybe if you didn't have the expectation of paying whatever amount, but if the experience and the final product ends up being a lot stronger than it would otherwise, in many cases, that's the route to go. At least that's our professional experience and my recommendation as well. Just make sure that you're satisfied with what you're hearing and on the same page, because you're going to be working with your ghostwriter for a really long time potentially. Make sure that you're not going in with reservations and off feelings.
[00:15:55] Matty: What is the scope of or the variability of time that an engagement can last?
[00:16:02] Rob: It depends. I would say that for us, our ghostwriting process, we budget about a year. In some cases it will finish in eight to 10 months or so, but for the writing portion, depending on the availability of the author, as well as the writer that we're working with, the writing process might take four to six months.
[00:16:19] And the way that we do it, we have recorded interviews. We'll come up with our introductory call, develop a general outline, a general scope. And then we'll have these recorded interviews. We'll transcribe them, and then work on translating that information into a chapter that reads well, that sounds like it's in the author's voice, that actually conveys what we're hoping to accomplish with that chapter. And then we'll send it back to them for review and they say, okay, this sounds great. This is exactly me. Or hold on there, over on page 15, we were talking about such-and-such, that wasn't exactly what I meant, and we'll workshop it, because we want to make sure as much as possible as we get to chapter two and three and four and 10 and 20, and the end of the book, that we're not having to go back and retrace things from the beginning.
[00:16:59] If we write the whole book from scratch, we have one interview and a month later, the whole book is done, it can be really hard to backtrack and correct any of the issues that are there. If we're going chapter by chapter, the scale is a lot more manageable, it's bite size. And it also is really helpful for the writer to get a sense of, oh, okay. I know this particular perspective, or this turn of phrase or this style of delivery that the author, that the client is looking for, and I can incorporate that going forward, rather than proceeding along with, with a type one error from the beginning, going all the way to the end, and then having to deal with it a hundred times rather than a couple of times in the first few chapters.
[00:17:36] Matty: Yeah. It's reminding me of the experience I just had with the audio book of one of my novels. And fortunately, one of the very early chapters had almost all the characters in it talking on a Zoom call, in fact, and it was great because the audio book narrator could just do that one chapter and then send it to me and say, okay, here's pretty much everybody. Let me know if you want any changes. And similar kind of thing, if you start with a sample that's going to represent the different types of things that are included in the project, that's probably a good way to start out.
[00:18:09] Rob: That writing process will happen, and then we'll actually go through, for Archangel Ink, the rest of the scope of service. So we'll have another editor working on it, doing the line editing, doing the copy editing, in some cases, maybe even a party doing the proofreading at the end. Because we want to make sure that everything is really tight and crisp.
[00:18:24] And in that first stage where we're focusing on the writing, obviously we want it to be good. We want it to sound like you, we want to get the outline of what's there onto the page. But we're not worried about crossing all of the T's and dotting our I's We liken it to building a house. We want that foundation. We want the walls to be there. We want the roof to be there. We want it all to be sound. We're not necessarily thinking at that stage about the interior design and what paintings we're going to put on the wall once everything is painted and taken care of.
[00:18:48] All of that happens in sequence, and there may be other processes out there. I can just speak to our own. But because of that, and because of that emphasis on the detail and quality that we really try to aspire toward, it's going to take, in many cases, eight months to a year. I think that's a reasonable turnaround to anticipate.
[00:19:05] Matty: I would think that a possible red flag for avoiding the bad players would be if somebody wants the whole payment upfront or a big payment upfront, as opposed to, we’re going to do the research portion, we're going to do the outlining portion or whatever, and there are going to be milestones along the way, and you'll make a payment as you reach those milestones. Is that true in the ghostwriting world?
[00:19:26] Rob: Yeah. I think that's pretty typical. For us, we do have a payment plan set up for almost all of our projects. And so we'll stagger it out. One thing I will say from the provider standpoint is sometimes there are delays that don't have to do with us. So there could be the client gets busy at work and all of a sudden, they drop off the map for three months, you know, we still have our process going. Everything is moving forward. And we're careful about our service agreement and how we word it and late payments and anything like that.
[00:19:52] But yeah, I do think it's reasonable to have different benchmarks, that have milestones, to have payment plans in place. I don't think it would be fair or reasonable, for example, for Scribe Media to say, okay, cut us a check for 120 grand and we promise we'll get to your book at some point.
[00:20:05] I think that would alarm most people, and for due cause. So have transparency. Discuss that with your provider, if you do end up going the ghostwriting route. Try to understand that for us, we have our structure in place and we're happy to answer your questions. And, in some cases, if we need to make some alternative arrangements where they say, hey, I'm concerned about A, B, and C, can we consider something else? We're always happy to discuss that and figure out if we can come up with a workable solution.
[00:20:27] And we're also happy to say, hey, this is just kind of what we need. These are our terms. If this doesn't work for you, that's fine. No hard feelings. We're not hard salespeople. And we have our integrity to back us up. But I recognize that people have different needs as well. And we’re happy to figure out if we can come to a good place together.
[00:20:43] Matty: The last question I wanted to ask you is when I'm also going to ask Mikal. So I want to get both the perspective from the person who's managing these engagements and the perspective of the person who's executing the engagement. And that is what tips do you have for people who are engaging a ghostwriter to make the experience as optimal as possible for both parties.
[00:21:02] Rob: Yep. So the first thing, most important thing I would say is figure out what your goal is with your book. What are you trying to accomplish? If you go in with a north star, with a guiding light and a sense of, hey, I have Y revenue in sales every year. I own this business. I'd like to get to Z revenue in sales and this book is my avenue to do that, it makes it a lot easier to assess, after the fact, whether you've accomplished your goal and also during the process, whether you're working toward that goal. Continually reach back and figure out, is this helping me to accomplish my one big goal or my two big goals? Then that makes the writing experience easier, the editing process easier, the motivation portion easier because you've identified what it is that you're trying to do. And so when it feels like drudgery and you just don't want to go over review the next chapter and you're like, wait, okay. I remember I invested in this because I had this vision, this something, then, it's easier to do that.
[00:21:49] The second thing I would say again, going back to the early stages, vet your provider, make sure it feels like a good fit. If you have a good, free flowing, easy conversation from the outset, and the person is vibing with you, they understand what you're getting at. Maybe they're not an expert in your subject matter. In most cases, they're probably not. But if they are asking intelligent questions, if they're able to follow up with good responses and imagine different scenarios that can help put you at ease, that's really helpful.
[00:22:16] Make sure that your working relationship is going to be something that you feel good about. And again, you don't necessarily have to be best friends with your writer. Obviously, we love forming relationships. That's a big part of why we do what we do at Archangel Ink anyway.
[00:22:27] We don't all have to be super chummy, but we have to have a good professional working relationship and be able to say, okay, I pick up what you're throwing down. You know, I grok it. Let's move forward. And, so if you can get those couple of things in place, as well as the logistical issues of budget, timing, scope of service, what your expectations are as the client, what their expectations are as the provider.
[00:22:47] What you do in different scenarios. If a particular benchmark isn't met, whether on your end or their end, get clear about all of that, those technical issues. Then I think that the stage is set for success. If you ignore that, if you go in blindly, if you think, wow, this person seems okay, let's just do it. Or there's the cheapest one, let's just do it, the likelihood that you're going to run into something that throws you for a loop I think increases.
