In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with author and ghostwriter Jon McGoran about the craft and business of ghostwriting fiction. They discuss how Jon got started through an agency, the difference between fiction and nonfiction ghostwriting, the challenges of working in someone else’s creative world, and how clear contracts and good collaboration can make ghostwriting a steady income stream for authors.
Listen to the Podcast: The Hidden Craft of Ghostwritten Fiction
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About the Host
Matty Dalrymple podcasts, writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage as The Indy Author. She has written books on the business of short fiction and podcasting for authors, and her articles have appeared in Writer’s Digest magazine. She serves as the campaigns manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Matty is also the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with Rock Paper Scissors; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with The Sense of Death; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including Close These Eyes. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.
About the Guest
Jon McGoran is the author of eleven novels for adults and young adults, including his latest thriller, The Price of Everything, which Publishers Weekly called “a page-turning thrill ride.” His other books include the YA science-fiction thrillers Spliced, Splintered, and Spiked, as well as the science-based thrillers Drift, Deadout, and Dust Up. Jon is also a developmental editor, ghostwriter, and teacher in Drexel University’s Creative Writing MFA program, and he lives outside Philadelphia. You can find Jon through his website, Facebook, Goodreads, Bluesky, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.
Read the Transcript
Matty Dalrymple: I am Matty Dalrymple. I am the campaigns manager for ALLi, and I am here today with Jon McGoran. Hey Jon, how are you doing?
Jon McGoran: Hey, Matty. I'm great. I'm glad to be here with you.
Matty Dalrymple: I am happy to have you here. To give our listeners a little background: Jon McGoran is the author of 11 novels for adults and young adults, including his latest thriller, The Price of Everything, which Publishers Weekly called ‘a page-turning thrill ride.' His other works include the YA sci-fi thrillers Spliced, Splintered, and Spiked, and the science thrillers Drift, Deadout, and Dust Up. Jon, you do have the best series book names of anyone.
Jon McGoran: Thank you.
Matty Dalrymple: He's a developmental editor, ghostwriter, and teacher in Drexel University's creative writing MFA program, and he lives outside Philadelphia. I invited Jon on the podcast because he ghostwrites fiction, and this always struck me as mysterious and interesting — I totally get how people ghostwrite nonfiction, but ghostwriting fiction seems like a whole different gestalt. We recently got the results back on the ALLi Author Income Survey and a surprising number of people noted ghostwriting fiction as one of their multiple streams of income. So we're going to be delving into that. First of all, Jon, how do clients find you?
How Ghost Writing Fiction Came About
Jon McGoran: My agent was approached by an agency — a kind of brokerage that handles a lot of ghostwriting, putting clients and authors together. They had recently started doing fiction, which is not something they had done before. I had not heard of that and wasn't aware it was a thing, because it doesn't seem like it would be. But now that I'm doing it, I understand why it is and I'm glad that it is.
I had been wanting to dip my toe into ghostwriting. I used to do a lot of freelance magazine writing — fairly steady, but it always held the promise of a lack of steadiness. I was always busy but never booked more than six or eight weeks out. A friend described it as driving toward a cliff that keeps getting further away — you've only got so much runway unless another client comes up. One of the really nice things about ghostwriting book-length material is the stability: knowing there's a big chunk of work you'll be doing for however long the process takes. I have done nonfiction ghostwriting — blog posts, that sort of business-oriented writing — but fiction was different.
Matty Dalrymple: I know it's always a little tricky asking about ghostwriting because you have to be discreet, but you said that when your agent first approached you about this opportunity your reaction was also ‘ghostwriting fiction — huh?' What made you go, oh, yeah, now I kind of see what's going on here?
Jon McGoran: It was mostly about understanding where the client was coming from and why they would want to ghostwrite fiction. I did sign an NDA, which is very common, and the client is pretty chill about it, but I'm not sure the agency is, so I have to be careful with specifics. But it's somebody who has a public face and a lore that they've built up around them, and this project is expanding and fleshing out the lore of their persona. It takes place in a world they have already created, so there's a lot that has already been established and ideas they have that we want to massage into the story.
