Ghostwriter as 1 Great Consultant

A prospect had a compelling story to tell. I asked her my usual three questions, “Why do you want to tell this story?” “Who is the audience? and “What is the story?” She had a difficult time with the audience question and asked me if I would be willing to act as a consultant to help her figure it out. 

I had never been asked that before, but my research told me it could be done. Other ghostwriters, especially those with fewer years of experience, supplement their time and income with other projects, such as copywriting, coaching, and consulting.

A ghostwriter consultant does the same things as any other consultant: provides expert advice to individuals or organizations to help them solve problems, improve operations, and achieve goals and objectives. Consultants leverage their knowledge, critical thinking skills, and experience to analyze and offer perspective, opinion, and insight into a client’s needs. They then devise and compose strategies and make recommendations to help the client.

According to careerexplorer.com, consultants tend to be go-getters and entrepreneurs, “meaning they’re adventurous, ambitious, assertive, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident, and optimistic. They are dominant, persuasive, and motivational. Some of them are also artistic, meaning they’re creative, intuitive, sensitive, articulate, and expressive.”

Consultants have a lot of experience and a deep understanding of the industry they’re in. They might conduct research to find the best way to do what the client wants or what to avoid. They might put together timelines for the client. They might assist the client in the tasks (and get paid additional monies for the work) and then present that work to the client. They might follow up with the client. Or they might do some of these, all of these, or none of these. It really depends on the client’s needs, wants, and desires.

I spoke to my business adviser about being this prospect’s consultant. He suggested I charge a certain rate and a guarantee that if this person eventually hires me to ghostwriter her book, the cost of the first ten consulting sessions would be applied to the book.

So, now she’s my client.

According to ghostwriter Erick Mertz, ghostwriters can and do work with authors to define what they want out of their projects. Gotham Ghostwriters said ghostwriters may have well developed instincts for determining the publishing potential of a project or the odds of attracting a literary agent to it, which is what this client wants.

She’s dreaming big and seeks a Big Five publishing company—Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster—to buy her story. It’s one that reads like so many other tales of redemption: She gets into erotic dancing while underage and transitions into sex work. Along the way, she develops a heroin addiction and is on the phone with her father as he blows his brains out. But she rights herself, beats heroin after eighteen years and goes into finance, even getting an MBA in financial analysis.

Then comes the twist ending: She realizes it’s not what she really wants. She prefers sex work, which she had never stopped doing.

I can’t predict if she’ll succeed; no ghostwriter or consultant can. However, I can advise on how to go about achieving her goals, long as the odds are—and I made it clear that her odds are VERY long.

I quote Olivia Blacke, who compiled these facts back in 2023 (the bolded words are mine):

● The odds of getting a book traditionally published is around 1-2%.

● The average traditionally published book sells around 3,000 copies over its lifetime, and less than 500 the first year.

● A PUBLISHER breaks even on a $10,000 advance by selling around 1,000 copies. There are a lot of variables at play here, but an AUTHOR earns out on a $10,000 advance by selling more than 5,000 copies. Less than 25% of books “earn out” their advance.

● What about best sellers? Again, these numbers are clouded in secrecy but one estimation is that a book has to sell at least 10,000 copies during the FIRST WEEK to even have a shot at the NYT Best Seller list. Something like 0.08% of books published in the US annually (300,000) make the US Best Seller lists. To break this down, you have a better chance of winning the lotto (1 in 300M) and being struck by lightning twice (1 in 9M) than writing a book, getting it traditionally published, and making the Best Sellers list.

She wanted to know if I was telling her this to dissuade her. I said I would never tell her no, but I will always tell the truth about the chances. “Maybe you’ll be the exception that proves the rule,” I told her, “but you need to know the reality. I don’t tell you this to dissuade you. I simply want you to know what you’re up against.”

She didn’t understand that once you go down a certain path, you can jump off and try a new one. You’re only locked in as long as you want to stay on that particular path. If she wants a different path, I can advise. In fact,  I have a way that I think would work very well for her, but since she is gung-ho on trying the traditional publishing route, all I can do is tell her what steps those entail. 

A ghostwriting consultant, like any ghostwriter in Portland, needs to listen and then follow the client’s lead.

It’s clear that she needs a literary agent, but first she also needs a proposal, and she didn’t know that there are people out there who specialize in writing them. I suggested she do some research before our next session: what should go into a proposal, what literary agents work with stories similar to hers (and what connections to publishers they have), and what value a proposal writer would provide and if it’s worth the money (she discussed writing it herself, another viable option).

But like a traditional ghostwriter-client relationship, there are two experts. As an experienced networker, I asked if her sex-work clients might know agents, proposal writers, or people in publishing she could be introduced to. Her expertise in sex work told her no, so I backed off.

We finished our last session with her committing to do the research and report back. “Thank you for your expertise,” she told me. “I really didn’t know all these things.”

Feel free to read and check out my other posts related to ghostwriting. Go to leebarnathan.com/blog.