Copywriters are well placed to move into ghostwriting. The skills you already use every day — interviewing clients, finding the angle, understanding an audience, structuring information, telling stories and capturing someone else’s voice — are exactly the skills you need as a ghostwriter.
But writing a business book takes those skills to another level.
Instead of turning an interview into a 1,000-word article, you might be turning months of conversations and decades of someone’s ideas, stories, successes and failures into a 70,000-word manuscript.
So, where do you start?
Having spent nearly a decade ghostwriting business books for entrepreneurs and CEOs, I’ve developed a few principles that make the process considerably easier for both the ghostwriter and the author.
Here are seven of the most important things I’ve learned.
1. Start with the end in mind
Before you start writing chapters, work out what the book is meant to achieve.
Does the author want more speaking engagements? More clients? A stronger profile? A platform for a consulting or coaching business? Or do they simply want to document what they’ve learned?
A business book needs a purpose. Knowing what that is helps you decide what belongs in the book, and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.
2. Know exactly who the reader is
I get nervous when clients say, “This book is for everyone.”
I try to steer them away from that idea because a book written for everyone is a book written for no one.
I treat this just like a marketing exercise. If you were creating a campaign brief, identifying the target market would be one of the first things you’d do. After all, how can you write compelling copy if you don’t know who you’re writing for?
A book is no different. I ask my clients to identify the top three customer avatars that best represent their readership. They might be based on their existing customers, new clients or someone else entirely.
Once we know who we’re writing for, we start asking questions:
- What problem are they trying to solve?
- What do they already know?
- What could we teach them that they don’t already know?
The clearer you are about who you’re writing for and what they want from the book, the easier your job as a ghostwriter becomes.
Eventually, the book may appeal to a much broader audience, but I always start by making it relevant to someone specific.
3. Find the big idea
A business book can’t just be one long chronological account of what someone did, how they did it and how successful they became, with a few business lessons scattered throughout. There needs to be a central idea from which all the other stories, insights and lessons spring.
I call this the nub of the book — the heart, the soul, the key that unlocks the author’s stories and ideas.
To find it, I delve deeply into the client’s background. Their parents, grandparents, their siblings and wider family. Where did they grow up? What shaped them? What happened in their childhood that influenced the way they think, work and lead today?
Often, the heart of the story is rooted in their family history — frequently in the influence of a mother or father. Once I crack that, the rest of the story tends to unfold much more easily.
I’m also looking for what this person knows that’s worth sharing. What are their principles, frameworks, processes and philosophies? Have they developed a distinctive way of doing something? What do they believe that has guided the decisions they’ve made?
Sometimes one of those ideas becomes the backbone of the entire book.
I don’t go into the first interview, or any of the interviews, trying to force the book into a preconceived structure. I interview with an open mind and an open heart and follow where the conversation takes me.
Sometimes the nub reveals itself quickly; sometimes it takes much longer, but you have to trust that eventually you’ll find it.
Finally, don’t worry about giving away the author’s best material. That’s exactly what a good business book should do. I think of a business book as the CEO’s greatest hits — all the best bits included and all the boring bits left out. After all, that’s what the audience is paying for.
4. Dig for the stories
If you asked me the number one secret to writing a good business book, I’d say: tell a good story.
But it can't just be any story; it needs to be a story with a structure.
Storytelling is an art, but it’s also a learnable skill. Once you understand how stories work, they become more engaging, memorable and impactful. If you don’t take the time to learn the craft, it’s easy to miss the mark and then wonder why readers lose interest in what you’re saying.
Many business books showcase the same fundamental lessons, and many of the aphorisms they share aren’t necessarily new.
Be resilient.
Hire good people.
Never give up.
The problem is, we’ve heard these things a thousand times before. That doesn't mean you need to change the aphorism; it means you need to change the story that illustrates it. Our job as ghostwriters is to dig beneath the cliché and find the story that proves the aphorism is true.
When did you have to be resilient? What happened? Where were you? Who else was there? What did they say? What did you do? What happened as a result?
This is also where your copywriting skills become particularly valuable, because the story is almost always more interesting than the lesson.
I use a simple six-step storytelling formula called CCARLS to help structure these stories:
- Context: Set the scene. Where and when did it happen, who was involved and what does the reader need to know?
- Challenge: What went wrong, changed or became difficult? What was at stake?
- Action: What did the person actually do? What decision did they make or what did they change?
- Result: What happened as a result? Include specific outcomes, consequences or numbers where you can.
- Learning: What did the experience teach them? What do they now know or believe because of it?
- Suggested Action: What can the reader do to apply that lesson in their own life or business?
CCARLS gives those stories a shape. It helps you turn a rambling two-hour interview into a tight narrative with a beginning, a turning point and a stunning end.
It also helps you decide what to leave out, because not every detail belongs in the book. The ghostwriter’s job is to find the moments that move the story forward, reveal something about the person and ultimately earn their place on the page.