[00:23:07] Matty: Great. Well, Rob, thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing that perspective from the managing of the engagement perspective.
[00:23:14] Please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and Archangel Ink services online.
[00:23:20] Rob: Yeah, absolutely. So ArchangelInk.com. And you can find all of our social media on there. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram. We're on Twitter. We have a YouTube channel, and you can find all of that on our website, but our website is the best way to reach us.
[00:23:37] We do offer a free initial consultation. If you think you might want to work with us on ghostwriting or anything else, or if you just have some questions, you know, hey, I'm not really interested in working with a provider at this time, but I’ve read some of your free resources, which again are on our website, and I just had a couple of questions. Would you mind getting on the phone for 20 minutes and chatting with me and maybe pointing me in some helpful directions, we're happy to do that too. That's the hub. That's the way to reach out to us. And if there's anything we can do to help any of your listeners and viewers out there, we're very happy to.
[00:24:05] Matty: Excellent. And, listeners, please stay tuned because right after this, you're going to be hearing from Mikal Keefer discussing being a ghostwriter. So, Rob, thank you again.
[00:24:14] Rob: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Part 2 - Mikal Keefer on Being a Ghostwriter
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to part two of The Indy Author Podcast on ghostwriting and for this segment, my guest is Mikal Keefer. Hey, Mikal, how are you doing?
[00:00:08] Mikal: Doing well. Thank you, Matty.
[00:00:10] Matty: To give our listeners a little bit of an introduction for you: Mikal Keefer is a freelance author, who's published more than 35 books and ghosted half dozen more. He's a veteran copywriter, crafting advertising and brand collateral for dozens of brands and hundreds of product launches. Mikal has served as an executive editor at a publishing house, written hundreds of video and audio scripts, developed curricula, and for one glorious day was hired to write fortune cookies.
[00:00:34] So we're going to be talking with Mikal about being a ghostwriter, but I had to follow up on the fortune cookie gig. So what's the story behind the fortune cookie gig.
[00:00:44] Mikal: You know, when you're a freelancer, pretty much you say yes to pretty much anything that doesn't actually violate the law or your personal beliefs. And in this case, it was a really easy job because I couldn't rely on my ancient heritage, the wise teachings passed to me, being a German guy from the Midwest. But I went to the book of Proverbs, which is Eastern wisdom in the Bible, and good news for me at least as far as I can tell it's no currently no lawyer involved. It's all been around for a couple thousand years. So it's copyright free. The hardest part was coming up with the combinations of, these are your lucky numbers.
[00:01:25] Matty: Were they expecting sort of serious fortunes?
[00:01:28] Mikal: Well, I threw a few things in. Yeah, they were. Ponder this while you're paying your bill kind of thing. What would people really want with a fortune cookie is either a really nice pithy piece of advice, something they could turn into a meme, or something that they can read and show their friends: Really? I'm going to be a ballerina? Who wrote these?
[00:01:47] Matty: It's very rarely a fortune though. It's almost always advice cookies.
[00:01:51] Mikal: Always advice cookies ever been completely misnamed.
[00:01:54] Matty: Yep. And my favorite one is ignore this cookie. I think I still have the little piece of paper that I got in one that said, ignore this cookie.
[00:02:02] Mikal: Where was that one when I needed it? I needed that one. That's good.
[00:02:05] Matty: I also can't pass up the opportunity to interject that, depending on which Bible you were using, if it was the King James Bible, it actually is under a Royal copyright.
[00:02:15] Mikal: Oh yes. No, I reframed everything. There's a Royal copyright. King James was very thorough as is every other translation. But the Mikal Keefer version of that is available and I leaned heavily that way. Yes.
[00:02:30] Matty: I was very surprised to hear that. I had Kelley Way on talking about how to use content legally and we got on to biblical quotes and she had that little gem of wisdom. So I thought that was interesting.
[00:02:39] Mikal: Yeah. any time a king has done anything, you want to make sure that the military is not associated with the backend of it? That's good not to break that law.
[00:02:46] Matty: I think that's good advice. You're obviously well equipped to be writing advice cookies.
[00:02:51] Mikal: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:02:53] Matty: So now that we understand the fortune cookie gig, how did you get into the ghostwriting gig? ...
[00:00:08] Mikal: Doing well. Thank you, Matty.
[00:00:10] Matty: To give our listeners a little bit of an introduction for you: Mikal Keefer is a freelance author, who's published more than 35 books and ghosted half dozen more. He's a veteran copywriter, crafting advertising and brand collateral for dozens of brands and hundreds of product launches. Mikal has served as an executive editor at a publishing house, written hundreds of video and audio scripts, developed curricula, and for one glorious day was hired to write fortune cookies.
[00:00:34] So we're going to be talking with Mikal about being a ghostwriter, but I had to follow up on the fortune cookie gig. So what's the story behind the fortune cookie gig.
[00:00:44] Mikal: You know, when you're a freelancer, pretty much you say yes to pretty much anything that doesn't actually violate the law or your personal beliefs. And in this case, it was a really easy job because I couldn't rely on my ancient heritage, the wise teachings passed to me, being a German guy from the Midwest. But I went to the book of Proverbs, which is Eastern wisdom in the Bible, and good news for me at least as far as I can tell it's no currently no lawyer involved. It's all been around for a couple thousand years. So it's copyright free. The hardest part was coming up with the combinations of, these are your lucky numbers.
[00:01:25] Matty: Were they expecting sort of serious fortunes?
[00:01:28] Mikal: Well, I threw a few things in. Yeah, they were. Ponder this while you're paying your bill kind of thing. What would people really want with a fortune cookie is either a really nice pithy piece of advice, something they could turn into a meme, or something that they can read and show their friends: Really? I'm going to be a ballerina? Who wrote these?
[00:01:47] Matty: It's very rarely a fortune though. It's almost always advice cookies.
[00:01:51] Mikal: Always advice cookies ever been completely misnamed.
[00:01:54] Matty: Yep. And my favorite one is ignore this cookie. I think I still have the little piece of paper that I got in one that said, ignore this cookie.
[00:02:02] Mikal: Where was that one when I needed it? I needed that one. That's good.
[00:02:05] Matty: I also can't pass up the opportunity to interject that, depending on which Bible you were using, if it was the King James Bible, it actually is under a Royal copyright.
[00:02:15] Mikal: Oh yes. No, I reframed everything. There's a Royal copyright. King James was very thorough as is every other translation. But the Mikal Keefer version of that is available and I leaned heavily that way. Yes.
[00:02:30] Matty: I was very surprised to hear that. I had Kelley Way on talking about how to use content legally and we got on to biblical quotes and she had that little gem of wisdom. So I thought that was interesting.
[00:02:39] Mikal: Yeah. any time a king has done anything, you want to make sure that the military is not associated with the backend of it? That's good not to break that law.
[00:02:46] Matty: I think that's good advice. You're obviously well equipped to be writing advice cookies.
[00:02:51] Mikal: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:02:53] Matty: So now that we understand the fortune cookie gig, how did you get into the ghostwriting gig? ...
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[00:02:59] Mikal: Yeah, backed into it by accident. I was working as an editor, an acquisitions editor at a publishing house, and things had changed. There was a time, and as you can tell I've been doing this for a while, but there was a time that it didn't really matter if you had a big platform. The publishers assumed that you probably weren't going to be moving many books yourself. And so it wasn't an issue that somebody didn't have 10,000 followers here or 50,000 followers there. And we were looking mostly for people who were influential in the field.
