This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Joshua Lisec, the 34-year-old founder of Lisec Ghostwriting in Dayton, Ohio. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m the founder of Lisec Ghostwriting. I earned my BA in communications and, in 2018, a professional designation in ghostwriting. I’m also a certified hypnotist, which I feel helps me in my work.
I started my career as a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and copywriter in June 2011, with my very first gig paying just $1.67 an hour.
Since then, I’ve ghostwritten more than 100 books and, for several consecutive years, grossed over $1 million — a journey I shared in my 2017 TEDx Talk. As my career has developed, I’ve found ways for AI to help me, not hurt me.
I landed my first ghostwriting project by accident
My dream when I was a kid was to become a published novelist, which happened far sooner than I thought. As I promoted my first novel in 2012, readers would approach me and ask me, “Can you help me write my book, too? I’ve wanted to write one longer than you’ve been alive!”
I didn’t know what to charge. I was a full-time HR specialist, earning barely above minimum wage, so I increased my equivalent hourly wage to what I thought it would take to make a living at this. After doing the math on how long I expected a book to take me, I set a rate of $200 a month for a 1- to 18-month project.
That was catastrophically undercharging, which I would learn when I reached out to an experienced ghostwriter for some friendly advice, and he told me he charged no less than $75,000 per manuscript. That broke my brain — and my heart, a little bit, as I was still working on those first books for less than $20/hour.
I used my relatively modest freelance earnings to fuel my eventual rags-to-riches story. It took six years of gradually increasing my charges, but 2017 was my first year grossing six figures.
In the following years, I’ve achieved multiple six-figure incomes. I learned to charge based on value, not time. If a CEO intends to use their book to strategically generate new sales opportunities, and those sales would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in services, then charging $75,000 for that book becomes cheap.
I only work part-time now
I work in the office by myself on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I meet with clients periodically, though I work on chapters immediately after meeting with each author to keep them fresh.
The rest of my week is for my three children. Before they wake up and after they go to bed, I handle correspondence, write, and schedule social media posts promoting my services — such as discussing online the subject I happen to be working on in a book. This allows me to stay “on brand,” since my range of topics for ghostwriting or co-authoring at any given time is very broad.
I know most writers are scared of AI, but I actually have embraced it
I know a number of people who are washing out of the profession and going into retail, food service, landscaping, or working at non-profits and museums. It’s bad. I would say AI has, or will, wipe out 90% of the ghostwriting services provider market. But as this happens, people need quality editing more than ever, so I’m not that afraid of the AI revolution personally.
My top two uses for AI save me money and time. First, I use Fireflies.ai, which costs around $10 a month, to automatically record and transcribe client conversations, making it significantly cheaper than tools like Rev or Temi. This way, I can go right from the client transcript to a raw draft with a few edits, and then to a polished first draft. Money loves speed; the faster I work, the more I can earn as a ghostwriter.
I also use AI for research, specifically Grok and ChatGPT. I’ve updated my old process for scouring Wikipedia article bibliographies on a subject or Google Scholar / PubMed. AI helps me find what I need much faster, almost like cheating, but it’s not.
The catch is, I actually have to read and properly cite the articles, journals, or books AI finds for me. AI can hallucinate, and that’s a problem when your author client has a brand, image, and integrity to protect at almost any cost. Still, it saves me a lot of time.
I’m also making the publishing industry more accessible
The publishing industry is well-gatekept. Prospective authors had to have landed an agent, who gets you an intro to a publisher, and only after you’ve survived the gauntlet, and your manuscript has withstood the crucible of literary professional scrutiny, are you permitted passage.
Much money is made and lost along the way among all the middlemen and women who stand between the one who writes the words and the one who reads them.
I created ghostpublishing, in addition to my ghostwriting services, to circumvent the usual pipeline and connect authors directly with readers. I help my independent author clients establish their own publishing imprints that can distribute books, including to bookstores if they choose to pursue wholesale relationships.
For people interested in pursuing ghostwriting, I tell them the riches are in the niches
I wouldn’t recommend that any young, aspirational writer go into ghostwriting right now, but if you do, I suggest specializing in multiple genre and subgenre crossovers. For example, a memoir of a niche expert that doubles as a how-to in that same domain and also has a humor element. Layering old niches all in one creates something entirely new and beautiful.
Don’t try to write the next great American novel for a client; write a paranormal romantasy series featuring the male harem and monster tropes. The best way to get noticed is to be the first or one of a select few on a laser-focused, niche layer like this.