5. Let them be vulnerable
Have you ever read a business book or biography where the author started off successful and just became more successful?
Was it boring? Probably.
That’s because there was no vulnerability, struggle or doubt; there was nothing for the reader to connect with.
The best business books reveal the more vulnerable side of success — the failures, fears, mistakes, doubts and difficult decisions that shaped the person behind the achievements. Even someone who started life with money or privilege will have faced challenges. Sometimes that privilege creates its own set of pressures, expectations and vulnerabilities.
If every story begins and ends with your author being brilliant, visionary and right, you’re going to have a very boring book.
So, ask about the failures as well as the successes.
What did they get wrong? When were they frightened? What nearly brought the business undone? Which decisions do they regret? When did they doubt themselves? What did they have to overcome?
Readers have problems they’re trying to solve too. They’re human, vulnerable, riddled with fears and doubts. They want to see that the author experienced those things as well, and, importantly, what they did to overcome them.
Many CEOs and founders shy away from telling these stories because they worry they’ll make them look weak or vulnerable. I encourage my clients to tell those exact stories, however difficult it may be, and help them understand that vulnerability often does the opposite. It makes them human, relatable, just like the rest of us, and that’s what readers connect with.
I’ve had clients cry during these interview sessions because the process brings up so many difficult memories and emotions, many of which they haven’t revisited for years, if ever. At the end of it, some have told me I was more like a counsellor or therapist than a ghostwriter. I take that as an absolute compliment.
Part of our job is to hold the space, be present and help them work through those difficult emotions so they can tell the story with honesty, empathy and understanding.
So, when your author starts sharing a story that makes them feel uncomfortable, don’t steer them away from it. Stay with it, help them go deeper, gently explore what happened, ask how it affected them and what they learned from it.
Those are often the stories readers remember, connect with and learn from most.
6. Don’t save the best material until the end
Here’s the unvarnished truth: most readers don’t finish a business book.
It pains me to say that because I work as hard on the end of a book as I do on the beginning, but the reality is that many readers simply won’t make it all the way through.
One mistake authors make is saving their best material until last. They treat the beginning as a long run-up to the big idea, the killer story or the ultimate lesson.
Please don’t do that.
Put the good stuff up front and don’t tuck your best story away in chapter 14. You might think you’re building towards a magnificent finale, but your reader may never get there.
7. Make it good. Really good.
I often say to my clients, ‘It’s better to have no book than a bad book.’
A bad book sitting on the shelf with your name on it can do untold damage. I’ve read autobiographies where you’d assume that, by the end, you’d feel better about the author than you did at the beginning. But sometimes it’s quite the reverse. I’ve finished books thinking, I would never want to work with that person. I’m not even sure I’d want to know them.
That’s not a good outcome for a book written to showcase who you are, what you know and what you stand for.
A good business book should enhance the author’s reputation, attract new readers, potential clients and opportunities, and leave people wanting to know more about them. If it does the reverse, it’s working against them.
With that in mind, give the book everything you’ve got. Dedicate the time, money and effort it deserves because, in many ways, you only get one shot. If the first book is good and does its job, you may get a second shot, but you’re unlikely to get one if the first book is bad.
I take my ghostwriting responsibility seriously. How the author comes across on the page, and ultimately in public, is part of my job.
That’s why I believe a good ghostwriter needs more than writing ability. They need judgement, discernment and discretion. They also need the strength of character to push back when they think the author is making the wrong decision.
I do that with my clients. Not to protect myself, but to protect them. I’m not suggesting my judgement or taste is always perfect, but I can be a sounding board and say, “I don’t think that story belongs in the book,” or, “I think there’s a better way to say this.”
If you’re hiring a ghostwriter, choose someone who has the confidence to challenge you rather than simply tell you what you want to hear. Most people haven’t written a business book before, so they don’t necessarily know what to include, what to leave out or what will resonate with a reader. That’s one of the reasons they’re hiring a ghostwriter in the first place.
Experience and maturity can be enormously valuable here. You want someone with the courage of their convictions, who isn’t easily cowed or intimidated and who is prepared to have the difficult conversation when it matters.
Could ghostwriting be your next move?
If you’re already a copywriter, you have many of the skills you need to become a ghostwriter. The difference is learning how to take those skills deeper — asking better questions, finding the big idea, digging out the stories and turning years of someone’s knowledge and experience into something other people genuinely want to read.
And you don’t have to start with a 70,000-word business book.
Start with the clients you already have. Is there a CEO who could use your help writing LinkedIn posts? A founder with strong opinions who could be publishing thought-leadership articles? An entrepreneur with a great story to tell? Start there.
Interview them, learn their voice, find the stories and help them articulate what they know but may never have put into words before.
And if you discover you love spending hours asking successful people nosy questions about what they did, why they did it, what went wrong and what they learned along the way, you may just have found yourself a very rewarding new writing career.