[00:03:30] And I would go to conferences that were in areas that we were servicing, that niche that we were serving other books into. And I would be running up and down the hallways, seeing how many people were at each of those little breakout sessions. And then just haunt, just basically, it's not really stalking until they filed a police report, getting to the speakers who were well-known and working the circuit, checking to see what was on their merch table, finding out what they published or hadn't published.
[00:04:03] And the unicorns we were looking for were people who had something to say, were relatively well known, but had not published. And I came across a guy, as a ghostwriter I feel ethically obligated not to reveal whoever is. Because if they do, that's fine. If they don't, but let's call this guy Larry, cause that's not his name.
[00:04:26] And Larry was well known. There are a couple of thousand people at all these conferences he's speaking to. And I approached him and said, have you ever thought about doing a book because you actually have some things to say? But I want to make sure there's a book in you. Would you be willing to at least talk to me about it?
[00:04:41] So we got together. Oh, a couple of times by phone and once in person, and I got an outline together for him and we worked together on it and getting ready to turn it over to somebody. And when the day came to do that, my boss came to me and said, the deal's kind of falling apart. 'Oh, please no.' Because he doesn't want to work with anybody but you. He wants you to be his ghostwriter.
[00:05:10] I can't think of a bigger conflict of interest than an acquisitions editor assigning himself a book. But that guy, he made that as the rule. And so I didn't get paid. I was being paid by the publisher at that time to come show up for work every day. I got reassigned to work creating this book.
[00:05:31] And I loved it. And part of it was, he was such a sweet guy, and such a funny guy and southerners have a way of speaking that I'm just delighted by. He would sometimes say things and I would go, I know what all the words are. I have no idea what you mean by those words. Here's an example. I asked him early on about the process, how was it going, us working together? He said, oh, I'm happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.
[00:06:00] Matty: Okay. I lived in Alabama, and I have no idea what that means.
[00:06:03] Mikal: Okay. All right. Well, I hear 'dead’, and I figure everything after that's kind of, eh, who cares? And he goes, no, that means I'm happy. How did anyone come up with that?
[00:06:15] But the book did well, and he came back, and I did another book for him. And then after that, once you've written a few books and people know you've ghosted books and they haven't heard of any problems arising out of that, because there can be some that come up, then you have an opportunity to do some more.
[00:06:31] I guess the question would be, I would be asking if I were looking to find somebody to ghost for, what am I bringing to the table that they can't do for themselves. And oftentimes people who are great public speakers are terrible writers. It's people who are good editors are terrible writers. And those are all separate sets of skills. And if you're lucky you get cross pollinated and you have an opportunity to work in several of those kinds of arenas. That's going to be helpful.
[00:06:59] So first thing I would do if I were going to go to look is, I would have already ghosted something for somebody. And that's one of those catch 22s. It doesn't have to be a book. That's the thing that I would tell your listeners. If you go to church, write the letter from the pastor if there's one in the newsletter, if they still do a newsletter or have a website. Go to some local businesses, do the same thing there.
[00:07:23] There's a way of ghostwriting called copywriting. And I had the good fortune to spend five or six years managing a copy team for a publisher. And I was a working copywriter, but I also met, and we worked on figuring out brands and figuring out the voice and the tone. And copywriting can teach you to be a chameleon writer. If you do it for very long, you'll be writing a letter for this CEO or the introduction to that public report from somebody within the company. That's ghost-writing. It doesn't have to be a book.
[00:07:58] And now that really the smarter model for an awful lot of people is self-publishing, and you're never really going to have to go sell a mainline publisher, then you just need to be able to take that person's voice, cover the material they want, and deliver what they're looking for.
[00:08:16] Sometimes people want nothing more than their memoirs. Hey, I just want my grandkids to know me, and I can't tweet. Sometimes it's, I'm one of 75 chiropractors within this zip code and I need to show that I have some expertise. And so I want a book that I can go around and talk to the Kiwanis Club and just hand out. Those are very different goals. And so finding a person is part of it, finding out what they need from you is the second part. And that takes some listening.
[00:08:49] Matty: I'm very curious about understanding how you achieve that, those different voices. And I think it would be useful to understand what books you have out under your own name. Do you want to give a little bit of background on that?
[00:09:00] Mikal: Yeah. I've been doing a long time, you’ll find most of them as I have in a discount bin, last chance eBay things. One I have out now that, I have worked mostly in the Christian marketplace, writing books for the Christian audience, but one that's out now that's doing pretty well. It's called NOTES FROM JESUS and it's for early readers.
[00:09:22] You're never supposed to read your reviews and I made the mistake of doing that. So I know everything is wrong about it and everything that's right about it. And I also know that it is number one in its category. And its category, if something like Christian Children's Faith Fiction, which is sort of like being the best pitcher in the American League who's left-handed has six vowels in his name, and he used to live in Bolivia. You know, if you get the right combination of things, you'll be first in your category too.
[00:10:00] Matty: Yeah, that's the recommendation to get that orange banner on Amazon is niche down as much as possible.
[00:10:06] Mikal: So I look at it two or three times a day because I know it will be gone in a week. You just never know.
[00:10:12] Matty: So I'm guessing you're not ghostwriting for 'young reader Christian Fiction,' that category?
[00:10:18] Mikal: No, that was under my own name.
[00:10:21] Matty: So give an example of a book that you've written. Are most of the books that you've ghostwritten within the same genre or across different genres?
[00:10:29] Mikal: Yeah, and I think this is a genre that your listeners would want to take a look at because a lot of people feel they have something to say there: leadership. And that leadership principles are pretty much transferable everywhere. What's nice about that is most of the people who are asking for that book, as far as ghosted for me, they actually have some kind of content.
[00:10:49] There are others, and I would advise you, your listeners, and myself to run away as quickly as possible if they approach you, of people going through this really cool thing happened and I got this great story and all you have to do is write it up and it will split the money. Have you had that happen to you?
[00:11:10] Matty: I have had the people who come up and say, I have an idea for a murder mystery. Like I have lots of ideas for murder mysteries. It's putting them on the page that's the problem.
[00:11:20] Mikal: Yeah. Which is what you write. And it's a little more complicated to really leap over that whole writing a thing. Leadership is one, and how to books, believe it or not, there are people who, again, if a realtor approaches you, what they really want is 95% of the content of this book, and I would make it 70 pages at most, because it's really a big calling card, more than anything else, is going to be stuff that every realtor knows.
[00:11:48] But you're also going to have an introduction from that person in that person's voice. And it'd be nice to have a couple of specific stories about them or of successes they've had in their career as a realtor sprinkled throughout. So again, that's a type of a ghostwriting book where it's really kind of copywriting and ghosting at the same time.
[00:12:10] Matty: So if somebody comes to you, they are the realtor who wants that book as a calling card, what does that engagement generally look like?
[00:12:20] Mikal: Generally, it looks like a conversation about whether or not they really have a book or they have an article. And that's a huge difference. This is also something that happens with public speakers. They feel they have a world of content because they're out there talking to people six times a month, but they're saying it's a stump speech. And so they have 45 minutes’ worth of material with a different introduction and a different joke. And that's an article, that is not a book.
