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The World of Ghostwriting: A Conversation with Douglas Glenn Clark · All About The Joy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here we go.
• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This is how we do it.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: We just this is how we Okay.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Copyrighted can't do copyrighted.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I know it is copyrighted.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to All About the Joy.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: We're so glad to have you here, rick, high as always Hello, hello, but I wanna welcome Douglas.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're here and on the show.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Well thanks for having me yeah, and I'm doing great Doing great Welcome.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So I wanna welcome our guest and I wanna tell everyone who he is before we start interviewing him.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: But Douglas Glenn Clark, who I kept calling Glenn, I think forever.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: We met back in.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we met, but we talked in 2016,.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Right, and forgive me, because I know it has something to do with the AMR Foundation, where I worked with Arlene Rosen, but what do you remember?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Because I was really trying to figure out how we connected.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: You know I'm in the same boat with you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: I remember Tashi and being connected and thinking how did that happen?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I think it was through the foundation.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So here's what I remember.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: For me, it's really important to kind of always have context while I bring people on the show.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: You were helping us or you were going to help us with our website and our press release.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: That's the only thing that I remember and that's how we started talking and at some point we went back and forth on LinkedIn.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: That's what I remember.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was writing for businesses primarily back then.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: So here's my thing.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about you being a ghost writer, but I want to talk about how you started writing to begin with, like did you know as a kid?
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Did it happen to you some other time?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Tell me, when did you become inspired to become a writer?
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, oddly enough, when I was very young, I had three things I wanted to do, and they were all in the arts performing, making some music.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: My father was a musician, okay, and I wanted to write a book.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Now, no one in my family was an author.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: I have no idea why so young maybe 12, I had this distinct choice or made these distinct choices and I proceeded.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But you didn't just proceed.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: You're not like everyone always says, I'm a writer, but you're a writer of everything.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: You've done screenplays, you've done, a play on Broadway, you've done books, you've done I'm trying to remember everything that was on your website but you've written in every genre.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: You also write music, which I thought was mind-blowingly crazy, but I think that's pretty unique, to have kind of such an overall love of the art that you can fit in every genre.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you, I'm having to look back now.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: You're right, you, all those things, and it's been so odd to start in one place and then, 10 years later, you touched all these different bases.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I think one of the best things that happened to me, though.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: I began writing as a playwright and I had some plays done, got some grants and those sorts of steps forward.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: But when I became a journalist which I did kind of through the back door I didn't go to Columbia Journalism School but when that started I really felt that that taught me how to write professionally, in the sense that there were gonna be some tough deadlines.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: I was sure they have to draw from interviews and research and various points of reference to be able to create something.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: And I use all of that today because eventually newspapers died yeah.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Or they're still dying.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: They're still dying.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: There's some holding on.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: There are some holding on.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they certainly have made a rebound because I was working for the Los Angeles Daily News.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: And as a turn of the century.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I mean when the internet rose and it all was glory and everything had to be free.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: But since then, yeah, I mean jobs were lost then and I had no future in journalism then as a daily newspaper guy.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow, okay.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: So that forced me into freelancing, thank you.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: Led to boss and Led to you and I meeting because I was ready for businesses.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell me about your business and Okay, but here's the thing I, you know, I had to do some research on the whole ghost writing thing.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So of course I know Rick has questions too, but I think it's, I Think it's I don't want to say weird, but that's the word coming out of my mouth For you to go from being this journalist and being you know I were were you also a reporter, because you said you were interviewing too.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So you were a reporter.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: How did you end up becoming a ghost writer, which first?
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Can we tell people what that means?
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Because I didn't realize how extensive of a definition that was.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's why it is still a mystery, I don't know, but it does.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, it creates some anxiety sometimes and the people are right for and Other people are fine with it and they just need some help.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: Basically, a ghost writer helps, the author will call the author to be a business person, theater person, whomever Decides they want to tell their story.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so they, they need help.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: They don't have the time or the skills.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: And I got into ghost writing because at one point I realized how do I, if I'm going to freelance, how do I describe what I do?
