Welcome to episode 75 of Published. Today we’re joined by the CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and namesake of Kevin Anderson & Associates, a team of publishing experts who provide ghostwriting and other services to shepherd authors through the writing and publishing process. Kevin will share with us how book coaches, editors, and ghostwriters support authors, and how to get started working with one.

You’re probably already aware of the difficulties navigating the publishing world as an author, especially at the beginning of the journey. Being able to lean on the experience, knowledge, and skills of veteran publishing experts can make a world of difference in the quality and success of your book. Kevin Anderson will speak about the different kinds of literary guides out there, the unique skills associated with each title, and how to decide which partnership is right for you and your book.

Tanya: Kevin, welcome to Published!

Kevin: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Tanya: Yeah, good to have you. So let's start by having you introduce yourself and tell us what you do.

Kevin: So my name is Kevin Anderson. I'm the founder and editor of KAA, which is Kevin Anderson and Associates. Our company is a team of best selling ghostwriters and editors, most of our team, all of our core team are all former acquisitions editors from big houses like Random House and Harper. Some of the authors they've published and edited include like Brene Brown, Jen Sincero , Seth Godin, even the Tolkien estate, Ian Fleming, the James Bond estate. So that's kind of our core team.

We work with authors at whatever stage they're at to help them figure out their publishing path, help them with developing the book, whether that's ghostwriting, or just editing or book coaching, and then guide them through the whole process: what marketers should they get, what publishers should get, if any at all, what publishing options are going to be best for them, and just connecting all those dots for them and figuring out their plan together and just guiding them through the whole process.

Tanya: Awesome. So you mentioned a couple of functions in there: book editors, book coaches, ghostwriters. Can you walk us through kind of the core people on your team, and maybe the difference between those roles?

Typically, when we use word “editor” we're referring to when someone comes to the manuscript that's already essentially completed, or pretty far along, and the editor is going through and making manual changes to the manuscript, giving some advice and feedback on how to elevate the writing, or even looking at the bigger picture issues with the manuscript. But they're usually working with something that's already written.

The book coach is coming in, usually, before anything's written, although they might come in with a manuscript that just has some issues and they want to maybe start over or they want to start with some existing material. But regardless, a lot of times, the book coaches aren't even touching the manuscript at all. They're just reviewing and giving feedback, and collaborating with the author, back and forth, guiding them through the whole process, but the author is the one who's actually making the changes to the manuscript.

A ghostwriter is someone who is writing the manuscript, they're still working in close collaboration with the author, of course, but they're actually putting the pen to paper or fingers to keys. And often they're really coming up with their own ideas, etc, as well about the book to try to help the author bring it all together and create a great book.

And in our team, we're often working together, often we’ll have an editor that's working with the author, as well as the ghostwriter and working on everything as a team. So we're kind of collaborating and figuring out the bigger picture together, the ghostwriter’s writing the book, the editor’s editing it as we go along, and they're all working together to come up with a final product.

Tanya: And I think a lot of authors are sort of prone to locking themselves in a room and working in a silo really, and not letting anybody see it until they feel like it's good enough to show. What would you say is the benefit to bringing in an expert versus going in alone?

Kevin: One thing to know is that every single book that's been published, maybe save for a few that I've never heard of, have had multiple people working on that book. I mean, no author is writing and publishing their book alone. So it's very common — In fact, it's the way that books are written, that they are edited. So they are getting professional help by somebody else to help fine tune it, to help correct the grammar errors or repetition in the material, whatever it is. There's no book out there that isn't getting professional help. Authors shouldn't have an ego involved. I mean, Shakespeare had an editor! So this is just a common part of writing a book. It's never done in isolation.