[00:12:49] So the engagement is, picture two dogs getting together and sniffing each other. Do I feel like we can work together? Is this person wanting to be involved or is it just, hey, just write something up and I'll say I did it? You know?
[00:13:05] So it's managing those expectations. How are we going to communicate? How are we going to know when it's done? What is it that you're expecting as the person coming to me, realtor or a person with a life story or somebody that needs their life story popped down for the grandkids?
[00:13:21] Let's make sure we understand, when we are talking about a book, what we mean by that book. How long do you picture being before you feel like it's worth doing? So it's the place where I switched back into being an acquisitions editor. All those logistical things that if you can get them talked about upfront, you can find the snag and straighten it out as you go. If not, you will find it. It just will be at a terrible time.
[00:13:48] Matty: It does seem as if the effort and the way the engagement plays out would be quite different between the scenario where there's the real estate agent, and there's probably research you can do to fill in some of that with some stories that reflect their personality and their personal brand, as opposed to a memoir. Like, that's got to be a huge difference in time investment, right?
[00:14:13] Mikal: It's a huge difference in time and it behooves you to record it and get it transcribed. So that you've got the language and the feel of how they speak.
[00:14:23] For instance, you said you're from Alabama?
[00:14:25] Matty: I lived there when I was very small. I spent most of my life in Pennsylvania.
[00:14:29] Mikal: Okay. Cause you certainly don't sound like you're from Alabama. There are regional differences in language used. There are times when people start talking about their youth that they have almost a completely different way of speaking. And if you hit a hard story and I have sat with people who said, yeah, we want to do this book and we want it to be everything we've learned in our careers over this time. Okay, those are all business principles. But, no, we want it to be personal. I said, well, then let's talk about what's on the table and what's not.
[00:15:05] If you really want it to be personal, the more you say you want that to be true, the more self-revealing you need to be. And the more transparent you need to be. And if I step over a line, please know I'm stepping over it because I'm representing the reader, and I'm curious. You're saying you learned that this is true. I want to know how you know it's true. And not just your thoughts, but where have you seen it? Where have you felt it? You're going to engage people at a completely different level if you're willing to do that, at least occasionally. So it is a much bigger time investment and that means I want more money to write it. Because I'm going to be living in your head for a while. And sometimes that's a scary spot for some of the people I've written for.
[00:15:48] Matty: So how do you make that transition of making it sound like them? Like how do you take on the voice of the person that you're writing for?
[00:15:56] Mikal: Great question. That's what being a copywriter has been helpful because I got to fail so many times. I went to one job, and I was hired as a copywriter. Day two, two, I'm told, you're writing a letter from our CEO, and we need it in 48 hours, or whatever. And I went, I don't even know your CEO. I know who it is. And that little picture here. I don't know anything about the person. That's okay, you can make some stuff up. No, I really can't because if it's not true, eventually is this person going to read it? Cause I've been here not long enough to be secure.
[00:16:33] And in this case I was able to spend a little time with the CEO, discover he was a pilot, and so I said, what's your plane? Describe it a little bit, describe how this feels. And I had my story and I build everything around that kind of a framework. So I think to get the voice, the easiest thing to do is spend time with the person. It's also the most expensive way to do it, because it's time.
[00:16:58] Now, in the fellow's case who was the speaker, he had, oh, probably 10 or 15 CDs of him speaking. So I listened to those. And here's the explanation that has always worked for me. This is my trade secret that I will give you, if you're talking to a client, you ghostwriters. I live in the Rocky Mountains. And I'm at the bottom on them, but if you go up toward the top and you look, you can see peak after peak after peak. And the way I have described what I'm going to do for somebody as a ghostwriter is, you know those things, author, and I refer to them as the author, always, I am never the author because I'm being paid not to be the author, but every one of those peaks are the big things that you want to say. Those matter to you. And my job is to make sure they all get said. They all get said in a way that you don't lose people, and that they make sense moving on through the book, but there's a lot of fill in between and that's what I'm going to be contributing.
[00:18:06] I'll help you say the big stuff but know that it's not all going to sound exactly like you, because I will do my best and we're going to have to go back and forth a little bit, but I'm going to introduce some material that connects those peaks. And we'll talk about it before I do it because I don't want to waste my time or annoy you, but that's what I'm bringing to the table. And for the most part, people go, oh, okay. They care about the peaks. And as long as I've got them, they're happy.
[00:18:37] Matty: Have you encountered a situation where despite excellent metaphors like you just shared, you get into the process and the author is still not mentally prepared for the journey, let's say.
[00:18:52] Mikal: Let me take it back to that meeting I had with the people who wanted to share everything they'd learned. I knew them pretty well. I'd been around them some. I'd read about them. And so they said they wanted to do a business book, essentially, that was personally based. And I told them, a business book, you don't have to get personal. You just share a few stories from your career. it's the stories you've already decided to share with people. You get on a plane, and they ask you what you do. These are the safe stories.
[00:19:21] I said, I know you have one child, and you lost another one. How does that principle about this work in your personal life? How does that work in the business failure you had before the business success you have? And I said, those are the things that are going to really be effective. And they chose to not go there. It was their call and I briefly thought, security will be escorting me out at any moment. I did say, permission to speak freely. I want to check this. I want to know what my parameters are. And the way you find those is you step outside them, and you get slapped back in a little bit. They chose to not go as personally as they thought they would. And I was already into mentally having already got that thing set up.
[00:20:16] So that was a situation where I got a little ahead of myself and I had to just throw all that out and start over again. It turned out to be a pretty bland book by the way. But it accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. They're paying for it. I'm there to serve them.
[00:20:32] Matty: Do you read the reviews of the books you've ghosted?
[00:20:36] Mikal: Never. Never. It's not my story. And normally people or write one-star reviews are not terribly helpful as far as the depth of their analysis. 'This is stupid.' Well, I've got to think that was the cover. I'm not going to learn anything. I don't want to go there.
[00:20:56] I think if it's my stuff that I have an opportunity to revise, yeah, I would answer very differently. If it's somebody else's stuff, there’s nothing I can do about it.
[00:21:07] Matty: So how often are you in a situation where the author is sharing the fact that they had a ghostwriter and sharing your name, or even just admitting they had a ghostwriter?
[00:21:19] Mikal: Boy, I've never been aware that happened.
[00:21:21] Matty: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Mikal: Let me tell you about a time that was just really good fun. It's back to the guy who I originally ghost wrote for. But I'm at a conference he's at the conference speaking, so I was back there to do something else. And so we got together and at that time I was still acquiring things and I said, I want to walk through the displays, there was booth after booth, and I just want you to tell me what you think when you see it, cause you're a practitioner. And he was part of a large organization, had some influence. And I thought this is a great way to kind of walk through this booth with different perspectives.
[00:21:57] Well, everybody knew him. Nobody knew me. But they were coming out of their booth go, hey, would you like to take a look at this? They're giving him all these samples, which he's immediately handing to me like a Sherpa. They're piling up. I'm 6'7". I'm still like this looking over things with my arms down. And I'm thinking, talk about swag, man. People said, I loved your book. I loved your book. Thank you. Thank you. You know, this is going to be, this is the moment that I will somehow come to appreciate someday. I'm still working on that by the way.