The first book I did with this client, they had started working with somebody else and it wasn't a good fit, so they came to me. A lot of the work I'd expected to do had already been done, some of it had to be undone, and there was also a pretty massive time constraint because they'd already been spinning their wheels with the other writer. We had to hit the ground running. It's been a little more leisurely paced the second time around. They were very happy with the finished result, which is why we're doing another book together.
Matty Dalrymple: I can see the parallel with ghostwriting nonfiction — someone with an established brand who wants a book to go with their classes, their TV show, whatever. The theme that's consistent across fiction and nonfiction is that there's somebody who has already established something in a different medium and they want to add books to that. Maybe they're great instructors or great at whatever the other part of their brand is, but not writers.
Jon McGoran: Yes, I think that's true. One of the things that became clear — one of the big differences between ghostwriting fiction and ghostwriting nonfiction, business books or self-help books — is the process itself. The agency I'm working with is still kind of figuring out the process. The first time around it was very chapter-by-chapter, with this notion that once a chapter was written it was in the vault. They actually used that word. And I was like, well, that's not how fiction works. There's a lot of back and forth between early parts and later parts, making sure that if you change something in chapter 17, the corresponding changes in chapter five get executed. That took some doing to work out.
The Outline, Collaboration, and Process
Matty Dalrymple: The idea of ‘we're done with that chapter, putting it in the vault' is a scary concept, especially when you're feeling your way along — and in this case, for the first book, you were also working through the detritus of the first attempt.
Jon McGoran: The first one was more of a challenge, although some of the work was kept and I didn't have to redo it. But the client is always going to know more about what they want than you do. And one of the other big challenges is that if you disagree with the client about what's best for the story, the client wins — it's their story. You present your case, they present theirs, and that's it. Editing can be like that too. I do a lot of developmental editing, and I know that as with editors I've worked with at publishing houses, you're not obligated to agree with a hundred percent of the edits. But if you push back on too much, you get a reputation for being difficult, or you might lose a book deal. There's always a process of negotiating what's best for the book versus what's best for the book they envision.
Ideally your visions will be closely aligned by the time you start writing, and a big part of that is the outline. You have to have a very detailed outline so you're both on the same page. But outlines are always broad strokes — the writing is the writing, and a lot of things come to light as you're writing them. Otherwise the outline would be a draft. So a lot of the process is about getting onto the same page, making sure everyone knows what you're trying to do and how you're trying to get there, and then executing it while hashing out the details along the way.
I mentioned in an earlier conversation that there are a lot of similarities between ghostwriting and media tie-in work, and having that very detailed, robust outline as a roadmap is a very important part of both. I've done one novel-length media tie-in — a book based on the TV show The Blacklist — as well as short stories and novellas in other IP for anthologies. With the Blacklist book it was probably eight or nine months going back and forth on the outline, a 30 or 40-page document, and then once everyone was on board, eight weeks to write the book. In the ghostwriting world, by contrast, you're doing it chapter by chapter with input from the client and from the editor at the agency.
Matty Dalrymple: I imagine there would be very different scenarios depending on why the client is looking for a ghostwriter. One extreme would be someone who just has an idea and wants help turning it into a book — craft isn't their thing. Another would be someone who has the skill to write it themselves but lacks the time. I would imagine the approach for those is quite different.
Jon McGoran: Yes. And there's another iteration — a fuzzy line between ghostwriting and heavy editing. Sometimes someone has a very rough first draft and wants you to punch it up into a finished first draft. That's a gray area. But yeah, the variety is wide. One thing that's important for the ghostwriter: the client might say ‘we've talked about the idea, you know my premise, just go write the book.' That sounds great on the surface, but the outline is also there to protect you. If you write the book and it clearly follows the outline and hits all its marks, you don't want the client saying ‘that doesn't work, let's try something different' and you not getting paid for that. So it's also important to figure out what the milestones are and when you get paid.
Contracts, Milestones, and Money
Jon McGoran: I don't know what happened with the writer who preceded me on that first book, but whatever they got paid was certainly contingent on how the contract was written and what the milestones or mileposts were. That's an important thing when getting into something like this: making sure you know when you're getting paid what, and making sure the mileposts aren't too backloaded. Especially if it's a rush project where you've had to push aside or forego other work — you've got to pay your rent and buy food. If it's too backloaded there's the possibility that things might collapse and you might not get paid the bulk of it. If it's too front-loaded, you might have already gotten paid for the earlier work but the project drags on and you're waiting on that final installment.