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: I can't, I can't have 20 things that I say I do.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Right, and I finally settled on.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: You know, I have written so many people's story as a news writer.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: I Can write your book.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I was shocked to find out.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I was heartbroken today and, like I want you to walk me through this, I was looking up books that were Written by other people, ghost written, right.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So some of the famous ones we already know, which everyone no one is surprised by this one, I tell you, but the art of the deal by Donald Trump was actually by Tony Schwartz, and Tony Schwartz has then said he's regretted writing that or whatever.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: So I want to get into that in a minute, not so much about the Trump part or the Tony Schwartz part, but about, kind of, how do you go through that process with the author?
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I am Malala, so Malala, who we all love, right, she's an amazing young woman.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Her book was also ghost written by Christina Lam, who's a foreign correspondent, right.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: But here's the one that I was heartbroken about, because it's one of my favorite books and actually I love the idea of it was profiles and courage.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, is how did I not know that that was a book that was ghost written?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Ted Sorensen, that's right.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Ted Sorensen wrote, yeah, profiles and courage.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: So how do you deal with that?
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Do you does?
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Does anyone know that you are the ghost, that you are the actual writer.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Does the author take over the work?
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: How does it work?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say too, could we for like the seven-year-old watching and you just said ghost, right, like, oh, is it ghost stories?
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: No, sweetheart, like explain yeah what it means?
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: I think a lot people still don't know what that means.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Well, the ghost means I Need to be invisible mmm.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: You like, let's start with JFK.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: That book won the Pulitzer Prize and and everyone thought, oh, yeah, wonderful.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: We have such a literate political leader and he wins the Pulitzer as well as becoming well-known and eventually to the White House.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: Well, how do you?
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: How do you deal with that?
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: How does JFK then say oh, by the way.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't write it, or the son or Pierre Salinger, whoever they thought at the time, how?
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: does he?
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: give up the identity of being a writer and it pull a surprise when you write that.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: That's tricky.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Just kind of explain it in a different way, because I think that's what Rick is getting at a ghost writer in the layman's term.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: My, my way of looking at it is if you're a business, or you're somebody who has an idea of a book but you're not a writer, or you don't have the time and you don't really want to sit down and, you know, write all these chapters out, whatever you hire somebody else to write the book, I'm gonna say with you, but it is kind of for you, isn't it?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's where it gets confusing.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: That's, yeah, kennedy thing.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Well, there are so many different situations.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: For example, I have a new client and he very successful businessman, but he was a very successful young college athlete.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: Okay and that's part of what makes the story unique and fun.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: But we were on the phone the other day and we've just started.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: He said by the way, doug, your name is gonna be on the front cover with my name, and I rarely See that.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: I, you know I I don't fight for it, it's just it becomes so you'd be co-author.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Is that what it is, or?
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: yeah, it would probably be title by clients name, and maybe with Douglas Glenn Clark, right, but you see any number of non-fiction books with two names, right?
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Then I asked a ghost writer they might have just collaborated on the book, right?
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: So you taught me off charge of that.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: And his point was it's an integrity thing, I don't want to pretend I didn't write that.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna help, I'm gonna be.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: You need me to write the book, but I'm not actually technically the right.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: So there's a scenario.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, but that's an interesting.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, is that about integrity?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, okay, let's just bring it back to John F Kennedy.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: He has a great idea about profiles and cards.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: If people don't know the book, basically it's about honoring each Person in politics who I mean I'm really dumbing it down here, but it's essays, right of each individual person who he believes are doing something.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: That's a profile in courage.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: They're doing something so extraordinary and they might lose their election or they're taking a big risk because they're doing what's in the best interest of the country first.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So it's a great idea, it's an amazing idea.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: But he didn't sit down and start writing page for page.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: He hired someone like you and said here's my idea, and then what's the process after that?