[00:22:33] Matty: Well, I would think that that would be one of the biggest downsides of ghostwriting, that I think that one of the exciting moments for any writer is being able to accept any kudos that are sent their way for their work. Is that in fact a downside for you?
[00:22:51] Mikal: It's not for me because I spent so long as a copywriter. When you're writing catalogs and you're writing outbound mail and you're writing websites, you have literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people reading your writing, who do not know it is you. They'll never know it's you. There's no credit on it. And it comes from the company, or it comes from the organization.
[00:23:17] So I think being a copywriter weeds out people who have, well, who have healthy self-esteem, who don't go to prison, and it was a bunch of stuff, but it weeds out some people who feel like they need to have credit for the writing, because you're not going to get credited, and you just learn to live with it.
[00:23:33] The downside, I think of ghostwriting is that you're taking time away from your own writing. You were telling somebody else's story for pay. Now I have friends who refuse to ghostwrite. And the reason they do, they fall into two camps. One is what I just said, hey, look, I'm a writer because I have something to say, and I want to work on my voice and my tone. And I'm about to start a book, next week. And I would expect it'll take me a couple of months and I'm not going to work on any of this stuff over at my table over there during that time because I want to be hustling through this.
[00:24:11] And the trade-off is, you know, we also all know what it's like to write a book or to start down the path of a book and we either can't find a publisher, a conventional publisher, who's going to give us some money or we self-publish, and you hear crickets. So it's a risky either way.
[00:24:27] The second reason that I have had friends who say they will not ghostwrite is they feel it's dishonest. It's not that you're hack because you're writing somebody else's stuff. It's that you're lying about them being a writer. Really? Now they would not feel that way. If the cover said written by so-and-so with Mikal Keefer. That would be okay. But going completely behind the curtain with the wizard means that you're hiding. And that they are out there claiming something that's not true. Well, I don't know what they're going to claim. That's up to them. So those are two downsides, the big one being you're not writing for yourself.
[00:25:05] Matty: It's that scenario where it says so-and-so with so-and-so, and I'm thinking I usually see that with really big-name celebrities, and then they usually have the "with" is usually almost an equally big name, journalist or something like that. Is that also considered a ghostwriting, that kind of scenario?
[00:25:22] Mikal: I don't consider it ghostwriting cause you're not a ghost, or you're a very seeable ghost. That's calling in some help from some big guns. And there are celebrities who write their own books, but there are very few of them.
[00:25:36] Matty: Another question I had is how do you assemble a resume as a ghostwriter that you can share with people?
[00:25:44] Mikal: That's a challenge. Now, I'm in a position where I can point to, look, I can prove to you I can write a book because here are 30 titles if you want to go find them, and here are the last five and you can definitely find those. So we're not talking about whether or not I can write a book. That's established. Whether or not I can ghostwrite a book is a whole different animal, and that you're going to have to take on faith.
[00:26:11] I, on a resume, say if you want details as to who I have ghostwritten for, then I'm happy to share those, but we're not going to do it in print and we're not going to do it until we're talking about a little further down in the conversation than just blasting it out there. And I have at times called a couple of the people I've ghostwritten for and said, in this limited case, is it okay if I tell them that I've written for you and if they want to see those books, they can. And both times I've gotten, sure, yeah, for a one-off, no problem. So people are not unreasonable. It is tricky.
[00:26:50] I think it'd be really tricky, if you wanted to start as a ghostwriter, you'd never really written anything for publication. Boy, they're rolling the dice on you. You're going to have to write one heck of a cover letter to go with that.
[00:27:02] Matty: Is the fact that the books you've written yourself have been largely unlike the books that you've ghostwritten, has that stood in your way at all in terms of pitching yourself as a ghostwriter?
[00:27:14] Mikal: It certainly has. And people that work in any one genre often find it difficult to cross-pollinate. Surprisingly, mystery writers are not among those. I don't know if you're aware of that. People assume if you can write a mystery, you can write anything. It's convoluted and it turns corners and it's got twins and false panels and walls. I don't know what she's drinking or smoking. They figure you can do anything. But if you're writing in the religious market. One, people are a little worried about you and two, they're like, is this person going to come in and try to convert me? Do I have to be worried about this person?
[00:27:54] The second thing is there's a sense sometimes that the Christian Booksellers Association sort of books that sell in Christian bookstores are lesser books than other books. And I don't know if that's true or not true. I just know that that's out there as a belief. Okay, you can write a bestseller and the Christian marketplace, but out here in the real world where we throw some elbows. I've written for politicians and P&G and a bunch of other places. So yeah, I know what the elbows feel like. I'm not worried about them.
[00:28:28] Matty: Were there any other pros or cons of having a ghostwriting career that we haven't hit yet that you wanted to share?
[00:28:35] Mikal: I think the big one is just you're giving up on your own writing. That's a huge cost because for many people, they just struggled to start and they want to get their 500 words a day in and they're working full-time, like I did when I was starting, and they're going to their job, they're raising their kids, and they're carving out those precious few hours to write. Do you really want to use them writing somebody else's story? And you can't use your own voice. Well you can, they don't care, but you still can't use it because you can't point to it. You're not really developing the muscles that you want to strengthen.
[00:29:13] Another pro is you're going to get paid even if it never gets published. You write the contract for half upfront, half of that when you finish writing. What happens after that? I have been paid for books that are not in print. I'm sad because I really liked them. But I also take care of the mortgage for a while.
[00:29:33] Matty: Yeah. Do you have any advice to offer people who are looking for a ghostwriter?
[00:29:41] Mikal: Call me, of course, that'd be my first choice. You know, start with the tallest, if not the best. I think you can go to a number of places online. My advice would be, you're not going to have any trouble finding people who want to ghostwrite your book. Plug in ghostwriter, Google that. Go to the sites. See who's there. Don't just hire somebody. Talk to them first. Because you're going to be, if in fact your book is personal in nature, you're going to be spending a lot of time with this person and I think you should like them. That sounds horrible, except for the part where it's absolutely true. I have talked to people who wanted me to ghostwrite for them, and after spending an hour with them on the phone with, no, I just, my life, there's not enough left of it to spend six months with you. And I'm pretty sure if I'm feeling that way, they're feeling the same way.
[00:30:40] Go find somebody but talk to them first. Ask around if you have any friends who've had a book ghostwritten.
[00:30:47] Matty: How would you know?
[00:30:48] Mikal: Well, not everybody is as circumspect as I am.
[00:30:55] I see it as sort of a code of ethics, which means I could be lying to you completely, you know? Did I mention the Nobel prize? I was in Sweden picking that up. Now you can fact check that. It's just see if you trust the person with your story. It's your story.
[00:31:13] Matty: Well, Mikal, this has been so helpful and so interesting. And at this point I would normally invite people to say where listeners can go to find out more about them online, but you're kind of a low-profile kind of guy.
[00:31:27] Mikal: I'm a low-profile kind of guy. Yeah. That's what they said. You know, we'll relocate you, but we don't want people to find you easily.
[00:31:33] Matty: Well, and the conversation right before yours is going to be Rob talking about matchmaking between clients and ghostwriters. So if people want to find you, then they'll be able to find you through Rob and through Archangel Ink.
[00:31:46] They absolutely could. And Rob and I have talked about that. So I think they will be happy with that end of what happens as well. So yeah, they can find me through Rob.
