I’ve worked as a freelancer for over a decade in various capacities. I hustled before it was really a thing. It wasn’t so much a desire as it was a necessity. While I’ve done many different freelance jobs, none of them have delivered so many harsh lessons as rapidly as the world of ghostwriting.
Almost every job has its skeletons in the closet, but ghostwriting feels like a boneyard by comparison. Sometimes you’re just writing mind-numbing filler content, other times you’re helping someone commit plagiarism. You become the dirty little secret to a client or business for producing their content.
Ghostwriting taught me the pain and power of branding, the full difference in needs for the client and the audience, how different each publication is, how this type of work impacts career prospects, and what ethical considerations there are. Some of these may seem tepid, but their implications and impact are major. Freelancing is already the Wild West for work, but ghostwriting is the Wild West of (legal) freelancing.
The Pain and Power of Branding
A brand easily becomes a double-edged sword. Labels become limitations, and the unknown becomes a liability. The more defined the personality, the more defined the limitations for your writing. The less defined the brand’s personality, the more your writing shapes (or breaks) its definition. The weaker the brand, the harder it is to advance.
You are hostage to the brand you ghostwrite for. An article which would have gone viral may not, and an article which had no hope of going viral just might. This all comes down to the brand and the personality you’re representing. You need to work with the brand and not against it.
What is your client doing, what should they do, and what can you get them to do? The wrong approach for a client means hitting a dead-end. I’ve had conservative brands want to be hip, and indie brands want to appear mature.
How is your client branded, how can you leverage it, and how does it impact your process? Each combination of answers will be at least somewhat unique and get you a unique approach. Knowing what you’re working with determines your potential for success.
Branding is one of the biggest issues I deal with when ghostwriting. An established brand means an established expectation, but most clients are reaching out because they can’t get ahead. It’s not quite a Catch 22, but it’s a conundrum. Learning to make the jump to ignore the preconceptions of a client and focus on what they need rather than just what they want is an essential lesson to succeed.
Different Audiences and Different Needs
Who are you writing for and who are you writing to? You’re writing for a patron and an audience, and both have expectations which don’t always line up. Your client should be straightforward enough for what they want, but the audience is going to be variable depending on many factors.
A client may want to push an edgy piece through a conservative medium, or they may want something too safe to succeed for the target audience. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for each situation, and it’s uncomfortable for everyone. It’s easier to change the client than the audience usually, but sometimes you just can’t live up to expectations because the expectations don’t fit reality.
You need to set realistic expectations before you even get near the job, but sometimes you’re speaking different languages. The sooner the client understands their options, the sooner they can come to terms with what they need to do and whether you fit in or not. An article which doesn’t go over well can turn into a reflection on your writing.
You have to fight peak Dunning-Kruger Effect level incompetence sometimes. Many clients are coming to you because they don’t know what to do, but have a vague idea they “read about”. If they don’t understand the audience, how do they even know what they want and need (and if these two are even the same)?
On the other hand, the client is the one signing your paychecks. Most ghostwriting jobs exist because of a lack of ability, but plenty exist because a client just wants to pump out content with their brand. Which one is your client and how do you reconcile their wants and needs?
Understanding Publications
Different publications have different style guidelines, different acceptable topics, and different overall expectations. An article for a blog, Forbes, and LinkedIn are all going to end up largely different even if they set out to discuss the same topic(s). You have to know your audience, but you have to know the filter between your audience and your content.
A Forbes Council post is going to be a lot more conservative with language, style, and message than a LinkedIn post for most people (though it depends on the industry). A blog can be about almost anything a client wants. Each publication is going to have a different type of “censorship” and minimum viable level of quality.
I learned this lesson in academia. A journal article is different than a class paper which is different than a dissertation. To (over)simplify the differences, journals are peer reviewed and have agreed upon standards, papers depend on the professor, and a dissertation is going to be a mix. I’ve had a client for a dissertation request “etc.” be changed to “et cetera” because their doctoral advisor didn’t like abbreviations.
Academia shows the extremes, but you need to be aware of how your medium for publication will react to certain things. Some clients have very specific expectations and requirements to even entertain reviewing an article. “Real world” publications don’t care about as much as academia, but there are still (largely unwritten) professional expectations for each.
