The Power of Specialization: Why Ghostwriters Should Find Their Niche

By Brunella Costagliola

Her voice was barely a whisper, broken up by the knot of tears in her throat threatening to betray her composure. “I don’t know how you did it, but you wrote exactly how I felt.”

On the other end of the line, I smiled.

Though I couldn’t see her, I knew she was looking at the same page of her memoir I was staring at on my computer screen. A scene in particular staring back at me.

“The thing is”—she paused for a moment—“I never told you how I felt, yet you wrote it anyway. How did you do that?”

I can’t say the question surprised me. I just hoped it wouldn’t come, because then I’d have to break a self-imposed rule of never allowing my ghostwriter clients to get to know me as well as I have to get to know them.

As ghostwriters, it is our job to place ourselves in our author’s shoes to live what they lived and feel what they felt, so much so that, when a loved one reads their book, they would never suspect that behind those words is, essentially, a stranger. It is therefore crucial for the author to trust the ghostwriter enough to recount and reveal—sometimes for the very first time, even to themselves—what it was like living through certain moments and traumatic experiences. And it is part of a ghostwriter’s job to facilitate and establish this trustworthy relationship.

I cleared my throat and confessed. “I’m a military spouse too.”

“Ah,” she sighed. “That’s why you know how I felt.”

Indeed. The scene in question was the one often shown on TV where military servicemembers come home after a long deployment and their spouses and children are waiting for them with posters made by little hands, plump balloons, and hopeful smiles that the worst part is finally behind them.

That’s the scene she thought she had to describe. The acceptable one, the known one, the expected one. Yet, her innuendos, silence, and hesitation told me otherwise. They tasted of emotional censorship. I could sense there was more to the story, so I began circling around it with questions that became more and more direct. There were hints as to how she really felt, phrases and sentences that oozed with exasperation but masqueraded by laughter. “I told him countless times that the mugs are in the top right cabinet, yet every single morning he opens the left one because that’s where they were in the barracks.” Or, “He comes home expecting the same kid he left, but our son grew up while he was gone. And he can’t accept that.” Another nervous laugh.

In the scene we were talking about, I translated the nervous laughs, the words she didn’t say out loud but that I could hear anyway, because I lived through the same frustrations, the same reality checks that slap you in the face long after the TV cameras have moved on, those posters have been thrown in the garage to collect dust, and the balloons, now deflated, forgotten behind couches. That scene revealed an uncomfortable truth, one known by virtually every military spouse: the homecoming is not the idyllic family reunion TV makes it out to be.

Her book, published in the mid-2010s, went on to become critically acclaimed and made a lasting impact not only within the military community but also on my career. By then, I had been working in the publishing industry as a ghostwriter and editor for about five years. At the same time, I had been living and breathing the military life for just a couple of years longer. It was after working with her that I decided to completely pivot my career and go from being a generalist—working on almost every project that came my way, regardless of genre or topic—to becoming a specialist.

In 2019, I founded The Military Editor® Agency, my ghostwriting and editing agency that caters exclusively to military voices and military-related manuscripts. The pivot was terrifying. I was leaving steady work and income that allowed my dual-income family to live comfortably to potentially sentencing us to a one-income household. But I believed that I could bring something to the ghostwriting table that most ghostwriters who weren’t part of the military community couldn’t: cultural fluency.

As it turned out, many want-to-be-authors believed the same thing. After a few months of being in business, I had a two-year waiting list of people who signed up—and paid for a retainer—to work directly with me. My company became a Forbes NEXT1000 honoree, and within the military community, news of my specialized ghostwriting and editing services spread faster than a rumor through the barracks. Authors expressed their relief at the fact that they didn’t need to explain what PCS or TDY mean, that I knew what they meant when they said they wanted the Shirt to be a character in their book, or, like that one author, I knew how they felt without needing them to spell it out for me.

Finding my niche made me understand that I was more than a ghostwriter; I was a translator, fluent in military lingo and culture. It was therefore easy for me to translate their experiences in such a way that they would transcend the military world and reach a civilian audience, while allowing my author to simply speak and behave the way they normally would.  They never had to translate their experiences for me—a process that could have caused crucial details, nuances, and emotions to be lost in translation.

This mutual understanding created an ecosystem of trust between us, because authors hand us their expertise, reputation, or a story they have carried for years and need to trust that we will understand not only their words, but the world behind those words. That’s why I believe that finding your specialization becomes an advantage in the craft itself. For example, a ghostwriter who specializes in healthcare may recognize nuances in a physician’s experience that another would miss.

Specialization creates contextual understanding, which then creates better books and something that every ghostwriter needs: authority. When you position yourself as a specialist, referrals become more specific. Instead of someone saying, “I know a ghostwriter,” they can say, “I know the perfect ghostwriter for this.” That distinction is powerful. After years of being a specialist, I now have publishing professionals and even movie directors reaching out to me because they have a military-based project they need my help with.

With the rise of AI and the threats it poses to our craft and livelihood, I believe specialization may be one of our greatest advantages. Our deep understanding of the human experience within a particular community gives us a level of insight, context, and fluency that cannot be easily replicated. AI may be able to generate words and parrot voices, but a specialist brings something more valuable to the page: a deep understanding of the people and experiences behind those words. In an increasingly AI-driven world, our specialization is what gives us depth, and that depth is what makes us indispensable.

Brunella Costagliola is the founder of The Military Editor® Agency, a ghostwriting and editing agency that specializes exclusively in military authors and military-related manuscripts. With more than a decade of experience as a publishing professional, including work with HarperCollins and WME, she is a sought-after subject-matter expert and speaker on military storytelling and editing.