[00:31:56] Well, thank you again, Mikal. This has been so helpful.
[00:31:58] Mikal: Thank you.
[00:03:30] And I would go to conferences that were in areas that we were servicing, that niche that we were serving other books into. And I would be running up and down the hallways, seeing how many people were at each of those little breakout sessions. And then just haunt, just basically, it's not really stalking until they filed a police report, getting to the speakers who were well-known and working the circuit, checking to see what was on their merch table, finding out what they published or hadn't published.
[00:04:03] And the unicorns we were looking for were people who had something to say, were relatively well known, but had not published. And I came across a guy, as a ghostwriter I feel ethically obligated not to reveal whoever is. Because if they do, that's fine. If they don't, but let's call this guy Larry, cause that's not his name.
[00:04:26] And Larry was well known. There are a couple of thousand people at all these conferences he's speaking to. And I approached him and said, have you ever thought about doing a book because you actually have some things to say? But I want to make sure there's a book in you. Would you be willing to at least talk to me about it?
[00:04:41] So we got together. Oh, a couple of times by phone and once in person, and I got an outline together for him and we worked together on it and getting ready to turn it over to somebody. And when the day came to do that, my boss came to me and said, the deal's kind of falling apart. 'Oh, please no.' Because he doesn't want to work with anybody but you. He wants you to be his ghostwriter.
[00:05:10] I can't think of a bigger conflict of interest than an acquisitions editor assigning himself a book. But that guy, he made that as the rule. And so I didn't get paid. I was being paid by the publisher at that time to come show up for work every day. I got reassigned to work creating this book.
[00:05:31] And I loved it. And part of it was, he was such a sweet guy, and such a funny guy and southerners have a way of speaking that I'm just delighted by. He would sometimes say things and I would go, I know what all the words are. I have no idea what you mean by those words. Here's an example. I asked him early on about the process, how was it going, us working together? He said, oh, I'm happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.
[00:06:00] Matty: Okay. I lived in Alabama, and I have no idea what that means.
[00:06:03] Mikal: Okay. All right. Well, I hear 'dead’, and I figure everything after that's kind of, eh, who cares? And he goes, no, that means I'm happy. How did anyone come up with that?
[00:06:15] But the book did well, and he came back, and I did another book for him. And then after that, once you've written a few books and people know you've ghosted books and they haven't heard of any problems arising out of that, because there can be some that come up, then you have an opportunity to do some more.
[00:06:31] I guess the question would be, I would be asking if I were looking to find somebody to ghost for, what am I bringing to the table that they can't do for themselves. And oftentimes people who are great public speakers are terrible writers. It's people who are good editors are terrible writers. And those are all separate sets of skills. And if you're lucky you get cross pollinated and you have an opportunity to work in several of those kinds of arenas. That's going to be helpful.
[00:06:59] So first thing I would do if I were going to go to look is, I would have already ghosted something for somebody. And that's one of those catch 22s. It doesn't have to be a book. That's the thing that I would tell your listeners. If you go to church, write the letter from the pastor if there's one in the newsletter, if they still do a newsletter or have a website. Go to some local businesses, do the same thing there.
[00:07:23] There's a way of ghostwriting called copywriting. And I had the good fortune to spend five or six years managing a copy team for a publisher. And I was a working copywriter, but I also met, and we worked on figuring out brands and figuring out the voice and the tone. And copywriting can teach you to be a chameleon writer. If you do it for very long, you'll be writing a letter for this CEO or the introduction to that public report from somebody within the company. That's ghost-writing. It doesn't have to be a book.
[00:07:58] And now that really the smarter model for an awful lot of people is self-publishing, and you're never really going to have to go sell a mainline publisher, then you just need to be able to take that person's voice, cover the material they want, and deliver what they're looking for.
[00:08:16] Sometimes people want nothing more than their memoirs. Hey, I just want my grandkids to know me, and I can't tweet. Sometimes it's, I'm one of 75 chiropractors within this zip code and I need to show that I have some expertise. And so I want a book that I can go around and talk to the Kiwanis Club and just hand out. Those are very different goals. And so finding a person is part of it, finding out what they need from you is the second part. And that takes some listening.
[00:08:49] Matty: I'm very curious about understanding how you achieve that, those different voices. And I think it would be useful to understand what books you have out under your own name. Do you want to give a little bit of background on that?
[00:09:00] Mikal: Yeah. I've been doing a long time, you’ll find most of them as I have in a discount bin, last chance eBay things. One I have out now that, I have worked mostly in the Christian marketplace, writing books for the Christian audience, but one that's out now that's doing pretty well. It's called NOTES FROM JESUS and it's for early readers.
[00:09:22] You're never supposed to read your reviews and I made the mistake of doing that. So I know everything is wrong about it and everything that's right about it. And I also know that it is number one in its category. And its category, if something like Christian Children's Faith Fiction, which is sort of like being the best pitcher in the American League who's left-handed has six vowels in his name, and he used to live in Bolivia. You know, if you get the right combination of things, you'll be first in your category too.
[00:10:00] Matty: Yeah, that's the recommendation to get that orange banner on Amazon is niche down as much as possible.
[00:10:06] Mikal: So I look at it two or three times a day because I know it will be gone in a week. You just never know.
[00:10:12] Matty: So I'm guessing you're not ghostwriting for 'young reader Christian Fiction,' that category?
[00:10:18] Mikal: No, that was under my own name.
[00:10:21] Matty: So give an example of a book that you've written. Are most of the books that you've ghostwritten within the same genre or across different genres?
[00:10:29] Mikal: Yeah, and I think this is a genre that your listeners would want to take a look at because a lot of people feel they have something to say there: leadership. And that leadership principles are pretty much transferable everywhere. What's nice about that is most of the people who are asking for that book, as far as ghosted for me, they actually have some kind of content.
[00:10:49] There are others, and I would advise you, your listeners, and myself to run away as quickly as possible if they approach you, of people going through this really cool thing happened and I got this great story and all you have to do is write it up and it will split the money. Have you had that happen to you?
[00:11:10] Matty: I have had the people who come up and say, I have an idea for a murder mystery. Like I have lots of ideas for murder mysteries. It's putting them on the page that's the problem.
[00:11:20] Mikal: Yeah. Which is what you write. And it's a little more complicated to really leap over that whole writing a thing. Leadership is one, and how to books, believe it or not, there are people who, again, if a realtor approaches you, what they really want is 95% of the content of this book, and I would make it 70 pages at most, because it's really a big calling card, more than anything else, is going to be stuff that every realtor knows.
[00:11:48] But you're also going to have an introduction from that person in that person's voice. And it'd be nice to have a couple of specific stories about them or of successes they've had in their career as a realtor sprinkled throughout. So again, that's a type of a ghostwriting book where it's really kind of copywriting and ghosting at the same time.
[00:12:10] Matty: So if somebody comes to you, they are the realtor who wants that book as a calling card, what does that engagement generally look like?
[00:12:20] Mikal: Generally, it looks like a conversation about whether or not they really have a book or they have an article. And that's a huge difference. This is also something that happens with public speakers. They feel they have a world of content because they're out there talking to people six times a month, but they're saying it's a stump speech. And so they have 45 minutes’ worth of material with a different introduction and a different joke. And that's an article, that is not a book.