You need to understand what a given publication expects and wants from you as a writer. A great article or piece of writing just gets wasted otherwise. It’s not enough to be a good writer, you need to fit in and play by the rules while paying attention to everything else.
Career Prospects
When you become a ghostwriter, you become the dirty little secret. This is one of the hardest parts of being a ghostwriter (or uncredited editor). Word of mouth is necessary to advance in ghostwriting, but what do you do if your client won’t talk? How do you put it on a resume if a client doesn’t want to admit to hiring you?
Most people take a good bit of pressure to cross the line the first time they employ a ghostwriter. There is a stigma in most industries to claiming someone else’s work as your own even if it is a work for hire (and for good reason). Your client has to be willing to admit they use a ghostwriter to even mention you in any real capacity. If they do, every piece of their writing becomes suspect.
You also deal with a certain degree of jealousy in some circles. Just because you’re the dirty little secret to their success doesn’t mean they want you to work for anyone else. Most clients can’t or won’t pay for this luxury though; they just expect it. I’ve found myself either pigeonholed or in a dead-end business relationship more times than I want to count. If they’re willing to cross one line, they don’t really care about the rest usually.
I can’t live on ghostwriting alone, but I can’t live without it either. It pads my income, but even when I lived off of freelancing alone, it wasn’t enough. The questionable ethics on either side (the client or yourself) definitely restrict the growth you see unless you know the right people. The problem I had was how far the client expected me to go. It’s not all doom and gloom though; you just need to be aware of what you’re getting into.
Ethical Dilemmas
Before I learned how to be pickier than is financially advisable to someone in my position, I was continuously faced with ethical dilemmas when writing. I mentioned writing papers, journals, and dissertations, and I’ve done all of them in some capacity (from uncredited, grammatical editing to complete rewrites). I have (largely) avoided full ghostwriting assignments in academia, but that doesn’t mean everything else was necessarily “by the books”.
Ghostwriting is already a bit of a questionable position at an individual level. Most people looking for ghostwriters are looking for someone to technically plagiarize. The ethical implications can impact your longterm success.
You may have no qualms, but what happens if your client passes on your information? They’ve implied they use a ghostwriting service which makes all of their writing suspect. It also paints you in a negative light. You become someone willing to ignore agreed upon ethics to make a quick buck.
Businesses tend to be the most ethical (minus payment) with ghostwriters since it’s acceptable (and even expected) for many professionals to provide “wisdom” and “guidance” rather than to “waste time” with the actual writing. College kids are willing to drop some cash for a paper on a specific topic, a complete rewrite with raw data and sources, or similar. It’s easy to say you wouldn’t take the temptation until the money is the difference between next month’s rent and sleeping outdoors.
Where does editing end and ghostwriting begin? At what point are you no longer implementing an idea rather than creating it? What are the implications? Learning my limits and learning to adhere to them were the hardest lessons I’ve learned as a ghostwriter. And, while I learned these lessons, clients tended to get more brazen until I dropped them or vice versa.
Conclusion
These lessons aren’t anything you won’t get in some regard elsewhere, but I feel they’re accentuated with ghostwriting. You don’t get the overview course, you get the full lesson and all the nasty details thrown in at once. I knew branding was important before, but I didn’t realize how hard it was to implement when you have to follow the train tracks but trail-blaze at the same time.
Ghostwriting is a wild ride because so many rules are made up on a client by client basis. The ethical implications of writing a paper so someone can pass a class are different than a company wanting to publish some marketing filler as their own. It can be the same exact content in some cases, but one is controversial, and the other may just be business as usual.
How you deal with the branding and whether it works for you or against you will vary. You have different audiences and different needs for clients, the audience, and publications. You also have ethical considerations depending on just what the client is asking. To top it all off, the career prospects tend to just plain suck (without luck).
These are the harshest (but not the only) lessons that ghostwriting has taught me. Each lesson has been valuable for other aspects of my life and career. I’m glad I learned them, though I would rather have had the experience be a bit less intense. Consider these elements when looking at going into or doubling down on ghostwriting since you will face them all and more at some point.
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