Academics
who have written a peer-reviewed manuscript sometimes want to jump genres and
have their thesis re-written into a popular book.
A client once contacted
me and told me that he had written a thesis on the history of the cultural and
diplomatic relationship between Sweden and the countries of the Near East,
specifically Israel and the Palestinian territories. The history dates back to
the time of the Vikings, who first contacted traders in the Holy Land in the
tenth century CE. The client hoped that this could become a mass-market book in
the American market.
“I would like to keep an
‘academic tone’ in the language,” he said, “but give it more of narrative. I
have added quotations and anecdotes to the text in an effort to give it more of
a narrative. Some segments of the text have many anecdotes while other sections
are more academic. Is there any possibility of giving the text even more of an
interesting and captivating narrative, as some sections are still too
technical? In the best of worlds, I would like to end up with a factual text
based on facts combined with a captivating story.”
This is much more
difficult and expensive than you’d think. Peer-reviewed academic papers are
structured very differently from mass-market books. Imagine if you took your
BMW to a mechanic and said, “Can you transform this BMW into a Mercedes?” The
mechanic would say, “Okay – but because I have to replace every single part of
the car, it will cost you eighty thousand dollars.”
The most common problem
is that the author thinks his or her subject matter is inherently boring, and
that by somehow “spicing it up” it will become interesting. It is at such times
that the kindly editor, in an effort to save the client from spending many
thousands of dollars on a wild goose chase, will say, “Are you sure you want to
do this? It will require writing a completely new book. What sort of narrative
do you have in mind? The story of a family over many generations?” Such a project
could quickly become an epic James Michener novel.
My advice? Be happy with what you have, or be prepared to pay many thousands of dollars to have a ghostwriter write a new book for you.
Thomas Hauck – Book developer, ghostwriter, editor
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 name on a book.
In the case of a novel,
the question is often answered thusly: “I have an idea for a novel that I think
is really good, and I want to get it written.” Because most novels are
considered works of art and therefore not utilitarian in the same way as
nonfiction books, the goal is not always measurable. If you want to write
a novel, while you may have an underlying goal, such as drawing attention to a
social issue, the objective is often to make the book an exciting, stimulating,
and engaging piece of literature. As you formulate your plot, setting, and
characters, your ghostwriter can help you articulate your goals for your novel,
thus ensuring you’re both on the same page.
In contrast, when you’re
proposing a nonfiction book, the goal of the book is central to the project. By
definition, nonfiction books exist to inform the reader and often to produce an
effect, and you have to know what you want that response to be. Goals of a
nonfiction book may include:
Inform. You may want your reader to have information about a certain subject. Examples might include a family genealogical history, the history of a business venture, or a memoir. The information need not be actionable, and it may not have immediate utilitarian value, but you want people to have it.
1. Help the reader solve a problem. The vast majority of self-help books, either written for individuals or organizations, are designed to help the reader solve a specific problem and, as a result, live a better life. Examples of personal problems include losing weight, getting a better job, planning for retirement, overcoming stress, and solving a medical issue. Examples of organizational problems include marketing a new product, hiring and firing, succession planning, improving management practices, outsourcing, and keeping up with competition. Because humans face endless problems, the possibilities for self-help books are equally endless.
2. Establish yourself as a thought leader. Many business books are designed to elevate the author within his or her industry. Being able to say “I’ve written a book on the subject” establishes you as an authority. When you speak at a seminar or convention, you can bring copies of your book to give away to potential clients. The effect is subtle but powerful. Having a book can also open doors to media exposure, as many news and opinion outlets seek authors to appear on their shows to discuss a subject, and having a book signifies that you’re an expert in your field. Nothing elevates you faster than discussing your new book in front of an audience that may measure in the millions.
3. Attract clients. Some self-help and business books go beyond the “soft sell” and become more blatantly promotional. These books may have calls to action, where the reader is encouraged to contact the author to learn more about how the reader can obtain the author’s services. You need to be careful about getting too close to a “hard sell,” which can be a big turnoff. No one will buy – or even read – a book that sounds like an extended sales pitch.
