Confessions of a Christian Ghostwriter
Thoughts on quitting publishing, writing books, and the life of the mind.
This post is my contribution to the conversation about the publishing world in general and the Christian publishing world in particular.
Here, I quickly sketch what I do for a living as a professional freelance writer, editor, and collaborator. I also tell the story of how I became a writer, how I got my first book deal as a non-platformed writer, and why I decided to walk away from the publishing world for over two years while living in Oxford, England, studying for my Ph.D.
My perspective is limited to my personal experience. That said, over the last decade and a half, I’ve cultivated wonderful friendships with agents, editors, and writers. Many share concerns about the publishing industry’s focus on platformed authors and writers' pressures to sell the work.
Like music and television, the publishing world is a business with sales expectations. Your advance from a book deal is the primary indicator of the publisher’s expectation of how many books you want to tell. The higher the advance, the more books you are expected to sell.
Many writers struggle with this, including me. But that is the deal we all sign up for.
However, though publishing is a business, writing is an art form. The writers I know and love as friends are artists who care deeply for the written word, the life of the mind, and the craft of writing.
We live in a postmodern world where the craft of writing is increasingly undervalued. Mass media train the public to expect free and easily consumed content.
Substack has provided an excellent afront to this reality. And quite honestly, it is putting the publishing world on notice. As Lore Wilbert Ferguson points out on her Substack, why go through the stress of writing, marketing, and launching a book that will last for three months in the public eye and fade when you can pour into a wonderful audience on Substack with your writing?
But as much as I love Substack and its potential to fund writers through financial support from readers, I also love books. I love the publishing process. At some level, every writer must count the cost demanded of him or her when pursuing the writing life of publishing books.
Writing is good, hard work. Publishing is gift—it provides a reading audience with a sliver of the writer’s mind and imagination. As Stephen King said, writing is telepathy. You connect with me through the medium of words to my inner thoughts. It’s wonderfully beautiful.
My hope? That a middle path emerges where audiences financially support writers on this platform, and publishers can adjust their approach to the life of the mind in a less mercenary way.
This post is not just for writers and creatives. It’s for readers, which is all of us. Readers need to understand the world of publishing since it touches multiple areas of our lives: television, news, books, articles online, music, etc.
Together, we can forge a better creative world.
What I Do
I am a writer. I work as a professional ghostwriter or collaborator. And I’m a Christian. Cue the horror film music.
I’ve supported my family for over 16 years in the publishing industry, working independently with authors, churches, non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, pastors, musicians, and professional athletes.
Where most people my age work for a company or organization and receive a salary and benefits, I’ve worked as a contract freelance writer for the entirety of my professional career, except for one. That year, I worked at a Christian nonprofit as an associate editor, and it was the worst experience of my life as a writer and creative person.
Like any profession, working as a professional writer has its valleys. I have been lied to, lied about, and betrayed. I’ve lost big contacts. I’ve had clients not pay. I’ve been manipulated by editors at a Christian nonprofit (see previous paragraph) so that I couldn’t rise from associate editor to editor.
On the flip side, I’ve developed lifelong relationships with many of my clients and have had the opportunity to help wonderful people articulate their stories. I’ve learned the craft of writing from the inside out and have the privilege of shaping cultural thought, and I do not take that lightly.
People sometimes think ghostwriting is scandalous. I believe that is partly because of the abuses associated with it over the years. In 2002, Randy Alcorn wrote an article about Christian ghostwriters, calling ghostwriting a scandal. Others climbed on the bandwagon. Eight years later, Jared Wilson said, “Know that to write a book someone else puts their name on may result in good money, but it’s dishonest gain for both of you.”
Wilson and Alcorn perhaps had a skewed view of what they were discussing. I don’t fault them for that. But maybe we should gain understanding before we spout off.
To say you work as a ghostwriter can mean many things. But I do know that it’s not a scandal, and it’s not dishonest gain. I’m sure there are abuses, as there are in any creative profession.
I worked as a musician in the music world for seven years and collaborated with bandmates and friends to write and record songs. The creative process was/is very fluid and collaborative.
This is how I approach my work as a writing collaborator—which is a better way to say “ghostwriter.” Like many pop/rock songs you hear on the radio were written by a songwriter behind the scenes, many of the books you read (fiction and nonfiction) and shows you watch are written by various writers.
