Self Publishing Interview with Ghostwriter Tim Knox

About this video

Dale interviews Tim Knox — best-selling author, serial entrepreneur, syndicated newspaper columnist, comedian, speaker, and talk radio and TV host who spent about 30 years in the software business and now works mainly as a book editor and ghostwriter through Knox Media. Knox says he would rather write his own work but makes more money ghostwriting and editing because he is paid upfront and does not have to worry about marketing; he claims he will do six figures this year ghostwriting while probably not making $6 on his own book, and cites a statistic that 99% of writers make less than $5,000 a year. He argues ghostwriting is not unethical: it is hiring someone to perform a service, like hiring someone to cut your grass, and notes that many celebrity, motivational, and even James Patterson books are substantially ghostwritten. He walks through a typical engagement: a client brings research and a premise (in one example, an 80,000-word young adult mystery), Knox builds the outline and character profiles, the client approves and pays 50% of the fee, Knox writes and edits over a couple of months, and on final payment the work, ownership, and credit belong entirely to the client, who may publish under a pen name with a brief fictional bio and hire separate marketing. On pricing, he says a real ghostwriter charges anywhere from ten cents to fifty cents a word — an 80,000-word book at six cents a word would be $4,800 just for the book — his own average is 10 to 15 cents a word including editing, and editing an 80,000-word fiction book runs roughly $1,500 to $6,000 depending on whether it is copy, developmental, or rewrite editing. He warns that one-to-two-cent-a-word Upwork writers usually deliver poor quality. His advice to new self-publishers is to start with the customer: research the genre and its subgenres on Amazon, study the top five or ten selling books to gauge marketability before creating anything, publish in an area you actually like, and approach it as a business rather than a hobby — he says he once had 300 books on Amazon at one time and lost money on genres his heart was not in because he did not market them well.

Key takeaways

• Knox prefers ghostwriting economics: paid upfront with no marketing burden; he claims six figures from ghostwriting versus almost nothing from his own books
• Ghostwriting, in his framing, is a paid service like hiring someone to cut your grass — the client owns the work and may publish it under a pen name
• Real ghostwriters charge roughly ten to fifty cents a word per Knox; his average is 10 to 15 cents including editing, and cheap one-to-two-cent writers deliver poor quality
• A typical deal: outline and character profiles first, 50% of the fee on approval, then writing and editing, with no ownership or credit retained by the ghostwriter
• New publishers should start with the customer — research genre demand and top-selling books on Amazon first, choose a genre they like, and treat publishing as a business

Episode details: published August 1, 2017 · 29:24 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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