Member Spotlight: Gini Graham Scott
How did you land your first book ghostwriting project?
I think my first project might have been back in 2011. I was part of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce and at a meeting about what the Department of Commerce did to promote international sales. I believe I introduced myself as a writer with a number of published books – about 40 at that time with traditional publishers, and one of the women there who was based in Malaysia asked me if I could write some articles and business reports for her, since she didn’t have a good facility with the English language. Mostly these reports which she drafted and then I edited. So I began working with her until 2022.
Then, in 2013, I got my first major book assignment, I think from a referral by this organization. It started out with a book about the problems his wife experienced with the police and prosecutors as a result of some local kids who didn’t like her filing a complaint that she had tried to run one of them over. It wasn’t true, but the kids got some neighbors to support them. The neighbors didn’t like her because she had repeatedly complained to the authorities about kids playing in the street, since she thought it was dangerous for them and it made a lot of noise which she heard in her house. The upshot was that she spent 5 days in a hospital unit for a mental health evaluation and eventually the prosecution was set to put her on trial. So facing a potential 16 years in prison, she accepted a plea deal involving paying legal fees and she and her husband had to move. Her story became half of the book, and then I continued the other half discussing problems in the criminal justice system, since I had specialized in this area. I had an AA in Criminal Justice Administration from a community college in Oakland, and I had take courses at the Oakland Police Community Relations unit and became a member and few a few years a board member of the CCPA, the Citizens Crime Prevention Association. Then, I began writing a series of other books on criminal justice for this client, such as Cops Aren’t Such Bad Guys and Crime in America, and this evolved into writing some books about prisons and women in relationships in prisons, the state of division in the United State called Fractured America, which led to creating a web site for all of these books at American Leadership Books (www.americanleadershipbooks.com) and then that evolved into creating games in books – over 100 featured on a site called ALB Games (www.albgames.net) – and that has led to creating a company called The Games Experience (www.the-games-experience.com) featuring game programs based on these games for al kinds of groups of all ages, from kids 9 to adults and seniors. And after 13 years, I’m still working with this client, now ghostwriting a book on child abuse for him. Sometimes he uses my name on these books; other times he uses a pseudonym, Peter Anderson.
What is your favorite type of project or client?
My favorite type of client is one like this one who has a number of projects, and is committed to work on them by giving me feedback after I complete each chapter or part of a chapter or format his latest book for publication. He also regularly communicates, usually at least two or three times a week, and sometimes multiple times a day to deal with a particular chapter.
What’s your favorite question to ask clients during an interview?
My favorite question to ask clients during an interview is to start off with “Tell me about your book” or “What’s your book about.” Then, I might ask how the client happened to write this and what kind of materials, such as notes, a journal, transcripts of interviews or workshops, or a rough draft, that he or she has already prepared. Then, I clarify if I will mainly be working from these written materials or I will need to do interviews and get transcripts.
What are the best parts of this career?
The best parts of this career are being able to work in my home office and being able to set my own hours, so I can readily organize my work around whatever I am doing that day, which typically includes about 3-4 hours of work for client and 3-4 hours of working on my own book, game, film, and other projects.
What’s one thing clients might be surprised to know about you?
The number of books and other projects I have written or produced. This includes over 250 books, over 50 with traditional publishers; over 100 games in a book; over 3 dozen scripts and 20 produced films – mostly documentaries, but a few feature films, and over 150 songs, where I wrote the lyrics. I have worked with about 100 ghostwriting clients over the years, mostly for books and book proposals, plus about a dozen scripts, and a few dozen articles.
How can people reach you?
Gini Graham Scott, Changemakers Publishing and Writing, 2415 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #4-366, San Ramon, CA 94583. (925) 804-6333. changemakersproductions@yahoo.com. www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com.