Readers are also
sensitive to pitches that promise the true insider information if you sign up
and pay for the next level, such as a seminar or training course. If you’re
going to write a book, you owe it to yourself and your readers to make sure it
has real value.
This doesn’t mean that
your book should be encyclopedic. Unless you’re writing a college textbook or a
groundbreaking authoritative text, stick to an upper limit of 50,000 words.
Self-help books need to be easy to read and not exhausting.
4. Make money from book sales. To be honest, this is rarely a reason why businesspeople seek to write and publish books. They do it for the other reasons outlined above, and because the book will indirectly stimulate income from other sources such as speaking fees and new clients. If you write a self-help book in a lucrative niche, and you can get it high in Amazon’s sales ranks, you might make a nice trickle of income. And if your core business is to sell books – for example, if you’re a motivational speaker by profession – then you might make significant money from your books. You’ll also make money if you’re a public figure with a built-in market ready to buy your memoir or business book. Having said that, authors don’t normally expect to make money from book sales.
When you start talking with a ghostwriter, the number one issue you need to resolve is what you hope to achieve with your book. It’s the ghostwriter’s job to help you to convey your message to your readers and reach your goals, and before your ghostwriter writes a single word you need to be clear about what you hope to achieve.
Thomas A Hauck – Book developer, ghostwriter, editor
People’s
lives are endlessly fascinating, especially if the life revealed is of a
celebrity or someone who has experienced something extraordinary.
If you’re thinking about
having your memoir ghostwritten and published, the first thing to think about
is this: Who will want to read your book? Are you a celebrity, and therefore
the general public is interested in your life? If so, then you might consider
getting a deal with a publisher. If you’re not famous, perhaps you’ll want to
publish your life story in a limited edition designed for your family and
business associates. I’ve ghostwritten or edited plenty of memoirs and family
histories that have never shown up on Amazon.com because they were never
released to the public.
By the way, there’s a
difference between an autobiography and a memoir.
The former is the chronicle of an entire life. The latter has a more narrow
focus and may be more story-like. It has been said that a biography or
autobiography tells “the story of a life,” while a memoir often tells “a story
from a life,” such as touchstone events and turning points from the author’s
life. For convenience, in this book I’ll just use the umbrella term “memoir”
for both.
You might offer
inspiration and hope to your readers that they, too, could survive misfortune,
as you have. In this case your memoir is a form of self-help book that happens
to be based on your life story.
One of my clients wanted
to write his memoir. He sent me an email, of which this is an excerpt:
“I want to tell my life
story because the illness from which I suffered for over twenty years is
dangerously misunderstood not just by the medical profession but other
organizations we hold in esteem. My program of recovery is not only unique and
unprecedented; it is needed. I am passionate about healing other sufferers. My
program works, and I am proof.”
I wrote back to him that
the biggest question that needed to be decided was the genre of the book. Based
on what he had told me, his book could either be a memoir or a self-help book.
It was not my distinction; this is how publishers view the market.
A memoir is a biography.
It is not instructional. It does not offer a prescriptive solution to the
problems faced by the reader. It is simply a glimpse into the life of someone
either extraordinary or newsworthy. In order to sell your book as a memoir, it
needs to be one of two things:
1) The story of a famous
person, like Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey.
2) A story of a life so
extraordinary that it commands attention. A story like that of Anne Frank, or a
coal miner trapped for thirty days underground, or someone who spent years in
the Soviet gulag.
My client believed that
his life story was worthy of category #2. His life certainly has had its
challenges, and even amazing trials and tribulations. But I told him that as a
ghostwriter I hear about endless streams of book projects written by
well-meaning people who have had horrific lives full of drug addiction, rape,
abuse, and family horrors. To a literary agent, such books are unfortunately
quite commonplace, and therefore have little market value. No one reads them
simply as biographies because they all sound the same. If you’re a drug addict
who happens to be famous, like Keith Richard, you can sell your story. But
unfortunately my client wasn’t famous. If his memoir had broad political
implications – for example, if he had been kidnapped by terrorists
and survived – then his story would have market value. But fortunately he suffered
no such fate.
