6 Great Reasons AI, Ghostwriting Co-Exist

I saw a report from Verified Market Research that valued the ghostwriting market at about $3.3 billion in 2024 and that it was expected to reach $6.2 billion by 2032. A different report, from HTF Marketing Intelligence in 2023, forecast the market’s value to reach $8 billion in 2030. 

I would say both reports didn’t take artificial intelligence into account, which is too bad because AI is and will affect ghostwriting as we know it. Ghostwriter Joshua Lisec, founder of Lisec Ghostwriting in Dayton, Ohio, told Business Insider he thinks AI could wipe out  “90% of the ghostwriting services market.”

Which report is correct, the rosy pictures or the doom-and-gloom scenario? Ghostwriters have to adjust, evolve, and innovate to keep their shares of the billions. Otherwise, they could lose ninety percent of the ghostwriting market.

As my business advisor once told me, “If you could dump all your knowledge into AI using the models that are out today—forget by the end of the year—the AI could write as well as you, maybe better, and could do it in a fraction of the time. Where does that leave you?”

As great as AI can be—and a 2024 survey at authorroi.com showed ghostwriters who use AI make more money, although the study couldn’t definitively explain why—there are still limits to what automation can and can’t do.

AI still can’t do emotion, nuance, subtlety, or know what a fact is, as I often say. When it comes to matters of identity, trust, memory, reputation, persuasion, or emotional truth, humans still win out.

Here are six reasons why ghostwriting is expected to continue expanding despite (or in spite of) AI:

1. AI produces language. Ghostwriters produce perspective. Clients don’t want to just string together words. They want to tell their stories: their lives, their philosophies, their brands, their legacies, their world views. While AI can imitate word patterns, it cannot uncover meaning, contradiction, emotional subtext, or the hidden links and symbolism of and between events.

Ghostwriters can do all that by asking the who/what/where/when/how/why questions that get their clients to think more deeply and gain insights they might not have realized they had.

2. AI is causing people to demand authenticity. Not everyone wants an AI-written book, speech, website, white paper, legal brief, blog post, or anything else. While I have had clients who took my writing and butchered it by running it through AI, and while I’ve had other clients request I use the same AI the previous ghostwriter used, I’ve had other clients demand I stay as far away from ChatGPT or Claude as possible because they want the human touch.

These people know that humans write and create from memory, trauma, joy, aging, loss, fear, failure, heartbreak, and a slew of other reasons. Human ghostwriters can notice a client’s hesitation, silence, body language, grief, anger, or desire and forge a deeper connection, which will only make the manuscript better. Through ghostwriting, humans can transform emotion into philosophy, art, wisdom, faith, compassion, or a hero’s journey of personal transformation.

AI can do none of that.

3. Most people still can’t write a book, even with AI. There are people who use AI to write emails. If they can’t construct a simple message without help, how are they going to structure a narrative through the outline process, build tension, sustain a voice or tone, shape chapters and scenes within them, drop in surprise twists or revelations, or organize complex ideas into a coherent manuscript? They can’t. They need human help.

Those people probably would never consider writing a book, but if they did, they would find that by using AI, they not only would sound like everyone else, they would have pages of copy but not a book.

4. AI can’t interview. Knowing how to ask open-ended questions, and knowing which ones to ask and when to ask them, is a uniquely human ability. While a person might sit across from a machine and answer questions the machine asks, that scenario won’t reach the level a ghostwriter can. The best ghostwriters act as interviewer, therapist, historian, investigator, researcher, editor, strategist, and collaborator. 

A ghostwriter can sit with a client and notice what they’re avoiding. AI can’t do that. For example, I had a client who complained that we weren’t moving fast enough. I repeatedly offered him a second day each week, but he declined in favor of his pickleball games. Finally, I told him, “The next time you feel we’re not moving fast enough, look in the mirror.”

Within a month, he found the time for a second weekly session.

5. Memoirs and thought leadership require emotional judgment. When a ghostwriter works in these nonfiction areas, clients have to tell stories. Sometimes, they go off on tangents and need to be reined in. A human can do that, AI can’t. 

Similarly, ghostwriters know when the client is being manipulative instead of honest, self-indulgent instead of genuinely vulnerable, or engages in personal revisionist history. That’s when the ghostwriter can call “bullshit” on the client and get them back on the right path.

6. Clients want accountability and collaboration. In short, they want a partnership. 

These are the people who understand there are two experts: the story expert (the client) and the storytelling expert (the ghostwriter). These are the people who need and want deadlines, who crave encouragement and reassurance, and who understand the roles they will play as the manuscript is developed.

I have a current client who wants to spend our time together telling stories. This is important and great, but after four months, I’ve given him first drafts of several chapters to examine, edit and provide feedback, and he hasn’t. So he committed to getting all of that done the week I was on vacation.

This same client tried working with me at various times of day before realizing what I knew at the beginning: early in the morning works best. Now, we’re rolling.

Next: More reasons.

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