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but he was usually not so easy or simple as saying hey, here's the idea.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Go disappear and go write that jfk probably had His own stories, the reason he loved the people he focused on.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: So there would be a dialogue.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Right, let's pretend we know.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Right happened there, but you know, jfk, or the author would be in conversation regularly and say, right, so I have this other idea for a chapter.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: This is the story I want to tell you.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: You know, me and my mom were walking down the street and we came across this car, whatever, and then you would take that information and you would put it in A story form that was written down in a way, because, look at, here's the thing it is rare, in my opinion.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Most people do not write the way they speak and tell stories.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: The reason why I know this is because I am pathetically exactly that person.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I write exactly the way I speak, which gets me in trouble a lot when it comes to grammar and spelling and Using words like suffage, that don't really exist, like making up.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that's really interesting is that when you have an editor that works with you right and that's different and editors different, if they don't know you well enough, they're going to change the way in which you write.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: It's really a hard, difficult one.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So my question for you, douglas, is this how do you get that person's tone, that person's like that's what the mastery is of what you do, because if not, it would just be you, the you writing for somebody else and it's your voice, right.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: Well interesting when Sarah Palin remember her yes yes, it became famous.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: She got a publishing contract and that first bull was obviously a ghost writer.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know and in fairness, sarah Palin never claimed to be an author and was in the midst of A campaign.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: The whole thing that happened with John McCain.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Right, was it John McCain?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, john McCain.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: And one of the book was reviewed and one reviewer said this doesn't sound anything like so exactly right, and that was a complaint, because Palin actually has a voice, right.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, whether you like it or not, she has a distinct sound exactly and rhythm.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wrote a book for a dentist.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: Actually, his son was funding it and forcing his dad to write a story, that's good, yeah, his father was actually not fame, but had become well known for training young athletes, and so, in any case, I wrote the book and the son said to me hey, my mom and I agree that you really captured his voice, maybe a little too well.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I would think that's the.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I would think that's the mastery of what you do.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to catch that person's voice a compliment.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that's the ultimate compliment.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what you hope for.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: But I also say to the author look, you know the way you sound on the telephone or the zoom meeting.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: By all means, I'm listening but, we have to write 50,000 words and there are going to be some times when we just have to be dramatically correct and it's a chapter or a sentence and it may not be exactly the way you talk.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing because you know my first manuscript was like 600 pages or something and my friends took it in sections first to go through it and I mean most of it was cut out.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to miss Melanie's question.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: She asked this what's the difference between a ghost writer and using a pen name?
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Great question, melanie.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: Great question yeah, excellent a pen name.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: You remember that, that somewhat famous author JK Rowling?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, harry Potter.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Well, she used a pen name when she decided she wanted to write crime novels.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: And I think Robert Galebreath is the name.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: Well, initially, when that first Robert was published, they kept it secret and her point was she wanted to break from Harry Potter.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: And so she's not the first author to start a new series and style using a pen name.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: So she still is the woman we know her to be.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: But for those other detective, those other novels she did.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't read them, but yeah, oh, really, I've never read them.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I've read all the Harry Potter's, of course, when they came out.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: So a pen name, melanie, also is used by a lot of actors as well.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: You know we were talking about, I mean, I guess it's, I mean, I don't know if you'd use the same verbiage, right, pen name.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Well, people change their names all the time.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: They don't use their real names in order to break away, like we were talking about Martin Sheehan in one of our last episodes, or as Rick likes to call him, martin.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You call it Martin?
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Sheen.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Right, but his name is.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: It's very Latin and I forget what it is, but it's this I mean that's his last name.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: No, no, it's his last name, but his name is.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: You know what, rick?
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Your mic is really hot.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you knew that, but you wouldn't know that if I had let you talk to like even a little bit.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean like you would have seen it already.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: I was going to say too.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Stephen King's son did the same thing because he didn't want if he got popular, he didn't want it to be well, that's because everybody loves my dad, so he used a different name, and that makes total sense.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: And so, melanie, that's what a pen name is, and yeah, actors other people may choose a different name, but a ghost writer is not the name on the book.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: You know, let's pretend JK Rowling decided I've got a hairy powder thing in my head but I don't know how to write it, so she hurries me I write it, and that's a ghost writer.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: I'm behind the scenes.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: I'm invisible.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Nobody knows it's you.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: They all think it's JK Rowling's who wrote the book.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Right, let's be clear.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Jk Rowling's did write the Harry Potter, but you know.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Just just to talk about that too, her name is actually not J K Rowling's or Rowling's.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: She had to do that because nobody would would take her book, because no one thought it was a Bible book.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So she went with JK, so people would assume she was a man.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Other conversation yeah, I mean, her parents didn't name her JK.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: She did that on purpose because she got so many rejections, rejections, rejections, and then she was like I'm gonna use a different name, so she used her initials.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how that happened to.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: What kind of people hire you or do you work with, and are there people that you choose not to work with?
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there are a couple I wish I had chosen not to work with.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Let's do the first part of the question.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: You know, non-fiction became so big in these last 20 years.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: It was always a Large present presence in the publishing world, but I think the advent of Kindle not.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: I think I know when self publishing became available in a brand new way.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: Men and women in business, for example, medicine.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: What have you realized?