You don't necessarily need to have someone come in and start to do some of the grind work right away, but just having that conversation: what are your publishing goals, what kind of book you want to write, what are some of the ideas you have and how do those themes hang together? What’s your platform, what kind of publishing options are gonna be viable for you? Does that change the kind of book that you want to write? All of these questions, you can really get a lot of answers to early on by talking to a professional. And then you can kind of go off and do what you need to do. But at least you have that confidence that you're going in the right direction, and you're not going to make some potentially costly mistakes, where you'll have to go back and do a lot of rewrites, or maybe, you should have been doing something earlier on. There's a million different things that just having even an hour conversation with a professional will really help to put you in the right direction and save you from a lot of costs and wasted time.

Obviously, another reason why someone might choose to work with a professional is that they just don't have the ability or time. There are so many people that have incredible messages to share, incredible life stories, but they don't have the technical skills to write a manuscript. But it's still a valuable message, something that still needs to get out there. So if they don't have that writing ability, hiring a professional helps to bridge that gap.

Tanya: Good points, and I would add that it makes for a more efficient process for sure, you touched upon that. Some people, when they actually sit down and start to work on the book, they start to resent how much work it is and develop a dislike for the writing itself, which is a shame. So at that point, I would definitely hope that somebody would get the help from a professional to finish it versus sticking it in a drawer and saying that experience is not for me.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. It's very motivating to have someone working with you, because then you're responsible to somebody else, you’re accountable to them. And a lot of times their ideas and their edits, them getting excited gets you excited. It greatly elevates the chances that you're going to actually finish the book.

Tanya: And once they finish the book, can a publishing expert like you or your team help them get published?

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Kevin: Yeah, absolutely just having somebody help with the writing process, elevating that quality of writing, enhances your chances of getting a publisher. Hybrid publishers, such as Greenleaf, they are looking for high quality manuscripts. To land a traditional publisher, you're going to need to have very great quality writing. So getting a professional to help with that is often necessary. With the traditional avenue, positioning the book is very important. What the market is doing lately and what is really selling is also important, as well as your platform and who you are, and whether you're really a candidate for a traditional publisher, they feel like you're someone that they can invest in, that's going to sell enough books for them to make their advance back.

These are things that most authors are not going to be able to answer on their own. And sometimes the internet research, Google is going to lead you in all kinds of directions that aren't really accurate for the time.

The other way that a professional can help, especially with our firm — We do agenting as well, only select categories, work a lot with agents and publishers, both hybrid and traditional. We have a lot of connections with publicists and marketers, so working with a professional like us, a professional outfit, we can really connect that author with all kinds of different resources to increase their chances that they're actually going to get a publisher.

The other thing that can help, especially if you're working with a firm, is that you're getting a brain trust that is looking at your material. For instance, with us, our editors are all foreign acquisitions editors from big five houses. And when we get a proposal, when we're working on a book concept, we'll often share that around the shop and everyone will be commenting and reviewing and giving feedback. That committee approach really is valuable to ensuring that the manuscript and the whole concept is at a high level. And that's one thing that we always tell our authors: just start early. It's better to get that information early on, rather than when you've already written 50,000 words that aren’t worth bringing to a publisher.

Tanya: Right. Circling back to the topic of the different roles. Editors, book coaches, ghostwriters. How does an author know what they need? Are there certain genres that sort of orient towards one of those functions? How do you go through that process of screening for the right resource?

Kevin: You definitely want to have a genre specific expert. You don't want to be hiring a business book expert for your novel. Think about what the book is that you want to write, and then look at whoever you're trying to get to help you, the professional. Make sure that their list, meaning that books that they've published and been a part of, aligns at least in part with your book. There needs to be a proof of concept there, that they understand your genre, they understand your market, and they’ll be able to guide you effectively. It's the same reason you don't go to a heart surgeon to get dental work done, right? You gotta go to somebody that knows what they're doing and there is proof that they've done it successfully.

