Book Formats and Word Counts – An Overview
Before you look for a ghostwriter, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the basic nuts and bolts of books and how they’re put together. The more you know about the product you’re going to be making, the more … Continue reading
4 Reasons to Publish a Nonfiction Book
When you contact a potential ghostwriter, the very first question he or she should ask you is, “Why do you want to publish a book? What are you hoping to achieve?” People have many reasons for wanting to put their … Continue reading
Self-Help Books: Prescriptive and Aspirational
The biggest market sector in publishing consists of nonfiction self-help books. They exist to serve one function: to help the reader to live a better, happier life. Self-help books are exactly as the name suggests. You read the book and … Continue reading
Genres of Books
Books can be divided into two broad categories, fiction and nonfiction. Works of fiction are short stories or novels. They tell a story that may be pure fantasy like Harry Potter or incorporate plenty of actual facts like Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, the great … Continue reading
Citations in Non-Fiction Self-Help Books – Advice from Ghostwriter Thomas Hauck
As a ghostwriter who has authored dozens of self-help books for both self-published authors and major New York publishing houses, one of the biggest questions that I and my clients must consider is how to credit quotes and research by … Continue reading
Character Development in Thrillers
I ghostwrite a lot of thrillers for my valued clients. (Surprised? Don’t be!) Naturally they often ask questions about the writing process and the relative importance of various elements including character development. Generally in thrillers you don’t spend much time … Continue reading
Should Your Editor Take One of Those Online Grammar Tests?
On the job site Upwork, I recently saw a job posting by a gentleman from France. As part of the qualifications to bid on his book project – which he did not describe in any detail – he wanted all bidders to take the Upwork “English sentence structure” … Continue reading
Write Cleanly and Clear Out Those Unnecessary Words!
I do a lot of book editing for my clients. Typically, my job is to clean up the text and make the emotions more vivid or (in the case of business books) the arguments more persuasive. I help my authors organize … Continue reading
The Vexing Problem of Numbers – Advice From Thomas Hauck, Author and Ghostwriter
In the English language, we have an alphabet of twenty-six letters. We use these letters to form words and sentences. Each letter is unique; generally, for any given word formed of letters, you can’t substitute other letters without changing the … Continue reading