Write your own book, or hire a ghostwriter?

An honest look at what a ghostwriter gives you, what it costs, and when to do it yourself.

If you have a book in you and the means to pay for help, the first question is whether to hire a ghostwriter or write it yourself. Both can produce a fine book. They cost very different amounts of money, time and control, and the right answer depends on which of those you have to spare.

What a ghostwriter actually does

A ghostwriter is a professional writer who turns your story into a finished manuscript that reads as if you wrote it. The good ones do far more than type. They interview you over many sessions, gather and check your sources, find the shape of the book, draft it in a voice that sounds like you, and edit it to a publishable standard. You stay the author and the owner, and the writer stays invisible. What you are paying for is craft and the time of someone who does this for a living.

What it costs

Ghostwriting is priced by skill and length, and the range is wide. At the low end, inexperienced or overseas writers advertise short books for a few thousand dollars, and the quality usually shows. An experienced ghostwriter for a full-length memoir or business book commonly charges from the high tens of thousands of dollars into six figures, paid across the year or so the project takes. It is the most expensive route to a book, and for the right person it is worth every cent, because it buys a finished, professional manuscript with very little of your own time.

When a ghostwriter is worth it

Hire one when your time is worth more than the fee, when you cannot write to the standard you want, or when you know you will not finish on your own. Executives, founders and public figures often sit here, with the story and the budget and not the months. If that is you, the work is choosing a writer whose other books read the way you want yours to, and whose process you trust.

When to write it yourself

Write it yourself when the story is yours to tell, you have some time to give it, and you want to keep control of every line. Memoir and family history especially reward the author's own hand, because the voice and the small true details are the point, and they are hard to hand over. You do not need to be a professional to write a good book. You need a method, the discipline to follow it, and a way to lift the prose to standard.

The middle path

Between the blank page and the five-figure fee sits a third option that did not exist a few years ago, a method and a tool that walk you through the same process a ghostwriter uses while you keep the pen. You do the deciding and the talking, and the tool helps with the gathering, the drafting and the editing, and flags what to check. You can still bring a human editor in at the end for a final read, which costs a fraction of a full ghostwrite. This is the route for the writer who wants a professional result, on their own terms, without the professional price.