If you’re an aspiring business book writer, this article is for you. And if you know someone who is, this article is for them. Share it with them. 
 
Our topic: How to get the most from your ghost copy-editor. 
 
We feel pretty qualified to weigh in on this topic, having ghost-copy-edited numerous books for various authors, some of whose works have gone on to become Amazon bestsellers. 
 
First things first: Credit where it’s due. Those aforementioned bestsellers did not become bestsellers because of us. It was due to the authors’ vision, as well as the complete marketing team that guided the book through its gestation. 
 
Still. We were along for the process from concept to completion. 
 
Interested in penning a business book? Let’s dive in. 
 
Division of labor
 
When you hear phrases like “ghost writer” or “ghost copy-editor,” you likely think of some celebrity, sitting back and sipping martinis, while some poor hack does all the work of actually writing the celebrity’s so-called “memoir,” or whatever. 
 
And that may well be true, in that instance. 
 
But that is not what we’re talking about here. 
 
Here, we’re talking about you, as a thought-leader in your business area of interest. You want to share your wisdom and experience with others. Done right, everyone benefits: Your readers elevate their knowledge. And you elevate your status as an authority. Heck, a published authority. 
 
So this is, clearly, not about sipping martinis and letting someone else come up with the ideas. The ideas here are yours. All of them. 
 
After that, however, it gets fuzzier. 
 
And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the opposite is true. When this process is done right, it’s custom tailored to you, and no one else. We’ve worked with authors who are detail freaks. We’ve worked with authors who are bulls-in-China-shops. And in every case, it’s our job to accommodate their style of working. 
 
Ta-dah. If you take nothing else away from this article, it should be this: Your preferred and most comfortable style of working is the one that is best for you, when working with a ghost copy-editor. Period.
 
It’s hard enough for you to get these ideas out of your head and down on paper. And then to pay someone to lubricate that process can feel like adding insult to injury. 
 
But if it’s a good fit, it will be the opposite. It will be intuitive, stress-relieving, and rewarding. You’ll get to see pages appear that make you say, “Dang! I never realized I was that good!”
 
And that’s just when it comes to the finished product: the pages. In consultant-speak, that’s the “destination.” Which is certainly crucial. But equally important is the “journey.” How do you like to work? In person? Via Zoom? Transactionally and asynchronously, via email? Or some crazy hybrid of all of the above? Are you serious? Are you playful? Do you work in marathons? Or sprints? 
 
Again, it doesn’t matter. Whatever works best for you is what’s best. Period. 
 
So we’ve done brainstorming sessions to help authors tease out ideas. And we’ve worked with others who have simply “thrown stuff over the wall” at us, nearly completely baked. 
 
And what’s our reward? Sure, we get paid. But the far bigger reward is seeing the happiness that our authors derive from both the journey and the destination. 
 
Remember: “Ghost.” Our name does not appear, anywhere, on any of the books we’ve helped shepherd to press. So it’s got to be a good relationship—on both sides—for it to work. 
 
Writing a book is a big project. It takes a long time, typically measured in months. So be sure you choose a ghost you can live with. 
 
Have a book project you’d like to discuss? Contact us, and let’s see if it’s a good fit. 

​There’s a hint in the headline to this article. Read it again. 
 
We’ll circle back to it in a minute. But the topic is important: You want to fill that room for your upcoming webinar! Otherwise, all of that prep work is for naught. 
 
Here, we’ll give you some pointers, based on actual client experiences, to help you boost your odds. 
 
To webinar or not to webinar
 
This entire article, and the recommendations herein, predicate on some pretty big assumptions: 
 
1) You think a webinar is an optimal marketing tactic for your business, and 
 
2) You’ve done a stellar job creating the presentation you’ll deliver during the webinar itself. 
 
Those are huge assumptions. 
 
A webinar is, as we’d noted above, a big commitment. They’re hard to do. It’s much easier, say, to be a guest on someone else’s well-established podcast (we have an article on that topic, too), but that isn’t necessarily easy to get, either. 
 
To have a successful webinar—and by “successful,” we mean “one that brings in prospects and leads to future business-generating conversations with them individually”—you need to choose a ripe topic that will attract your desired audience. You need to craft a really great presentation for them. You need to hone it and rehearse it. You need to publicize the event before it happens, in order to “fill the room.” You need to manage attendee lists and email sequencing thereto. You need to nail the presentation when you do it live. And you need to crush the follow-up, because that’s the impetus for the entire webinar in the first place: building new business. 
 
Phew. 
 
If that checklist sounds daunting, good. It should. But the upside can well be worth it; we’ve helped numerous clients with webinars that they’ve used to build business. 
 
While we’ve worked on various facets of webinar development and production, we’d like to focus on just one aspect here. It’s the “teaser” that we’d teased in the headline. 
 
Building unbearable suspense
 
Marketing a webinar is like marketing a Hollywood movie that’s slated for theatrical release: It’s all about driving the maximum traffic for one specific date. For a movie studio, it’s opening weekend. For you, it’s your webinar date and time. 
 
So your marketing—let’s say, your social ads—for this webinar is exactly like what you see—say, on TV—for a movie. You may not have noticed this, but you’ll almost never see a TV commercial for a movie that’s already opened. That window has closed. Ditto for your webinar. 
 
So you can learn—and borrow a page—from Hollywood here. Think about a movie ad or a trailer: It gives you glimpses of the very best moments of the movie. Because the (untrue) assumption you have, as a viewer, is that the rest of the movie will be that good. But it isn’t. It never is. It can’t be. 
 
Still, you can tease snippets and factoids from your webinar, since you already know all of its content, and can gauge, pretty easily, what you think are some of its juiciest tidbits. 
 
And here’s the last bit of inspiration we’ll give you. It’s the one we’d teased in the headline of this article. And it’s one you’ve seen in several places. Here’s one: 
 
You’ve seen it on the TV news. Just as they’re about to head into a commercial. They’ll never tell you, for example: 
 
“The U.S. Olympic committee just chose Los Angeles as its next host city! We’ll give you all the details after the break.” 
 
That never happens! You know that. It’s always something more like this: 
 
“The U.S. Olympic committee just chose its next host city, and you won’t believe where it is! Get all the details after the break.” 
 
It’s a teaser. Reading about it, here, makes you groan, but you’ve got to admit that it’s effective. 
 
And here’s the lowest form of teaser, but we still love them, in a perverse way; and it’s what inspired our headline for this article: 
 
Clickbait! 
 
Yep, all of those “stories” you’ll see at the bottom of a news article’s page, with headlines like “You won’t believe how so-and-so looks today” or “My jaw dropped when I saw her dress” or whatever. 
 
Now look at your webinar content. Think of what, in it, is exciting. And then tease the heck out of it.
 
Need help with a webinar challenge, or any other marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help.