Member Spotlight: Ginny Carter
How did you land your first book ghostwriting project?
Moving into ghostwriting books was a conscious choice. I’d been working as a freelance social media manager, building audiences for businesses. After a while, I decided I wanted to flex my writing muscles and make use of the uncanny knack I’d discovered I had for writing in my clients’ voices when I was posting on their behalf.
My first ghostwriting client was a motivational speaker who found me on what was then Twitter. I’ll always be grateful to him for giving me the chance to prove I could do this thing.
What’s your favorite type of project or client?
My favorite clients are experts—people who’ve spent years developing a distinctive perspective they want to share. Often, they’re big-picture thinkers with tons of ideas but without the stamina for writing a book themselves, or time-poor business owners who would rather focus on their clients than the keyboard.
They may be a marketing consultant wanting to mentor the next generation, a communications coach who cares about making workplaces kinder and smarter, or a leadership thinker advocating a more human way to run a business. What they have in common is a clear mission and a desire to deliver it to the right readers. My role is to capture their unique voice and express their point of view in a way that lands with their audience.
What’s your favorite question to ask clients during an interview?
The first question I always ask is, ‘What do you want to achieve with your book?’ In my experience, everything hangs off this answer. If it’s to raise my client’s profile, that might mean writing one kind of book. If it’s to share their story, that would be another and if it’s to spark change in the world, that would be another still. It’s frighteningly easy to write the wrong book if you’re not clear on this!
After that, some of my favorite questions dig below the surface of the topic. For instance: ‘What’s the main thing your readers think they know about this, but which they actually don’t understand?’ Or: ‘Playing devil’s advocate, what would readers disagree with about your perspective?’ Or: ‘When you talk to people about this subject, what’s the first question they ask?’
Even writing these questions now, I’m getting a tingle!
What are the best parts of this career?
I get to become a world expert in something for six months, whether it be phobias, HR, market research, recruitment, entrepreneurship—you name it. I’ve discovered that any field becomes fascinating when you sit with a true expert and learn from their experience. There’s a privilege in having a front-row seat to a life’s work and translating that into a narrative readers can’t put down.
I also love the craft. Turning complex material into a compelling book is part process, part intuition. A concept that might feel dense or technical at first reveals its true nature when I find the right metaphor, the right explanation, or the right story. A tale well told changes what’s possible for an author: it earns attention, opens doors, and makes the intangible feel concrete.
And finally, it’s the results. From the author who gained the international customers he wanted, to the one who expanded to delivering lucrative leadership programs, to the coach who gained numerous clients without a pitch because they were already sold on him through his book—that’s the bit that never gets stale.
What’s one thing clients might be surprised to know about you?
Before I started writing for a living, I spent two decades in marketing – work that trained me to think strategically about audiences, positioning, and results. That background still shapes every book I create today: I don’t just help clients ‘write a book’, I help them create the right book for the readers who will value it most.
How can people reach you?
You can learn more about me at my website https://marketingtwentyone.co.uk, where you can use my contact form to message me: https://marketingtwentyone.co.uk/contact. Or you can message me on LinkedIn, where I often hang out: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginnycarter.
