When potential clients reach out to me, I ask a lot of questions. I want to know what they are writing about and why. I want to know who the book is for, meaning, who do they think is the ideal reader for their book. But one other question I’m asking is: Do they need a writer, or a coach?
How To Know if You Need a Ghostwriter
If you have a message and some content, but you have serious problems writing or you have no time, you need a Ghostwriter. When I say you need a Ghostwriter, I mean you need a Co-writer. I don’t think you want to hire someone to ghostwrite your book and then go tell everyone you did it yourself. I mean, why? Who cares if you had help? You’ll sleep better, and you may even have the advantage of having the cowriter promoting your book with you.
That is how I like to work. Let’s list your name on the cover in bold print, and in small, tiny, miniscule print, way under yours, “Jeff Miller.” And you take all the royalties. I love helping authors get their messages out, and writing a book is darn difficult.
Unless you want to be a writer, save yourself the time and even possible failure by hiring an experienced writer to help you capture your message in a reader-centric way, build a logical and powerful outline, and then do all the grunt work of actually writing it. Make sure they’ll capture your voice and give your book the attention it deserves.
How to Know if You Need a Coach
However, it may be you need all the same help, but in the end, you want to write it yourself. This is entirely possible as long as you have one valuable resource (two if you count money): time. If you have the time to write it yourself, it can be rewarding.
But even if you have time to write it yourself, I wouldn’t if I were you. Why? Because I’m guessing you don’t consider yourself called to write. You are called to convey your message and a book is a great way to do that. You will further your ministry reach with a book and will be able to make bigger impact.
What you want to be doing is that work, your ministry, not book-writing. Leverage money and the services of a great writer to accomplish that. One of my favorite coaches in the entrepreneurial world is Dan Sullivan, and he says, “If you have the money to solve a problem, you don’t have a problem.”
But if you want to be a writer, then write you must. If you are new to it, get a coach instead of a GhostWriter. You can also get a good book writing course. Feel free to check out mine here. If you’d like to talk to us about coaching or cowriting, contact us and let us know. We’d be happy to sort that out with you. For now, God bless you in your endeavor to get the truth out of your heart and onto the page.