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: They should have a legitimate book Without feeling it was a vanity press Meaning that they wrote a book, paid somebody a lot of money and they published it.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay they could actually do that me legitimately do something creative unique to their background, their expertise, and I started Joe's writing at about that time you know, 2008.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and for the reasons I've mentioned so often, I'll be writing for, or someone with a business background.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: But I always say to the the author Look, here's my job, I'm gonna help you write the story that only you can write oh.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, wait a minute.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: That sounds weird, right Well meaning, it has to be personal.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: In other words, if I Let me back up a little bit, you said who you work with and who would you rather not work with okay.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Well, I would rather work with someone who understands I Know you have been through tough times, as well as All the business success you've had.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: If you're willing to be vulnerable and Tell me the low points as well as the successes, that story is your story and only you can tell that story because you have lived it right.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: So we may be writing a, a business book, but my technique is to get the author to tell us their, their story, their whole story, and then we blend that in with whatever they want to share.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: But you only work with a.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: You know what I have to be quiet now, I promise.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Well, hey, rick.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Well, questions I had was so you generally have like a contract and say, like you know, if this makes it big, I wrote the thing, so I better get some money out of this thing too.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: I know that that's an interesting point now.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: When we were talking about someone like Tony, who wrote Donald Trump sport Right now that level in the publishing industry, he would have been paid a lot of money and he would have had I'm pretty sure, listening to what he said about the book that he had a nice deal of sharing in the royalty of that book and it became a best seller.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's one thing.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't we all love to have that?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: No, that's it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think you could pay someone enough money to do that.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: To do that now?
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but back in the day he was happy to have the gig.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it turned out, he's a terrific writer.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: You say his name like you know him, I'm just spilling tea here.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: You say, like you know Tony, I'm just yeah, so so don't.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: So his publishing company paid him probably an upfront money and then turned around and he got Royalties afterwards.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Well to rich question.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: That would have been worked out in the contract.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: You know they didn't just say later hey, you did a great job, we're gonna give you all this money.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: That has to be set in place.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: But you know, some of my contracts, of course, are not with traditional publishers.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: I have a contract with the author, and sometimes with an author and what I'll call partnership publishing right.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: And so it's really to be frank.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: In my situation, it's better to have a fee for the book, not worry about what happens down the road, but create a good book, and Once you've done, you done, and that's the money you made from the work you've done right.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So you get paid a fee upfront.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: So let's say you and I were gonna work on a book together and I wasn't gonna write it.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: You're gonna be my ghost writer.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I would pay X amount of dollars.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I know all your fee structure is up on your website so people can go check that out at your ghostwritercom.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: And there are slashes in between each word as it is On the ticker at the bottom.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: But but then that's it right.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, then if my book becomes a best-seller, you don't get anything.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Right there, but well you know yes or no.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: It's kind of.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Let me put it this way let's say we have a stack of money on the table and I can either take all of that money and write the book, or I can take I'm just naming a number 75% of that money to write the book with the hope that later down the road I'll make even more money on a royalty.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: Well, that's speculation.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: So that's the issue, that's the risk Are you willing to speculate.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Right, and it just depends.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Well, if somebody's a celebrity or you know somebody's book I mean, if Barack Obama he wrote his own book.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: But if Barack Obama was like, hey, I'd love you to be the ghostwriter on this book, you'd be a fool to be.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: You take 75% and know you're going to get royalties on the end.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah right, Sure you would you would yeah.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: The president has joked that Michelle hired a ghostwriter.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that I knew.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: And no embarrassment, you know she.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's me out, though I don't know why.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Well, that's an issue that a lot of people have.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: It feels dishonest sometimes, I think, if I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but I had a client who had a great concept.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: I really liked the concept and so I was hired to write this book Non-Fiction and she was so paranoid about anyone knowing that I wrote her book that when it was published, although we had a contract that said in the acknowledgments my name would be there and in some simple way of saying thank you, douglas, for the publishing and writing consultations, right.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Well, when the book was published it wasn't there.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: Oh no, and it was too late for me to do anything, and it's not as if it became a bestseller but I was proud of that book and Ghostwriter has to find a way of making an agreement with a client.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Look, I have to be able to tell someone that you hired me, Otherwise who's going to hire me to do their book?
