I recently was reminded that I am a ghostwriter. You might think, Well, no shit, Sherlock! I prefer to look at it like the old aftershave commercials from the 1970s, “Thanks, I needed that.” And I have my business advisor to thank. I have many standard fee requests in my contracts. Besides the dollar amount,…
There is a battle between AI and ghostwriters going on. On one side, there is the ghostwriter. Ghostwriting is a craft. It takes practice, knowledge, skill, and experience to be able to pull a client’s story out of their head and get it onto a page while maintaining their voice, tone, style, and facts of…
When it comes to contracts, I believe both sides should have protections. The prospect needs to feel like the story is his/her/their property, that they have the rights to it and own it at all times. That also means the prospect has final say over the title, that he/she/they can terminate the project early under…
From my earliest days in journalism, I was taught to ask questions that begin with who, what, where, when, how, and why because they were open-ended and would lead to long answers (and better quotes). When I transitioned into ghostwriting, I found these questions still worked, but I recently learned that there is a better…
How would you like it if you arrived at a date’s house and were asked to sign an NDA to commence the date? Would you sign it or walk away dateless? It is a similar question ghostwriters have to consider when entering into an agreement with a potential client: Are you okay with keeping things…
Years before the COVID pandemic, I worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, and the paper underwent tremendous upheaval when it was sold and became part of a chain. Employees fretted that they were going to lose their jobs; some didn’t wait for that to happen, and when they left, their positions were absorbed. I…
Why would artificial intelligence create fake sources? That’s a question I posed to two free programs, ChatGPT and Deep AI. The answers saddened but didn’t surprise me. First, an explanation of why. I knew about a New York lawyer last year foolishly cited cases he found via ChatGPT and didn’t verify them. They were fake,…
Seventh in an occasional series about compelling stories and ideas worth telling. Compelling stories have many qualities to them: They’re powerful, have an irresistible, sometimes emotional effect on the reader. They earn the person attention, either positive or negative. They’re unique, original, different. They relate to the reader, and they put the reader there. A…
The expectations just keep coming. Prospects and clients have them, and ghostwriters need to mange them. Here are three more expectations to watch for related to ghostwriting services. Who’s the expert? The two sides have to understand where the expertise lies. It lies with both people. The prospects turned clients have story expertise. They know…
Let’s talk about expectations. Because ghostwriting is so collaborative, the ghostwriter has the responsibility of managing a prospect or client’s expectations. If not, things can go wrong quickly. Example: A prospect wanted me to write five high quality articles related to his business, that he could post and then share on different social media sites.…