[00:12:49] So the engagement is, picture two dogs getting together and sniffing each other. Do I feel like we can work together? Is this person wanting to be involved or is it just, hey, just write something up and I'll say I did it? You know?
[00:13:05] So it's managing those expectations. How are we going to communicate? How are we going to know when it's done? What is it that you're expecting as the person coming to me, realtor or a person with a life story or somebody that needs their life story popped down for the grandkids?
[00:13:21] Let's make sure we understand, when we are talking about a book, what we mean by that book. How long do you picture being before you feel like it's worth doing? So it's the place where I switched back into being an acquisitions editor. All those logistical things that if you can get them talked about upfront, you can find the snag and straighten it out as you go. If not, you will find it. It just will be at a terrible time.
[00:13:48] Matty: It does seem as if the effort and the way the engagement plays out would be quite different between the scenario where there's the real estate agent, and there's probably research you can do to fill in some of that with some stories that reflect their personality and their personal brand, as opposed to a memoir. Like, that's got to be a huge difference in time investment, right?
[00:14:13] Mikal: It's a huge difference in time and it behooves you to record it and get it transcribed. So that you've got the language and the feel of how they speak.
[00:14:23] For instance, you said you're from Alabama?
[00:14:25] Matty: I lived there when I was very small. I spent most of my life in Pennsylvania.
[00:14:29] Mikal: Okay. Cause you certainly don't sound like you're from Alabama. There are regional differences in language used. There are times when people start talking about their youth that they have almost a completely different way of speaking. And if you hit a hard story and I have sat with people who said, yeah, we want to do this book and we want it to be everything we've learned in our careers over this time. Okay, those are all business principles. But, no, we want it to be personal. I said, well, then let's talk about what's on the table and what's not.
[00:15:05] If you really want it to be personal, the more you say you want that to be true, the more self-revealing you need to be. And the more transparent you need to be. And if I step over a line, please know I'm stepping over it because I'm representing the reader, and I'm curious. You're saying you learned that this is true. I want to know how you know it's true. And not just your thoughts, but where have you seen it? Where have you felt it? You're going to engage people at a completely different level if you're willing to do that, at least occasionally. So it is a much bigger time investment and that means I want more money to write it. Because I'm going to be living in your head for a while. And sometimes that's a scary spot for some of the people I've written for.
[00:15:48] Matty: So how do you make that transition of making it sound like them? Like how do you take on the voice of the person that you're writing for?
[00:15:56] Mikal: Great question. That's what being a copywriter has been helpful because I got to fail so many times. I went to one job, and I was hired as a copywriter. Day two, two, I'm told, you're writing a letter from our CEO, and we need it in 48 hours, or whatever. And I went, I don't even know your CEO. I know who it is. And that little picture here. I don't know anything about the person. That's okay, you can make some stuff up. No, I really can't because if it's not true, eventually is this person going to read it? Cause I've been here not long enough to be secure.
[00:16:33] And in this case I was able to spend a little time with the CEO, discover he was a pilot, and so I said, what's your plane? Describe it a little bit, describe how this feels. And I had my story and I build everything around that kind of a framework. So I think to get the voice, the easiest thing to do is spend time with the person. It's also the most expensive way to do it, because it's time.
[00:16:58] Now, in the fellow's case who was the speaker, he had, oh, probably 10 or 15 CDs of him speaking. So I listened to those. And here's the explanation that has always worked for me. This is my trade secret that I will give you, if you're talking to a client, you ghostwriters. I live in the Rocky Mountains. And I'm at the bottom on them, but if you go up toward the top and you look, you can see peak after peak after peak. And the way I have described what I'm going to do for somebody as a ghostwriter is, you know those things, author, and I refer to them as the author, always, I am never the author because I'm being paid not to be the author, but every one of those peaks are the big things that you want to say. Those matter to you. And my job is to make sure they all get said. They all get said in a way that you don't lose people, and that they make sense moving on through the book, but there's a lot of fill in between and that's what I'm going to be contributing.
[00:18:06] I'll help you say the big stuff but know that it's not all going to sound exactly like you, because I will do my best and we're going to have to go back and forth a little bit, but I'm going to introduce some material that connects those peaks. And we'll talk about it before I do it because I don't want to waste my time or annoy you, but that's what I'm bringing to the table. And for the most part, people go, oh, okay. They care about the peaks. And as long as I've got them, they're happy.
[00:18:37] Matty: Have you encountered a situation where despite excellent metaphors like you just shared, you get into the process and the author is still not mentally prepared for the journey, let's say.
[00:18:52] Mikal: Let me take it back to that meeting I had with the people who wanted to share everything they'd learned. I knew them pretty well. I'd been around them some. I'd read about them. And so they said they wanted to do a business book, essentially, that was personally based. And I told them, a business book, you don't have to get personal. You just share a few stories from your career. it's the stories you've already decided to share with people. You get on a plane, and they ask you what you do. These are the safe stories.
[00:19:21] I said, I know you have one child, and you lost another one. How does that principle about this work in your personal life? How does that work in the business failure you had before the business success you have? And I said, those are the things that are going to really be effective. And they chose to not go there. It was their call and I briefly thought, security will be escorting me out at any moment. I did say, permission to speak freely. I want to check this. I want to know what my parameters are. And the way you find those is you step outside them, and you get slapped back in a little bit. They chose to not go as personally as they thought they would. And I was already into mentally having already got that thing set up.
[00:20:16] So that was a situation where I got a little ahead of myself and I had to just throw all that out and start over again. It turned out to be a pretty bland book by the way. But it accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. They're paying for it. I'm there to serve them.
[00:20:32] Matty: Do you read the reviews of the books you've ghosted?
[00:20:36] Mikal: Never. Never. It's not my story. And normally people or write one-star reviews are not terribly helpful as far as the depth of their analysis. 'This is stupid.' Well, I've got to think that was the cover. I'm not going to learn anything. I don't want to go there.
[00:20:56] I think if it's my stuff that I have an opportunity to revise, yeah, I would answer very differently. If it's somebody else's stuff, there’s nothing I can do about it.
[00:21:07] Matty: So how often are you in a situation where the author is sharing the fact that they had a ghostwriter and sharing your name, or even just admitting they had a ghostwriter?
[00:21:19] Mikal: Boy, I've never been aware that happened.
[00:21:21] Matty: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Mikal: Let me tell you about a time that was just really good fun. It's back to the guy who I originally ghost wrote for. But I'm at a conference he's at the conference speaking, so I was back there to do something else. And so we got together and at that time I was still acquiring things and I said, I want to walk through the displays, there was booth after booth, and I just want you to tell me what you think when you see it, cause you're a practitioner. And he was part of a large organization, had some influence. And I thought this is a great way to kind of walk through this booth with different perspectives.
[00:21:57] Well, everybody knew him. Nobody knew me. But they were coming out of their booth go, hey, would you like to take a look at this? They're giving him all these samples, which he's immediately handing to me like a Sherpa. They're piling up. I'm 6'7". I'm still like this looking over things with my arms down. And I'm thinking, talk about swag, man. People said, I loved your book. I loved your book. Thank you. Thank you. You know, this is going to be, this is the moment that I will somehow come to appreciate someday. I'm still working on that by the way.
[00:22:33] Matty: Well, I would think that that would be one of the biggest downsides of ghostwriting, that I think that one of the exciting moments for any writer is being able to accept any kudos that are sent their way for their work. Is that in fact a downside for you?