Many thought leaders and business experts, celebrities, public figures, use ghostwriters because they just don't have the time. In that case, you're going to probably go for a ghostwriter. Or, if you're a very poor writer, like we talked about before, if you just don't have the skills, you'll probably be looking for a ghostwriter rather than a book coach or someone. But if you're a strong writer, or if you just can't let go of your material, and you really have to be the one to write it — which, nothing wrong with that! I mean, that's great — you'll probably want to lean more towards a book coach, someone who's little bit more hands off.

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Don't necessarily assume that just because someone was a great copy editor before that they're going to be a great book coach. Definitely look at what they've done before. Have they done book coaching in your genre, and had success? These are really important questions to have answered.

Tanya: I think authors are usually surprised at how many levels of editorial are involved in writing a book. It's not just one editor sitting down, and doing all types of editorial, and they actually often will be going through multiple editors. I think that's an interesting point.

You mentioned starting early. So if I'm Joe Author, or Josephine Author, at what stage should somebody look for that help: When they'rejust sort of a glimmer of an idea, just thinking about the book, or they've actually got an outline? If you could just have a perfect world, and they came to you at the perfect moment, what is that moment?

Kevin: I feel like I keep beating the same drum: It's just, as soon as possible! The earlier the better. Now, blueprints can be changed, you know, you can still make adjustments. It's not like what you set at the foundation is going to be set for the whole duration, but you still are going to want to know what's possible, and start to kind of see the framework of what you want to do both in your publishing path, as well as what the actual book is going to be about.

It's very important to understand the bigger picture before you even start writing and planning. I mean, what does success for you look like 3, 4, 5 years from now? What do you want from this book? The direction that you might take with that book could change dramatically depending on those, and a professional will be able to help you direct your writing and your publishing goals accordingly.

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Tanya: And in terms of that relationship between the publishing expert and the author, what does it look like? When does it end? Do they sort of hand you off as soon as you find a publisher, and then they go on to the next thing and never talk to you again? What is that relationship like, especially in the long term?

Kevin: Sadly, a lot of times, that's exactly what it is. A lot of times, an editor or writer will just come in, they have a job to do. It's very important at the beginning of the process that, when you're doing the contract with the writer or the firm, you want to make sure that it's very clear what the scope is. Obviously, it's not fair for a writer to be expected to continue on with you throughout the whole publishing journey if the scope of their work in their contract was three revisions at the very end, and then that's it. So it's important that what you want from this experience is very clearly laid out.

At our firm, we're doing A to Z things with our authors throughout the whole process. Once the manuscript is finished, our work is not done, we're still helping with the whole publishing navigation side of it. But it's not unusual to have a writing or editing contract with an individual freelancer, that the scope really does end once the writing is complete.

Tanya: Yeah. And speaking of scope, I know every project is different. But can you give us an idea, ballpark, of what these different professional services cost?

Kevin: You know, you really get what you pay for. You can buy a Toyota Camry, or you can buy a Bentley. And you're gonna get back a lot of what that investment is, but it depends on what's really right for you. A lot of people are perfectly fine with the Toyota Camry and it does everything they need it to. It really depends on what your publishing goals are.

But just to give general ranges, if you're looking at somebody who has hit the bestseller list, maybe they've done a couple New York Times #1 bestsellers — let's categorize this as ghostwriting first. So, a ghostwriter that's done some notable titles with traditional publishers and name brand authors, it’s very common to be in the hundreds of thousands to hire that writer. And if you're J.R. Moehringer, you'd be looking at a million plus — he only takes on certain clients, he did The Spare, the Prince Harry book. It's not uncommon for these really elite gross writers to be in the hundreds of thousands. Our top packages are all in the hundreds of thousands, anywhere from $150,000 to $300,000 for a book. Usually that's a pretty comprehensive package that includes a lot: includes writing a book proposal, includes beta reader testing, we do a lot of different things within that package. But even with an individual freelancer, you'll see those kinds of prices with a very high-end writer.