I want to be clear: You
have the right to hire a ghostwriter to write your life story and publish it.
It’s your choice. But your ghostwriter must not flatter you by telling you that
your memoir will be a best seller. In fact, any ghostwriter who attempts to
assure you that any book will be a best seller is a charlatan
and should be avoided. The publishing industry is intensely competitive and
very few books make a profit. When I consult with a client, I tell them that my
goal is to make their book competitive and as good as any comparable title. I
want my client to be proud of the book that bears their name. That’s all anyone
can hope for.
For the person who has
survived misfortune and can articulate a program that others can follow to
avoid the same challenge, the logical solution is a self-help book. In a
self-help book, you write with a purpose. Your purpose is to convey information
to your readers that can directly impact their lives and help them solve their
problems. A self-help book shows the reader the way to kick a drug habit, lose
weight, make more money, understand their teenaged kids, cook better meals,
make Christmas decorations—the categories are endless. Some are trivial and
fun, while others address very serious issues.
Do you want to help your
readers in some way? Do you want to open their eyes to injustice, or help them
manage an abusive relationship, or find a cure for a crippling disease? Then
you’re writing a self-help book. You want your words and your message to have
meaning and to help people change their lives. You want to touch your readers
deeply and give them a way to live a happy life.
A self-help book need not
be boring or pedantic. You can tell your story; in fact, you should. And if you
approach the job with the attitude that you’re going to give the reader a gift
that can help them to be happy and healthy, your writing will reflect this.
The theme of the book should be, “How I overcame terrible events and a horrible situation – and how you can too.” Your experience will have value to the reader only if they can apply the lessons to their own lives.
Thomas A Hauck – Book developer, ghostwriter, editor
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 then, using the
principles outlined in the book, you can elevate yourself. You can get a better
job, make more money, lose weight, keep your pet happy, learn yoga – whatever
the problem, the solution can help you lead a better life.
There are two basic types
of self-help books. Prescriptive books provide a set of
instructions. For example, if you want to raise your credit score, the book
will show you the steps you need to take to improve your credit rating, such as
paying off expensive credit cards, going on a household budget, or saving your
money by not buying expensive coffee drinks.
A prescriptive self-help
book can show you how to lose weight, make money in the stock market, get a
better job, or hire and work with a ghostwriter. In fact, the words “How to…”
are often in the title, like “How to manage your business more profitably” or
“How to buy real estate.”
The other type of
self-help book is aspirational. These books present testimonials or
case studies of people who have improved their lives. Typically, these are
people who have overcome the same challenges that you might face. For example,
if you’re a small business owner, you might be inspired to read about
entrepreneurs who have risen from humble beginnings to achieve wealth. The
classic example is Thomas Edison, who supposedly tried one thousand filaments
before he found the one that worked in his light bulb. The lesson, which can be
applied in any area of life, is that failure is just another form of
opportunity.
Aspirational books also
provide more generalized or spiritual guidance. While they may not describe
specific steps to take to solve a problem, they give encouragement and
emotional inspiration.
Many self-help books offer a combination of instruction and inspiration. Often, the aspirational component is provided by the story of the author’s own rise to wealth or better health.
Thomas A Hauck – Book developer, ghostwriter, editor
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 American novel that includes a wealth of interesting
information about the whaling industry in the nineteenth century.
A work of fiction can be
as instructive as a nonfiction book. For example, one of the best selling
business management books of all time is Who Moved My Cheese? byDr.
Spencer Johnson. This slim little fable recounts the tale of four
characters who live in a maze and are confronted with a problem they
must solve. It’s a brilliant book that leapfrogged over hundreds of ponderous
and jargon-laden management books to the top of the best seller lists.
In contrast to novels,
nonfiction books are generally thought to be “true” or correspond directly to
the real world.
The umbrella of nonfiction
covers many genres including memoirs and biographies, self-help and
health-related books, business books, technical books, and books on
spirituality.
You can go to Amazon.com and see its detailed breakdown of dozens of fiction and nonfiction genres and hundreds of subgenres. A book in any genre can be ghostwritten. While there are categories and definitions, there really aren’t any boundaries. If you have an idea, it can be turned into a book. Who knows – it might even get its own genre on Amazon.com!