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I know, but that is a legal document too.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, not that I think you're wanting to sue people or whatever, but actually what she did showed more about who she was.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: It was actually more unethical than what she thought having a Ghostwriter would be about.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, middle kinds Exactly.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Oh my God.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: See, rick, I'm giving you space, jump in.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: So other question was so everybody's different, everybody's case is different, obviously, but what would you say, maybe on average percentage of people, that actually give you a really good skeleton, at least, of what they want, versus just a very brief idea and here just write it, if you know what I mean, like as far as guidance, I mean how does it?
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: what do we start with?
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like if I came to you and I, as if I said, can you write a book about birds?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: And I give you almost nothing else, just about that, as opposed to I've got to outline and here's all my points and then here make a book out of that.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Like, how often is it one way versus the other way?
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Well, it's really hard to begin if you don't, if the author hasn't put something together and that might mean a very loose biography or one client actually works out.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: It's just happened to time out this way.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: It was a book I really wanted to do.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: I really love the book.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: It's called Maintenance man to Millionaire and it's done pretty well and Glenn Gonzalez tells his story of wanting to be in real estate.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Glenn is fine with me saying that we work together, but the way it began was an interview much like this that he did for a podcaster in real estate.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: And for an hour Glenn sat on camera and went through his whole life story.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: So that was ideal.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: I didn't have to ask him to take the time to do that and because he was speaking to the audience that the book would speak to, he hit the major points and it was even then.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: It was just the beginning.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: How long is the process?
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Like someone comes to you and says I have an idea for a book and then it's a collaborative effort.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I assume you speak on a pretty regular basis, right?
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Until you're done with the book, right?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: It's not like here's my template, here's my idea about birds.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Let me know, when you're done so from beginning to end, what would be a time frame?
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Is it a year it takes to write a book, or is it three months?
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, getting back to a risk question, it does depend.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: How much do you have, I think, of those books in the six month time frame?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: You know that's a thousand words, but some, even some shorter books might still take six months, because I have to drag it out, I have to be an attorney in a courtroom Right?
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: I have to drive fast, and so forth.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I find that fascinating you need to pull stuff out from people so that you have something to work with yeah.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: But six months is not a long time to write a book, in case people don't realize it takes a long time to write a book, Even a bad book.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: It takes a long time to write a book.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: So six months is nothing.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: It's more me saying you know, I can only book so many projects per year.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Right how efficient.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: Can I be?
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about this website.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Authorlaunchgumroadcom.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's down on the ticker here.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I replaced your other one, which is yourghostwritercom, which people should go and check out.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: There are links there, and Rick just put it up in the chat as well.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Do you want to talk a little bit about this website?
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is very simple courses and some guidance.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: You know, I even put in the headline on the authorlaunchgumroadcom site hey writer, how about another course?
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: No, you don't need another writing course.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: You just need to know.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: So there are a few courses that you can download for free there and they're very simple, but they're put together to help people who are trying to get going and they can't get started as a writer.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: They want to be a writer.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Or they're stuck and they need a few ideas to get out of that rut, and so go there visit, it won't hurt you.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: There are three courses which you'll see have a zero right next to them that you can download.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: And then what I'm also saying is hey, contact me.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I'd love to have 15 minute conversations with people who are trying to figure out where they belong in their writing, and sometimes they do it themselves.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: It's not a business call, it's try to help them get started.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Is it is the call a free consultation, would you?
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Are you doing a free consultation to 15 minute?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Is that?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: what you're doing I don't like.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I just want to make sure I read the email right and Rick has a saying that I love that.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: He says all the time what is it, Rick?
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: If it's free, is for me.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: If it's free, it's for me, yeah, yeah.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: So it's courses, but also people.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Anybody who's interested in writing a book and doesn't know where to start, doesn't know what to do.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Go and visit Douglas's website, your ghostwritercom, or the one that's in the ticker right now at the bottom, author launchgumroadcom and reach out to him and he at least will give you some nice time and energy and tell you what your next steps might be.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Is that fair enough?
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: That's fair enough.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's fair enough.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be great.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I might take you up on that.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, what a pleasure to be here and really enjoy speaking with you both.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: I hope we offer something useful to your audience.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: No, absolutely so, everyone.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you for stopping by again and we'll be back next week.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you everyone, bye.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Bye, good night.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for stopping by.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: All about the joy Be better and stay beautiful.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Folks have a sweet day.