Matty Dalrymple: I wonder if ghost writers would specialize in certain parts of the process — like some who do the outline and hand it off to someone whose specialty is filling it in. Do you hear about ghostwriting being parceled out that way?
Jon McGoran: I have not heard of that, though I could see it happening — especially in situations where the client understands story and structure and has outlined the book themselves and just wants someone to write the draft. But I would have a hard time believing that even in that case the ghostwriter wouldn't suggest some revisions to the outline before starting to write.
That brings up something important: the outline works for you, not the other way around. When you're writing your own stuff, the outline is a tool. I don't think I've ever written a book where I haven't changed the outline two or three times during the first draft. That's a little more fraught in a ghostwriting situation because the outline has been contractually agreed upon and is often one of the early mileposts for payment. Deviating from it can be a big deal. And with media tie-in work, in my experience, once the outline is signed off on, it's ‘go write the book' — they might want to see the first 25 pages to check the voice, but otherwise you bring the draft back when you're done. With ghostwriting it's more chapter by chapter.
Right now I was in a situation where I was writing chapter 36, waiting to hear back from the client on first revisions of chapter 35 and second-look revisions of chapter 34, plus revisions I had to make to chapter 31 to accommodate things in 34 and 35. And the editor at the agency was looking at a five-chapter parcel of chapters 25 to 30 which was coming back with her notes. So while I'm trying to write chapter 36, I'm also addressing first-round revisions of 35, second-round revisions of 34, changes to 31, and editorial notes on 25 through 30. Keeping track of where each chapter fits and what stage it's at can be a real challenge — and probably a deal-breaker for some writers, depending on their process.
The Agency Layer: Pros and Cons
Matty Dalrymple: There would be ghostwriters contracting directly with a client versus your scenario of working through an agency, which introduces another set of eyes to please. In what ways is having that layer beneficial and in what ways is it problematic?
Jon McGoran: It's both. Because the client and I are working so closely together on each chapter, neither of our eyes are ever that fresh. Getting some fresh editorial eyes on the work is very beneficial. In traditional publishing the editor usually gets involved at the end — you write the first draft, they give you lots of notes, you revise. With ghostwriting you don't get that, so having the agency editor look at it in five-chapter chunks is really useful. They pick up things that might otherwise have been baked in until the final edit.
On the other hand, it can slow things down. Three people collaborating means that if any two of those parts disagree, things can get tricky. And having to stop writing chapter 36 to go back and address revisions on chapters 25 through 35 can break your momentum. But it's part of the gig.
Matty Dalrymple: When the book is done, is the agency also a publisher? Will they shop it, or will it be indie published?
Jon McGoran: It varies with each project. Some have a publisher already in place. This agency has a literary agency arm and possibly a hybrid publishing arm and offers a lot of services in-house — but people are free to take advantage of them or not. It runs the gamut from the client self-publishing to hybrid publishing, to already having a traditional publisher attached, to planning to send it to an agent. Some clients do a lot of live events where the vast majority of sales happen, so it makes sense for them to publish themselves and not cut a publisher in. As many different projects as there are, there are that many different calculi.
Matty Dalrymple: The other nice thing about having the agency layer is that, even as an author in a traditional deal, you don't want to be negotiating money directly with your editor and then having to have creative conversations with that same person.
Jon McGoran: Exactly. I have a great relationship with my literary agent and I trust her implicitly, but it's great never having to talk business with my publisher's editor — our relationship is just about the work. If there's a financial disagreement, they handle it, and my creative partnership with the editor stays clean. It's the same in ghostwriting, only trickier because you already have a fraught-ish relationship with your client for all the reasons we've discussed. I don't want to inject adversarial financial negotiation into the middle of that. So yes, everybody involved in the agency arrangement is getting a cut, and I could absolutely see someone saying they'd rather have that money. That's a pretty compelling argument. But for me the expertise they bring — and the fact that they probably get you a better deal anyway — makes it worth it.