Thomas Hauck, professional author, ghostwriter, and book editor
In the past few years, various software applications have emerged that automatically correct basic issues of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The most popular is Grammarly, an online grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection platform developed by Grammarly, Inc. First released in July 2009 and now a ubiquitous feature on nearly every website that requires writing, Grammarly’s proofreading resources check the text against a suite of grammar rules and point out perceived errors as well as the solutions.
It’s an effective and useful tool for detecting the obvious mechanical errors in a document. You might even say that Grammarly has supplanted the services of human proofreaders. As recently as a few short years ago, proofreading was a service commonly offered by professional editors and ghostwriters, but no longer. Thanks to Grammarly, the market has evaporated.
But clients who want their books to rise above the ordinary and stand out in a crowded marketplace know that Grammarly is not the answer. While Grammarly is useful if you want your book or report to read like everyone else’s, and it’s effective for dry, boring text, it does nothing to improve the ideas you’re presenting in your book, whether it’s a non-fiction self-help book or an exciting novel.
Great Writing Goes Beyond Grammarly
In any book, how you express your ideas, and the clarity and vividness with which they impact the reader, are far beyond the limited mechanical capabilities of Grammarly. Great writing makes an emotional impact on the reader. It thrills, delights, warns, or soothes them. To accomplish your mission, you often need to violate the rules of grammar to effectively reach your reader. In fiction, particularly, authors often use “incomplete” sentences convey their ideas with impact. Consider this hypothetical excerpt from a thriller:
“Hands up,” barked the gangster.
Judy saw the gun. Big. Loaded. Pointed at her head. It meant death – quick, brutal, bloody. Her hands flew up. Words stuck in her throat. Stomach churned. The black muzzle grinned. No saving you, it sneered.
And so on – you get the idea. Only a skilled editor can help you improve all the critical elements of your story, including plot, character, pacing, suspense, your unique voice, and the other ingredients that make a book a compelling must-read!
In non-fiction, Grammarly can’t elevate boring, repetitive writing that lacks spark and sounds like everyone else. It can’t contribute new ideas and make the unexpected connections that make your book stand out. For maximum impact, and to put your book on a level above the ordinary, you need a skilled, professional editor or ghostwriter who will give your writing the magic touch readers crave.
Thomas Hauck is a professional book editor and ghostwriter serving a wide range of clients from major New York publishing houses to first-time self-published authors.
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 third parties.
For example, let’s say you’re writing a book on heart health. In your book you want to back up your claims with evidence garnered by research studies. In the course of your research, you find a report in a health journal that concludes people who consume blueberries have fewer heart attacks. This is good news! To bring this information to your reader, you have three choices:
You can write, “Researchers have found that eating blueberries lowers your risk of heart attack.” Legally, this is all you need to say. The problem is that it’s vague and unsubstantiated. What researchers? In India, China, or the United States? How many people were in the test sample? How long ago did this happen? A reference like this one is no better than what you find in internet articles, and not good enough for a credible book.
You can write, “Researchers at Harvard University found that among a sample of fifty adults, eating blueberries lowered their risk of heart attack by ten percent.” It’s better, but you’re still not giving the reader enough information that will allow them to find the article or report for themselves.
You can provide a footnote. For academic journals and articles, footnotes or endnotes are required. A footnote provides precise information about the article so that anyone can find it. The drawback to footnotes is that they can make your book look like an academic publication. If you’re writing in a folksy down-to-earth voice for a mass audience, you may not want footnotes.
You can give more complete information in the text, so that the reader can find the article. You might say, “As researchers Ben Wong and others revealed in their 2015 article ‘The heart health benefits of blueberries,’ this delicious fruit can reduce your chances of having a heart attack by ten percent.” This is enough information so that the researchers are properly credited and anyone could verify the source. You can also add the publication, like this: (Jour Nat Hlth, vol 4, no 6, 345-349).
