It's just an ebook! Should I hire a ghostwriter?

If you’re looking at publishing a digital-first or digital-only book, do you still need a ghostwriter? Well, ask yourself this: if you were publishing a print book, would you want to hire a professional writer?

These days, we shouldn’t differentiate between print and electronic as “better” or “worse.” Some statistics say as many as one in four Americans owns and uses an e-reader, so don’t think that your e-book doesn’t have to be just as good as a print edition, because it does have to be as good—if not better. Thanks to the ease of self-publishing, the e-market is more heavily saturated than print, and you and your ghostwriter will need to work even harder to make a splash. Luckily, many writers are familiar with publishing digitally, and all you two will need to do is work together to come up with a plan to make your book work.

Before you even hire a ghostwriter, decide what kind of e-book you will want to create and thus what e-reader platforms you’ll reach. Using things such as color or interactivity can limit the types of devices on which your e-book will run. You’ll also want to talk to potential ghostwriters about their experience with e-books to see how much they can help you in the process.

If you are creating a standard, or “vanilla,” e-book (no bells and whistles such as video or audio), then there are few if any differences in the ghostwriting process. No matter how you skin it, you’ll need a solidly researched, well-written manuscript. And for a straight-text e-book, you don’t need much else.

Should you decide to add the aforementioned bells and whistles, you and your ghostwriter will need to come up with a plan. How will you denote where a specific image, video, or sound clip will go? Will your writer help you in the conversion process? You will also need to get the rights and proper permissions for any extra materials you use, and you will probably want to have some kind of QA process to make sure the hyperlinks land on the proper webpages and your videos don’t cut out in the middle. Of course, many of those items can be handled by professional e-book conversion companies, so you may need to involve multiple resources in the creation of your book.

To return to our original question, should you hire a ghostwriter for an e-book project? My answer is yes. If you’re thinking about working with a ghostwriter, odds are you need or want one, and the format of your book shouldn’t influence your decision.

Contact the Jenkins Group and tell us about your project