Member Spotlight: Jonathan Gifford
How did you land your first book ghostwriting project?
In a way, I got lucky. In another way, I helped make my own luck.
My last employment was as a publisher at BBC Magazines. My relatively niche-interest titles got relocated from London to Bristol, in the UK’s southwest, to cut down on overheads, and I had enough years of service (and was old enough – just turned 50) to turn redundancy into early retirement. I got a modest pension that paid some of the bills and gave me some options for exploring other ways to make a living.
So that was my first stroke of luck: I got made redundant, which threw me on my own resources, and I was lucky enough for that to come with a small financial cushion (don’t hate me).
One of the avenues I explored as a new way to make a living was writing – even though I had never written anything significant before. What to write about? I reflected on what I knew and could maybe write about as a non-fiction writer. I’ve never really been drawn to fiction writing.
I had a lot of experience leading teams – before the BBC I had worked for major UK newspapers as an advertising sales manager in the days when the UK’s press was still all based in London’s Fleet Street and advertising was still bought and sold by human beings. It was a very hands-on leadership role in a very pressurized environment. At the BBC, I moved from advertising to publishing and became the launch publisher of BBC History Magazine. We launched in 2000 on a wave (as we hoped) of national retrospection and a renewed interest in our nation’s long history. That didn’t prove to be a tsunami of interest, exactly, but it was more than a ripple; the magazine is still going strong.
So I thought about (spoiler alert) history and leadership. I wrote a book about what business leaders could maybe learn from the great leaders of history.
Actually, that’s not quite true. My first thought was to write a book about Napoleon. He gets a mixed press, but he was undoubtedly a great leader (he was definitely a megalomaniac, but every leader has their little weaknesses).
I read a lot, wrote a few chapters, worked up a book plan, and pitched it to every publisher who might be interested. After A LOT of rejections, one small business book publisher showed possible interest and asked if we could meet. He was dubious about the Napoleon angle and asked if I could write instead about several great leaders from history.
I refused. I said that I would rather starve than compromise on my artistic vision. I would write about Napoleon or die.
Just kidding. I bit his arm off and signed up to write a book about twenty-four great leaders from history (including Napoleon) and the lessons they still offer to modern leaders.
That was my second bit of genuine luck: in the early years of the 21st century, it was much easier to find a traditional publisher for a business book (and even get paid a small advance) than it is now. I went on to write four more books on the broad theme of ‘the history of leadership’, including the great business leaders of the twentieth century and up to modern times.
Then I bumped into someone looking for a writing partner to help him write about what business can learn from the performing arts. He had been a dancer since his university days and gone on to win two world championships in Latin American dance while working as a management consultant for a major London firm. I had played saxophone in various bands in my youth and played for fun evenings and weekends through much of my working career. He and I published four books together via a hybrid publisher – the books cost us money to publish, but they helped us promote leadership development programmes based on our ‘performance’ philosophy.
And then my third piece of luck. The publishing platform Reedsy reached out to me via LinkedIn, inviting me to apply to sign up as a business ghostwriter. My LinkedIn profile showed I had nine books published under my own name; possibly enough for their selection criterion (at the time, Reedsy asked ghostwriters for an eye-watering 10 published books; they currently ask you to have five published books on your resume). Ghostwriting hadn’t even occurred to me as an option, but it was an interesting idea. I applied, got accepted, put up my profile and started pitching for gigs when the first ‘Requests’ came in.
My first job was to contribute chapters for a book on the psychology of the workplace which the author had begun but was struggling to finish – a common reason for authors to reach out to ghostwriters. When the job was finished, she told me her own mother couldn’t spot which chapters she had written and which I had contributed, which remains one of my most cherished testimonials. Other projects followed. I have now ghostwritten around a dozen books for business leaders and taken on several other short-form projects.
So, I got lucky. But I had managed to get myself to a place where there was a chance my writing would be noticed.
What has been your secret to building a steady stream of ghostwriting clients?
Reedsy has been my main source of clients.
