I write for people who have better things to do than write. They bring the expertise. I bring the words and, if necessary, the ability to beat a story out of them. Nobody needs to know.
Ghostwriting has always been an honest trade.
Scribes did it for the pharaohs. Theologians always provided popes with their speeches, encyclicals and scandal spin. Specialists still swoop in to help celebrities turn their gossip into page-turners. And Tony Schwartz served Donald Trump for The Art of the Deal. Later, Schwartz described the experience as “putting lipstick on a pig” and how he’d now rename the book The Sociopath.
So yes, ghostwriting can also be a dangerous game. But I feel safe.
My job is to make sure the story is still amazing once it hits the page and that it’s sticky – yes, like ectoplasm – for those it was meant to stick to.
I’m just a fleshy vessel hungry for stories
I’ve always seen ghostwriting as a way to explore fields I’d never have wandered into otherwise – and, through conversation, to capture the passion and perspectives of the people living in those weird new worlds. As a long-time travel writer who became a family guy, I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to. But I rarely miss it, thanks to these talks.
Most of the people I work with share a common profile: an amazing story, not enough time and at least a vague appreciation that the written word is a profession in its own right. My job is to make sure the story is still amazing once it hits the page and that it’s sticky – yes, like ectoplasm – for those it was meant to stick to.
These clients fall into recognisable types. Some make it effortless: you press their play button, and they come out with a fully formed narrative in well-structured sentences and paragraphs. Others meander, and you end up doing a full remix. Some don’t even realise they have something worth telling and need to have that story beaten out of them – in a friendly, good-cop sort of way.
They all want to maintain some control, and you build the story with them (often in sync with their marketing team). After a few chats, you generate a draft and bounce it back and forth until everyone’s happy.
A billionaire once asked, mid-interview, what I would charge to write his memoir. He wasn’t a particularly cool billionaire – more likely in need of lipstick and someone to sanitise his views.
From pundits to billionaires
One of my earliest ghostwriting partnerships was with a marketing guru who was always ahead of the curve – from guerrilla to viral to sparking movements. He taught me that it was about ideas, not products. It was a true pleasure. We were friends who shared a similar tone and sense of humour, so self-editing was minimal. We had great conversations, which I then turned into columns that were very much his. His time was better spent inspiring people in real time.
Once, he flew me to NYC to meet with bigshot agents about a potential book. The agents were enthusiastic but honest: there was no money in publishing. The real value was in the prestige that came with having published something, which then attracted more clients. Since I was offered little up front and only a percentage of future sales, I couldn’t afford to say yes. Still, I had a remarkably surreal afternoon on a Madison Avenue rooftop. Thanks, buddy.
I’ve had other book offers. A billionaire once asked, mid-interview, what I would charge to write his memoir. He wasn’t a particularly cool billionaire – more likely in need of lipstick and someone to sanitise his views. I feared the project would leave a sign of “sell-out” ectoplasmed to my back. I also had the distinct sense that he’d already shared his best material during our hour together. While the material was freaking quality, I still passed.
A rock-and-roll plastics chemist also came calling. He was legendary in his field, and while I can get passionately interested in almost anything, I wasn’t sure my natural enthusiasm would carry me through a full book about the structural integrity of Samsonite.
Suddenly, everyone needed content, a personal brand and to be seen as the smartest person in the room.
Ghostwriting’s new haunts
My ghostwriting work increased when I caught a wave I didn’t immediately perceive as particularly wave-like. When traditional media fizzled in the 2000s, executives lost their profiles in the FT and the Harvard Business Review – once reliable sources of third-party validation. The vacuum was filled with LinkedIn and business blogging, handing executives a direct publishing channel for the first time. Suddenly, everyone needed content, a personal brand and to be seen as the smartest person in the room.
The demand far exceeded the number of executives actually capable of writing, leading to a booming industry for people like me: only too happy to work in the shadows and to learn something new.
The irony runs deep: “thought leadership” has authenticity boiled into its branding, yet there’s often a ghostwriter baked into its creation. The words and ideas of the thought leader are often, at least partly, someone else’s. And this isn’t any big secret.
Sometimes the irony goes even further: the thought leader doesn’t just outsource the writing – they also outsource the thinking.
Putting the thought into thought leadership
Sometimes the irony goes even further: the thought leader doesn’t just outsource the writing – they also outsource the thinking. I interview researchers, specialists, partners and others on their behalf, synthesise those conversations into a clear story and present it as their voice. The byline is theirs. The legwork is mine. And since the writing usually relates to areas like healthcare, sustainability and human rights, where my own voice is but a squeak, I’m totally fine with it.
The work brings me into conversation with genuinely kickass folk – experts of their fields, including AI. Unexpectedly, these talks prepared me for the age of AI better than anything else could have. The AI companies I’ve ghostwritten for – staffed with people who understood these models better than almost anyone – didn’t trust the existing tools to tell their own stories. They called a human.
Luckily, I had long self-branded myself as desperately human.
The ghostwriter who once worked alone now frequently collaborates with tools that can summarise and suggest. We’re like ghosts with our own ghosts.
The ghost gets a co-pilot
With the rise of AI, the landscape is changing – again.
Ghostwriting has always been a form of co-piloting. You inhabit someone else’s point of view, pulling the story out of them, and then shaping it into something that sounds like them, only sharper. AI is improving at parts of that process. Not all of it (not yet), but enough to reshape the role.
The ghostwriter who once worked alone now frequently collaborates with tools that can summarise and suggest. We’re like ghosts with our own ghosts. And I am more than happy to finally have a spectral grumpy editor covering my back and pointing out any mistakes and potential improvements.
Meanwhile, that instinct – to have one’s story told and told well – isn’t going anywhere. The same tools producing an ocean of AI slop are making what I do more valuable. Turns out, when everything sounds the same, sounding like yourself has a market.
Avoiding the void
I’m always surprised by the stories that arise in a relaxed, conversational atmosphere. Most people, given the right conditions, have something genuinely worth saying – and it doesn’t matter if you are CEO of a frontier AI scale-up with a “vision” or a maintenance manager trying to run a factory in the most efficient way possible. They all just need someone to help them translate their insights into text. The scribes already knew this.
Trump’s ghostwriter Schwartz also knew it, even if he later regretted it. After working with Trump, he felt, as he put it, “a gnawing emptiness”, and ended up writing a book about becoming a seeker – “to be connected to something timeless and essential, more real.”
I don’t feel that emptiness. These conversations are the connection. I just have to make sure I’m not holding any lipstick.