How about internet links? You can add them to footnotes, but remember that despite the popular conception that everything on the internet is there forever, this isn’t true. Pages disappear and links get broken. If you include the link, always give the date it was accessed (“Accessed 4 June 2019”). This will cover you in case the page vanishes.
Thomas Hauck is a professional ghostwriter and book editor serving a wide range of clients from major publishers to emerging authors.
In his new novel A Town Called Malice, Adam Abramowitz continues the exploits of Zesty Meyers, the 1980s Boston bike courier. When a rock and roll legend suspected of murdering his girlfriend reappears after thirty years on the run, Zesty is once again haunted by his family’s criminal past. What makes the novel especially fun is Abramowitz’s skill at weaving the neighborhoods, personalities, and even the real rock and roll nightclub scene into the narrative. Lots of local rock bands are mentioned in the story, including my own alma mater, The Atlantics. For anyone who knows Boston or who enjoys a fast-paced darkly comic thriller, this will be the sizzling beach read of the summer!
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 on character development outside of revealing the character as he or she works their way through various challenges. The best character development happens without the reader being aware of it… you just form an impression as the pages unfold. For example, in a scene we might show that our hero is a very skilled driver and knows a lot about cars. We don’t tell the reader this; we show the reader by letting the reader watch him or her in action.
For example, if you read the four Gospels–which read like thrillers as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem and betrayal–nowhere will you find a physical description of Jesus, or of anyone else for that matter. You find only the bare minimum of description necessary to make the story clear.
For a more recent example, if you read James Bond novels, Ian Fleming’s physical description of him is very sketchy. He has a scar on his cheek, and his hair curls over one side of his forehead… and that’s about it! We learn about Bond’s character by watching him in action. Generally, you want the reader to be able to imagine your hero the way they want to imagine them. If your reader is black, you want him or her to imagine the hero is black too. In fact, if they ever decide to cast a black actor as James Bond, I don’t think you’ll find anything in the books to directly contradict that choice.
In thrillers, every moment that’s lacking in tension is a moment when the reader may lose interest. Tension is key. Non-essential descriptions of anything tend to dissipate tension.
Having said that, until the day it’s published a novel is a work in progress, and revisions, subtractions, and additions are a normal part of the process! At any time an author could add scenes that reveal the hero’s personality, but they may not be tied to the plot.
Thomas Hauck is a published author, ghostwriter, and book editor.
My fiction clients often ask me if I think their novel could be a success, or even a best seller. My answer is that once you reach a certain minimum level of professionalism in your writing – which takes some work! – then it all depends on your story and if it resonates with readers. Or more specifically, with many readers who otherwise would have no reason to read your book. That is, people who aren’t your friends and family.
It really does depend on your story. Take, for example, genre fiction, and specifically romance novels or their various subcategories of romance mystery, romance thriller, western romance, and so forth. The authors and publishers who produce these books, which are highly profitable, have an advantage because they know their audience and can give them what they want. The plot lines are standardized, the protagonists of a type, the locations familiar (or exotic, if that’s the subgenre), and the sex scenes carefully calibrated to fall within a range between “mild” and “scorching.” The book covers are very carefully designed to show two people in a physical or romantic relationship (depending on the level of heat), and to give the reader sufficient clues about what to expect. Often the faces aren’t fully shown, which allows the reader to imagine being in the scene.
Once the basic requirements have been met, all that’s left is to deliver the goods. It’s almost like filling in the blanks.
This is why authors of literary novels often tear out their hair when reading a genre novel. “The writing is terrible!” they cry. “The author of this book breaks every basic rule of good fiction writing! How can they get away with it?”
It’s true. If you flip through the pages of a genre novel, you’ll see many writing sins. These include boring “information dumps,” where the author will introduce a character (using many adjectives) and then immediately spend the next few paragraphs telling us about the character – where she worked, why she didn’t have a boyfriend, and how her mother was lingering near death in a lonely rest home. This is meant to help us “get to know” the character. It’s very bluntly done, and most writing teachers will tell you it’s a terrible habit to get into. But it’s part of the genre.
The bottom line is this: the books that sell are the ones that are well written within the limits of the genre and which connect with the reader.
Thomas Hauck is a published author and professional ghostwriter.