Matty Dalrymple: As my friend Michael La Ronn likes to say: when you're negotiating a contract, it should be transactional, not emotional. But even if it is transactional, it's hard to go from ‘I want payment at that milestone' to ‘I think the tone of this scene is a little too fraught' in the same breath. The craft conversations and the business conversations are difficult to have in the same relationship.
Jon McGoran: Yeah, I think that's true.
Playing in Someone Else's Sandbox
Matty Dalrymple: Shifting gears from the business side to the craft side — what have been your favorite and least favorite parts about playing in someone else's creative sandbox?
Jon McGoran: Broadly, I love it. I love to write my own stuff — the premises and core ideas of my books are very dear to me, and a big part of the joy I get out of writing is seeing those ideas fleshed out into stories. But playing in someone else's sandbox is like, when I was a musician, playing somebody else's music or different styles you aren't used to. It's fun, it's a real challenge, and I think it's really good for you as an artist. It fills your toolbox with new tools and makes you aware of different ways of doing things. A lot of the nuts and bolts of prose is about not being repetitive, and there are only so many ways to attribute dialogue or to transition into a flashback. The more ways you have of doing all those things, the better off you are when you run into a problem, which you will.
The big challenge is that it's the client's book, not yours. Inevitably there are going to be times when you feel very strongly that the best thing to do at a given plot point is A, and the client says, no, we're doing B. Getting comfortable doing it the way they want, not the way you think is best — because you're not writing your book, you're writing their book. Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Having done a lot of freelance writing, writing in the house style of different magazines and capturing the voice of different shows for media tie-in work — you get used to it. But you have to get used to it, because initially it can really stick in the craw when you want the work to be as good as it can be.
Matty Dalrymple: I always thought a challenge of ghostwriting was doing all this work and not seeing your name on the cover. But I suppose in circumstances where you wanted A and they picked B, maybe that's the silver lining — you don't have to defend the choices that were made.
Jon McGoran: Exactly. I'm proud of all the books I've written, mine or other people's. But it does make it easier to get over yourself when your name isn't on it. It's also just a constant structural reminder that it's not your book. So it makes it easier to say, okay, we'll go with B because you want B, even though I think A is best.
Tips and Red Flags for Aspiring Ghost Writers
Matty Dalrymple: If people are listening and they're intrigued, what are a couple of things they should keep in mind, and what are some red flags to watch out for?
Jon McGoran: Contract-wise, I really defer to my agent. I would absolutely always have somebody review the contract — either a lawyer or a literary agent. One of the big things, as I said earlier, is the mileposts. You definitely don't want to agree that you get the full payment only on completion and acceptance, unless you're independently wealthy and not doing this for the money. Think carefully about what those milestones are and how long each is likely to take. The first chapter especially — it sounds like just a chapter, but that first chapter is so important, particularly in ghostwriting. You're finding your voice, finding the authorial voice, the point-of-view voice, all these things that you might have had a clear idea of going in, and now all of a sudden it's real and things reveal themselves to either work or not. And then you have to send it to the client and make sure it works for them too. The tone established in the first chapter is going to be the template for the tone throughout. It's not just 5,000 or 10,000 words — it's a much more significant chapter than the ones that follow.
The other thing is word count and overages. We had a situation where by the time we had the outline approved it was clear the book was going to be longer than the agreed target word count. Everyone agreed from the beginning that was fine and that I'd be paid commensurately. But when I suggested we hash out the details then, they said we'd handle it later. Sure enough, when we exceeded the word count, we had to renegotiate. As it turned out I had other work I'd been pushing aside, so it wasn't a crisis for me — but the project did pause for about a month while we went back and forth. So be as clear as possible about all contingencies from the beginning, so that if and when those things happen, everything doesn't grind to a halt.
Closing and Where to Find Jon McGoran
Matty Dalrymple: Well, Jon, thank you so much for shedding some light on the interesting concept of ghostwriting fiction and letting us see what goes on behind the scenes. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
Jon McGoran: Sure. My website is jonmcgoran.com — J-O-N-M-C-G-O-R-A-N dot com. And I'm on social media. I'm not on X anymore, but I'm on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads — just at Jon McGoran with no H, J-O-N-M-C-G-O-R-A-N. Reach out and say hi.
Matty Dalrymple: Sounds great. Thank you.
Jon McGoran: Always a pleasure, Matty.