Now, a lot of ghostwriters are in more of the $20,000 to $70,000 range. That's a very common range. As you scale up, typically, you're gonna see more more notable titles, more titles that have hit bestseller lists. Those writers are higher in demand, so you're gonna pay more for those.

You can get perfectly great writers at the $15,000 to $20,000 range and even below that sometimes, but it's unusual to get an experienced ghostwriter that's going to be willing to do it for less than $15,000. That would probably be at your bottom.

With book coaches, it again ranges. Our book coaching services can be $30 to 50k. If you're working with somebody, like if you're working with Brene Brown’s editor, you know it's going to be for book coaching during the entire process. Again, it's not just the coaching, it’s also the bigger picture. You're probably going to be between $30 and 50k. But there's a lot of book coaches out there that have great credits that have done a lot of great work that are going to be more in the $7,500 to $15,000 range.

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Again, it really depends with book coaching, it really depends what you're getting from that coaching. Take a look at the whatever the scope is: How many hours are you actually getting of interactive time, how many rounds of back and forth are you getting? Because no book coach can work forever, so there's going to be limits to the scope. And it's just gonna be fair to both parties if the scope is pretty clearly defined. If it includes unlimited revisions and unlimited reviews and unlimited phone time, then the price is going to go up to account for that.

Editing when you have a manuscript and they’re just going through and adjusting the grammar, the sentence structure, giving some feedback… Usually, that's between $2,000 and $5,000. A book, it can get higher, especially again, if you want somebody that has a lot of big name credits, those do come at a higher price, they're in higher demand. And there's also another service that we do, we call it a critical review and analysis, where no editing is actually done. It's a finished manuscript, there's no editing done, you just have the reviewer review the manuscript, and give editorial notes, they might give notes throughout the material, like liner notes, give like a combined editorial note about all the things that need to maybe be changed or considered within the manuscript, given their background and what they think is going to be best for the book, and then hop on a call to discuss it. Usually that service is between $1000 for like a freelancer to do it, or if you’re working with one of our kind of executive level editors, then it'd be more about $5,000 to $7,500.

Typically, you will save a little bit of money going to a freelance option, where you're just working with one person, as opposed to a company or firm. But there's also a lot of benefits to working with a company or firm. A company or firm, if anything goes wrong with that writer relationship, a good firm should replace that writer free of charge. The firm is the one that's responsible to finish that manuscript, not one single part of that process in the writer is one of those parts of the process. Same with editorial. With a firm, you do have more assurances, you have a team. You do pay more for those assurances, and for that kind of bigger think tank, and usually firms are doing more for you, too, in terms of the start and finish of the project. But it does come at a price.

Tanya: Sure. Get what you pay for. So, unfortunately, there are some bad actors in our industry. We hear these terrible stories of people basically getting scammed, far too often. How does an author vet a partner like this, and are there red flags? How do we establish that somebody is credible and reputable?

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Kevin: We probably get an email every day or two from someone who got scammed. It happens a lot. I'm sure you've heard of these, they're super common. Some of these websites that these companies put up look good on the surface, like they will look very professional. It's happening all the time, they're taking a down payment, they're usually offering some ridiculous discount, like 80% discount off the regular rates. The prices will seem too good to be true, you know, like $15,000 to ghostwrite a whole book, which is just, you know that, like I said, that's very low. If you're going with a firm, if you're going to the company, and if they're saying that they're offering best seller caliber services, there's no way that they’re going to be at that low of a price point. Right away, those are some red flags.

We actually did an article on this with the Association of Ghostwriters and Marcia Layton Turner about these scams because we're inundated by clients that are getting scammed. So that we did write a blog article about this that can be reviewed on our site, it gives a lot of the details and how they kind of operate.