[00:22:51] Mikal: It's not for me because I spent so long as a copywriter. When you're writing catalogs and you're writing outbound mail and you're writing websites, you have literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people reading your writing, who do not know it is you. They'll never know it's you. There's no credit on it. And it comes from the company, or it comes from the organization.
[00:23:17] So I think being a copywriter weeds out people who have, well, who have healthy self-esteem, who don't go to prison, and it was a bunch of stuff, but it weeds out some people who feel like they need to have credit for the writing, because you're not going to get credited, and you just learn to live with it.
[00:23:33] The downside, I think of ghostwriting is that you're taking time away from your own writing. You were telling somebody else's story for pay. Now I have friends who refuse to ghostwrite. And the reason they do, they fall into two camps. One is what I just said, hey, look, I'm a writer because I have something to say, and I want to work on my voice and my tone. And I'm about to start a book, next week. And I would expect it'll take me a couple of months and I'm not going to work on any of this stuff over at my table over there during that time because I want to be hustling through this.
[00:24:11] And the trade-off is, you know, we also all know what it's like to write a book or to start down the path of a book and we either can't find a publisher, a conventional publisher, who's going to give us some money or we self-publish, and you hear crickets. So it's a risky either way.
[00:24:27] The second reason that I have had friends who say they will not ghostwrite is they feel it's dishonest. It's not that you're hack because you're writing somebody else's stuff. It's that you're lying about them being a writer. Really? Now they would not feel that way. If the cover said written by so-and-so with Mikal Keefer. That would be okay. But going completely behind the curtain with the wizard means that you're hiding. And that they are out there claiming something that's not true. Well, I don't know what they're going to claim. That's up to them. So those are two downsides, the big one being you're not writing for yourself.
[00:25:05] Matty: It's that scenario where it says so-and-so with so-and-so, and I'm thinking I usually see that with really big-name celebrities, and then they usually have the "with" is usually almost an equally big name, journalist or something like that. Is that also considered a ghostwriting, that kind of scenario?
[00:25:22] Mikal: I don't consider it ghostwriting cause you're not a ghost, or you're a very seeable ghost. That's calling in some help from some big guns. And there are celebrities who write their own books, but there are very few of them.
[00:25:36] Matty: Another question I had is how do you assemble a resume as a ghostwriter that you can share with people?
[00:25:44] Mikal: That's a challenge. Now, I'm in a position where I can point to, look, I can prove to you I can write a book because here are 30 titles if you want to go find them, and here are the last five and you can definitely find those. So we're not talking about whether or not I can write a book. That's established. Whether or not I can ghostwrite a book is a whole different animal, and that you're going to have to take on faith.
[00:26:11] I, on a resume, say if you want details as to who I have ghostwritten for, then I'm happy to share those, but we're not going to do it in print and we're not going to do it until we're talking about a little further down in the conversation than just blasting it out there. And I have at times called a couple of the people I've ghostwritten for and said, in this limited case, is it okay if I tell them that I've written for you and if they want to see those books, they can. And both times I've gotten, sure, yeah, for a one-off, no problem. So people are not unreasonable. It is tricky.
[00:26:50] I think it'd be really tricky, if you wanted to start as a ghostwriter, you'd never really written anything for publication. Boy, they're rolling the dice on you. You're going to have to write one heck of a cover letter to go with that.
[00:27:02] Matty: Is the fact that the books you've written yourself have been largely unlike the books that you've ghostwritten, has that stood in your way at all in terms of pitching yourself as a ghostwriter?
[00:27:14] Mikal: It certainly has. And people that work in any one genre often find it difficult to cross-pollinate. Surprisingly, mystery writers are not among those. I don't know if you're aware of that. People assume if you can write a mystery, you can write anything. It's convoluted and it turns corners and it's got twins and false panels and walls. I don't know what she's drinking or smoking. They figure you can do anything. But if you're writing in the religious market. One, people are a little worried about you and two, they're like, is this person going to come in and try to convert me? Do I have to be worried about this person?
[00:27:54] The second thing is there's a sense sometimes that the Christian Booksellers Association sort of books that sell in Christian bookstores are lesser books than other books. And I don't know if that's true or not true. I just know that that's out there as a belief. Okay, you can write a bestseller and the Christian marketplace, but out here in the real world where we throw some elbows. I've written for politicians and P&G and a bunch of other places. So yeah, I know what the elbows feel like. I'm not worried about them.
[00:28:28] Matty: Were there any other pros or cons of having a ghostwriting career that we haven't hit yet that you wanted to share?
[00:28:35] Mikal: I think the big one is just you're giving up on your own writing. That's a huge cost because for many people, they just struggled to start and they want to get their 500 words a day in and they're working full-time, like I did when I was starting, and they're going to their job, they're raising their kids, and they're carving out those precious few hours to write. Do you really want to use them writing somebody else's story? And you can't use your own voice. Well you can, they don't care, but you still can't use it because you can't point to it. You're not really developing the muscles that you want to strengthen.
[00:29:13] Another pro is you're going to get paid even if it never gets published. You write the contract for half upfront, half of that when you finish writing. What happens after that? I have been paid for books that are not in print. I'm sad because I really liked them. But I also take care of the mortgage for a while.
[00:29:33] Matty: Yeah. Do you have any advice to offer people who are looking for a ghostwriter?
[00:29:41] Mikal: Call me, of course, that'd be my first choice. You know, start with the tallest, if not the best. I think you can go to a number of places online. My advice would be, you're not going to have any trouble finding people who want to ghostwrite your book. Plug in ghostwriter, Google that. Go to the sites. See who's there. Don't just hire somebody. Talk to them first. Because you're going to be, if in fact your book is personal in nature, you're going to be spending a lot of time with this person and I think you should like them. That sounds horrible, except for the part where it's absolutely true. I have talked to people who wanted me to ghostwrite for them, and after spending an hour with them on the phone with, no, I just, my life, there's not enough left of it to spend six months with you. And I'm pretty sure if I'm feeling that way, they're feeling the same way.
[00:30:40] Go find somebody but talk to them first. Ask around if you have any friends who've had a book ghostwritten.
[00:30:47] Matty: How would you know?
[00:30:48] Mikal: Well, not everybody is as circumspect as I am.
[00:30:55] I see it as sort of a code of ethics, which means I could be lying to you completely, you know? Did I mention the Nobel prize? I was in Sweden picking that up. Now you can fact check that. It's just see if you trust the person with your story. It's your story.
[00:31:13] Matty: Well, Mikal, this has been so helpful and so interesting. And at this point I would normally invite people to say where listeners can go to find out more about them online, but you're kind of a low-profile kind of guy.
[00:31:27] Mikal: I'm a low-profile kind of guy. Yeah. That's what they said. You know, we'll relocate you, but we don't want people to find you easily.
[00:31:33] Matty: Well, and the conversation right before yours is going to be Rob talking about matchmaking between clients and ghostwriters. So if people want to find you, then they'll be able to find you through Rob and through Archangel Ink.
[00:31:46] They absolutely could. And Rob and I have talked about that. So I think they will be happy with that end of what happens as well. So yeah, they can find me through Rob.
[00:31:56] Well, thank you again, Mikal. This has been so helpful.
[00:31:58] Mikal: Thank you.
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