The other source is my first publisher; the wonderful man who bought the pitch for a book about great leaders from history (despite his lack of understanding about the overriding significance of Napoleon Bonaparte). He subsequently sold his small publishing house to a major house (which published my next four books) and then moved to become an early hybrid publisher, and published the four books I wrote with my dancing management consultant colleague. My old publisher friend now comes to me where he has clients who need ghost-writing services. I tend to contract directly with the client. It works well.
My third source of work is previous clients who come back for second books. It’s real and it happens – but repeat business in our trade is a slow affair. Like one piece of repeat business every three years. But it’s all good!
What do you wish clients understood about the ghostwriting process?
A part of me doesn’t want to demand that clients know anything about the ghostwriting process; that’s kind of our problem. But I do get annoyed by clients who have no creative input to make but would like someone to write a best-selling book for them. My all-time favorite was an author who turned out to be a 10-year-old boy who had found his way to the Reedsy platform and declared that he wanted a book written about pirates. He wanted the book to involve lots of fights and bloodshed and treasure and adventure (I’ve seen worse book briefs, to be fair). His parents quickly withdrew the ‘Request’, and it was genuinely amusing – but I’ve seen a lot of (supposedly) grownup versions of the same thing: “Please write an authoritative, compelling and provocative book on subject X, based on your own research.” I say I get annoyed by this kind of request, and it’s true, but in practice I just ignore them, after wasting some time cursing at the computer screen.
For serious clients (the vast majority, in my experience) I hope they understand that they need to have a compelling vision for their book and a pretty good idea of the ground it needs to cover – they typically just don’t have the time (and maybe the writing skills) to get 50,000+ words on the subject down on paper. I hope they understand that it’s a genuine collaboration, and that what emerges will be a joint effort, which means they should be prepared to listen when the ghostwriter suggests that some aspect of their life or work is not compelling enough to be included, or that readers will want desperately to know something that the author is shy of revealing. But otherwise, I have few demands. I just want to help get the book they have in their heads down onto paper and published.
How would you describe your favorite type of project and client?
I started off writing leadership and business books for clients – books that the authors wanted to write to pass on what they feel they have learned in the course of their impressive careers. That’s still my main area of work, though I have also ghostwritten books about personal finance; buying “off-market” land to build houses on (typically pieces of people’s unwanted over-large back gardens); and the possibility that AI might be able to develop policy options for inexperienced governments in developing countries. I’m not fussy about subject matter and, funnily enough, if someone is passionate enough to want to write a book about anything, that usually makes it interesting in itself.
Recently, I find myself drawn especially to business biographies. People’s stories are always fascinating and have their own compelling ‘plot’. My favorite kind of client is one who is willing to trust me with pretty much everything about their lives – being someone’s ghostwriter is a surprisingly intimate relationship; one client described it as being a bit like therapy – and then trust me to deal sensitively with the bad bits as well as the good bits. Nobody wants to read a book about someone who’s too good to be true.
What are the best parts of this career?
Ghostwriting has become the perfect career for me. I wish I’d discovered it much earlier in life. I love writing. I love researching. I love editing and polishing first drafts. I even love proofreading, trying to find those last pesky typos (you never will – someone else will). I love being my own boss and being able to choose the projects I pitch for (unless I need the money, when I will pitch for anything that moves). But most of all I love crystallizing thoughts in writing.
Many people find the appeal of ghostwriting hard to grasp (“Why don’t you write your own books?”) but I feel like I’ve written all the books I want to write on my own behalf. When I have a new million-dollar idea for a book, I will write it, and you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, I’m grateful to my ghostwriting clients for bringing me their stories and ideas for me to write about: that’s a great idea; a great story. Now, how do we write a book about it together?
How can people reach you?
I’d love to hear from you. Visit jonathangifford.com or drop me a note at jonathan@giffordcreative.co.uk
If you are interest in applying to work with the Reedsy platform you can use this link https://reedsy.com/p/jonathan-gifford which will give me a referral fee if your application is successful. I didn’t write this article hoping for referral fees and you can bypass me easily by approaching Reedsy directly, but I have a long and successful relationship with them and using my link won’t do any harm.