James Patterson writes commercial fiction. That means he sketches out a scene on a legal pad and sends it to a writer or several writers—people like me. That writer frames out the scene, “writing it up,” and returns it to Patterson, who will either refine and edit or rewrite it. This is how the book gets written. And it’s not uncommon. It’s called commercial fiction, and it’s not unlike how episodic television is written. That’s one way that collaboration works in the publishing world. And no, I do not write commercial fiction or episodic television scripts—yet. :) In case you’re curious, Patterson makes about 80 million a year.
In Christian publishing, pastors sometimes take sermon series, hire a writer or several writers and editors, and create a cohesive manuscript from their sermons. Sometimes, a potential client will have a collection of writings they want made into a book. A collaborator will work with her to bring form and symmetry to the work, outlining it, refining the ideas, and helping the author articulate their thoughts. Yes, I do this kind of work.
Other times, clients have inspiring stories they want help telling. They transcribe their story with the help and prompts of a collaborator, who helps them form the narrative and put it in book form. I do this quite often for clients.
Academics also use staff writers and researchers for their book projects. Universities often pay these researchers as postdoctoral students or in some other creative position created by government funding. No, I have not done this type of collaboration, though I am working on an academic book for a press in England as an independent scholar.
Many celebrities, musicians, actors, Christian pastors, and ministry leaders use collaborators. Are there abuses? Of course. Is it all part of a scandalous and unethical kabal? Not usually.
But how did I find this kind of work? It’s all so mysterious, right? My mother still asks me how I make money. I tell her I’m part of the Illuminati, which was responsible for ghostwriting the Declaration of Independence and Seinfeld, and we both have a good laugh.
Here’s a glimpse into my journey as a writer.
How I Became a Writer
Before I met my wife, Christine, I toured in a band and recorded several independent CDs—remember those? It was a fantastic way to spend my 20s. I was in and out of university four times; twice, I was expelled. But that’s another post.
When I met Christine, she was the only woman at Grace Theological Seminary in Indiana. She was the number one Greek student and the number two Hebrew student. Yeah, total rockstar. You should subscribe to her Substack. She was why I returned to school and finished my undergraduate degree fourteen years after graduating from high school.
To finish college, I started a landscape company to have flexible hours for studying. During that time, I freelanced sporadically as a writer. Until then, I’d only ever written in the creative space: songwriting, poetry, short stories, and greeting cards (stop laughing).
Then, one of my best friends called me and asked if I wanted a shot to be the editor of the Catalyst Conference magazine. I jumped on it and had zero experience as an editor.
The experience opened my eyes to the Atlanta world of professional Christianity (again, this will probably be another post). Atlanta was oozing with writing opportunities. My friend challenged Chris and me to leave Lititz, Pennsylvania, and pursue a full-time writing career. The year was 2006.
So, we did.
We sold some junk, packed up a small Uhaul, and moved to Suwanee, Georgia. We lived in my friend’s basement for over a year. Imagine it—newlyweds living in the basement of a family of six and a dog. It was awesome—and awkward—and awesome—and hard—and awesomely unforgettable.
I worked for free for that entire year. Yes, you heard me correctly. Free. I wrote for whomever and wherever I could. I’d made about 15K from the sale of my landscape equipment. That’s what we lived on.
I freelanced as a writer and editor for Catalyst, which was stipendiary work. I also worked for free, doing interview segments for their podcast during the Catalyst event.
I wrote for Chick-fil-A’s nonprofit youth camp, Winshape. Then, I got hired at a nonprofit ministry that published three magazines: one for women, one for men, and one for youth. I wrote for the youth magazine and sometimes for the men’s publication. My salary was entry-level and equal to about $15 ph—or about 32K a year, but don’t take my word for it, I failed algebra two.
As I mentioned above, this experience was illuminating and awful. I had never worked for a Christian nonprofit (ministry). I had never worked in a corporate set-up. I don’t even know what that’s called.
Near the end of my one-year tenure there, I was asked into the editorial meeting room by my editor-in-chief, a nice woman near retirement age. She sat with my direct report editor, a young woman about ten years younger than me. I thought I had a great rapport with both of them. But it only took five minutes into the meeting that I realized I was being steamrolled. The meeting ended abruptly after a heated discussion over a devotional I wrote. As I tried to explain my approach, the editor-in-chief interrupted me, threw my printed devotional at me, and said, “This is crap. That’s all that needs to be said.”
Stunned, shaking, and confused, I closed my computer and sat silent for the remainder of the meeting. When I relayed the story to my wife that evening, she was stunned and appalled.
The next day, I was asked into the editor-in-chief’s office. I was shaking and nervous. I thought I was going to be fired and had no idea why.
Everything hung in the balance of this job. We’d just purchased our first home, and Chris was pregnant with our first child.