July/August 2006

Working With a Ghost

Business book publishers love CEOs. They have the one thing every publisher covets—a platform.

by Theodore Kinni

CEOs love publishers right back. A book can ensure a CEO’s legacy; see Alfred Sloan’s My Years with General Motors. Or perhaps excuse it; see Gil Amelio’s On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple Computer. They are vehicles for corporate promotion, as in Bill Gates’ Business @ the Speed of Thought. And sometimes, just plain self-promotion, as in “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap’s Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great.

Writing a book is an arduous task. Ask Lou Gerstner. In the foreword to his recounting of his tenure at IBM, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?, he declares: “I wrote this book without the aid of a coauthor or a ghostwriter (which is why it’s a good bet this is going to be my last book; I had no idea it would be so hard to do).”

It is the rare CEO who actually writes his or her book. All the titles mentioned above, except Gerstner’s of course, were produced with the help of writers like me, acknowledged or anonymous ghosts, who are hired to do the grunt work of transforming raw material into rough drafts and scribbled revisions into polished reads. Because most ghosts labor behind the scenes, and also because undertaking a book is not an everyday occurrence, the process of finding, hiring and working with a ghost is something of a mystery. So, here’s some advice from the other side of the keyboard for the first time, or the next time, you start thinking about creating a book.

Ghost-Hunting

Ghostwriters aren’t as scarce as they once were, and it is fairly easy to fill up your dance card with potential partners. But keep in mind that it is very rare to find a writer who is a jack-of-all-trades.

Writers, like the members of every other profession, specialize. For instance, you wouldn’t hire me to write a poem. (Just take my word for it.) Conversely, you should not hire the creative writing professor at the local community college for your business book. One client of mine, the leader of the training division of one of the nation’s media giants, did just that. I inherited the project when the first book in a series remained undelivered one year after the contracted completion date. Beware of any ghost who promises to write “whatever you want.”

The easiest way to scare up a qualified ghost is to ask another executive who has used one. Check the title page or the acknowledgements in books you admire. The ghost is the small name on the cover or the person who gets thanked for his or her writing or editorial assistance. Call the big name on the cover for a reference and contact info. Other likely sources for ghosts are business book editors at publishing houses, literary agents and public relations firms.

More important than ghosts’ names, however, is the fit between you and the writer. Professional ghosts will tell you if they don’t think a good match exists. They know how hard it is to write a book and how easy it is for a book project to fall apart. But a writer can’t make that judgment if you don’t clearly define your wishes.

I was recently forced to recommend the termination of a book project with an ex-Fortune 100 CEO with strong religious beliefs. I had signed on after he said that those beliefs would not play a major role in the book. But, after we started work, he decided that the book must be a religious business book, including scriptural quotes. This was neither the book I had been hired to write nor one I was qualified to write.

Avoid aborted starts by defining your project as clearly as you can. What do you want your finished book to look like? Define the primary focus. Is it biographical? An exposition of your management theory and strategies or personal philosophy? A narrative about your company? Define the style and presentation. What do you want to sound like to the reader? Will you tell it straight from the gut á la Welch, or will you stand back a bit and build a case?

When you talk to the ghost, check his experience against your vision for the book. Has the ghost written books on related subjects? Can he reproduce your style in writing? And critically, do the two of you connect in terms of personality and values? You are going to have to work with this person for months and if you don’t like the writer, it will be difficult to work effectively as a team.

Get It In Writing

It should go without saying: Anytime you hire out for a professional service, get a contract. I’ve heard of book projects sealed with a handshake, but even if you share the same DNA as your ghost, I heartily recommend that you put the agreement in writing.

The key issue in the contract with a ghostwriter is ownership of the finished book. This is no small matter. For proof, refer to the late John McDonald’s A Ghost’s Memoir, recently published by MIT Press.

McDonald was an editor at Fortune and the ghostwriter of Alfred Sloan’s My Years with General Motors. In 1954, he took a leave of absence to help Sloan write his business memoir, now regarded as a management classic. But if it hadn’t been for the terms of McDonald’s contract with Sloan, that is a book that never would have seen a bookshelf. In 1959, after five years of writing and only a month before the book’s publication, GM decided that Sloan’s memoir was a little too revealing and it stopped the presses. The only problem was that McDonald owned half the rights to the book by contract. He waited a few years for GM to see the light and when they didn’t, he finally sued the company over the book’s suppression. In 1964, after many years of legal fees, the mighty GM gave up the fight and the book was released.

At the risk of being haunted by McDonald, let me clue you into three words that Sloan apparently never heard: work for hire. A work-for-hire contract specifies that you, not the writer, own all rights to the book. You can rewrite it, sell it or shove it in your bottom desk drawer in perpetuity—and you don’t have to worry about the ghost.

The other crucial elements of a contract are the payment and delivery dates. I recommend a fixed fee for the book (hours can fly by while a ghost fishes for the next word) and a monthly payment schedule (it keeps the writer writing and limits the investment if the project unravels).

Fixed delivery dates are also a valuable project management tool. If you specify interim delivery dates for chapters or sets of chapters, you can stay on top of the book’s progress and again, limit your exposure.

It’s Your Book

How much of your own time and effort you devote to working with your ghost is a matter of personal preference. You could follow the lead of Ronald Reagan, whose autobiography, Ronald Reagan: An American Life, was ghostwritten by Robert Lindsey. According to publisher Michael Korda, when Reagan was asked about the book, the president replied, “I hear it’s a terrific book! One of these days I’m going to read it.”

Reagan’s wisecracking aside, if you are going to put your name on a book, its contents should have your voiceprints all over it. The book should reflect the way you sound, the way you think and what you believe. This doesn’t require the years of labor that Sloan devoted to his memoir or even the “well over 1,000 hours” that John Byrne told Business Week he spent with Jack Welch in the creation of Jack: Straight from the Gut. But it does require that you play an active role in the gathering of raw material and the revision of drafts.

Bury your writer in raw information, in written materials of all kinds and video and audio records. These, along with early conversations, allow the writer to create an outline of the book.

Once a working outline is agreed upon, it’s time for a brain dump. I invite clients to my home base in Williamsburg, Va., for a couple of days. This uninterrupted time is particularly important when the raw material does not physically exist. I once worked with the CEO of a consulting firm who wanted a book describing a cycle of accountability that only existed as an illustration on a wallet-sized, laminated card. The rest of the book was in his head, and he literally talked it out over the course of two, two-day sessions. 

The other place where you can make a major impact is in revisions.  As your writer delivers chapters, take the time to thoroughly read and edit them. Make sure that the contents effectively reflect your message and that the language incorporates words and rhythms that reflect your style. A client and I usually spend anywhere from two to ten hours per chapter, talking and arguing through each, line by line.

It is amazing to see clients naturally take possession of the work through this process of revision. That is, after all, your ultimate goal in working with a ghost: to successfully create your own book without all the wordsmithing.

Theodore Kinni (bizbooks@cox.net) has authored and ghostwritten 13 business books.