You hear a lot of horror stories about even people who aren't necessarily scammers, just the risks you take when you hire an individual writer. When you're hiring anybody, it's really important that you're looking at their list. Don't fall for the, “Oh, it's ghostwriting, so I can't tell you any of the clients that I've ever worked with, because it's confidential.” Any good ghostwriter that's been in the business for a while has got some credits, whether it's a publisher, whether it's a client that they maybe just worked with, or collaborated with, that maybe they didn't ghostwrite but they're willing to have their book on their list. You have to get some sort of credits. Don't just assume the credit is legit either. For instance, you'll see a lot of these scam sites. I mean, I've seen Michelle Obama's Becoming as one of their titles listed on their site, you know.

There's a million of these sites. They all have cheesy names, like Best Ghost Writers, or Elite Ghost Writers. They typically have a very generic, kind of SEO-friendly title to the site, so that it shows up, and then they pay for Google AdWords and everything, which is just a whole other issue. Anyway, you'll go to the site, and you might see a whole lot of credits, and you might even see some testimonials. Do your due diligence. It’s a big investment. Does that individual freelance writer or does this company or someone at that company — is their name actually in the acknowledgments section of any of these books? Almost every one of our clients that we work with, our name is in the acknowledgement section of the book, or the name of the writer or the editor that worked on it is in the acknowledgement section to the book.

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Sometimes, not always, but for the most part. Certainly any qualified ghostwriter or editor is going to be able to show you a bunch of books that they worked on with their name acknowledged in the book. That's one way to verify that they’ve actually done the work that they say they've done.

Other ways, look on LinkedIn. Most writers have profiles on LinkedIn, if it's an individual freelancer, they should be connected with a lot of people in the industry, you should see a lot of connections to other writers, you should see a lot of connections to people in the industry, publishers, marketers, you know. They should be pretty well connected within the publishing industry. That's a good sign if there are a lot of connections, and you can see that they've got those relationships.

For the companies, there should be somebody, their CEO, somebody that you can also look up on LinkedIn. For the company, they should also be able to tell you who's on their team. Who are these writers? What are their names, who are their editors, who's on their staff? Go and take a look on on LinkedIn, or just Google and see if any of these people are showing up. You can ask for an EIN number and check where the business is registered, make sure that it's actually a registered business. Red flags, they might not have any people actually listed on their site. So it's just like a website, there's no actual individual humans on the site that you can, that you can see and verify that they actually work there. Oftentimes, the copy on the side, if you look carefully, you'll see a lot of little copy editing errors and things like that. But those can be harder to find. They're getting better on those.

Tanya: Doctor, heal thyself.

Kevin: Exactly.

Tanya: Well, Kevin, you've been so generous with your advice today. Thank you very much for joining us. And do you have any parting advice for our listeners?

Kevin: Oh, you know, just take action, you know, dive in. Hire somebody to keep you accountable. The best insurance policy you can take to making sure that your book actually gets done is to hire somebody to help you with it, because it'll keep you accountable, keep you motivated. And it'll help also, you'll keep the confident that you've that you've got a good product coming out.

Tanya: Yeah, I agree 100%. Thank you, Kevin, we appreciate you.

Kevin: My pleasure. Thanks so much.

That's it for our episode today with Kevin. We hope you enjoyed learning about the different publishing guides out there and how to choose the right one for you. For notes and resources from today’s show, go to greenleafbookgroup.com/episode75. You can also find advice for writing, publishing, and promoting your work in my book, Ideas, Influence, and Income, which you can learn more about at ideasinfluenceandincome.com. If you've enjoyed our show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever it is you listen to your podcasts. It means a lot to have your feedback and helps us make sure we're answering your publishing questions. A big thank you to Eleanor Fishbourne and Madison Johnson who produce the Published podcast, and we will be back next month with another episode.

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As CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Kevin Anderson has grown his self-named Manhattan-based firm into an industry-leading ghostwriting, editing, and publishing services company with offices nationwide and a long list of notable clients — including New York Times #1 bestselling authors, publishers, and agents.

You can find the blog post Kevin mentioned on how publishing scams work here.