The Gathering of Information

Once you’ve planned your project with a professional ghostwriter, the next step is to pull together information to create content. The gathering of information is essential to your entire project, because it will help form the details of your story. Obviously, the kind of information you will need will depend on the type of book you’re writing. During an initial conversation, a talented ghostwriter will help give you a good idea of what you should be looking for.

Some sources that you may gather information from for a business book include the following:

Charts and graphs
Seminar videos
Blogs about the topic
Other books about the topic
Newspaper, magazine or trade publication articles
Interviews with other professionals in your field

The gathering of information for a memoir or autobiography might include the following:

Family albums, journals or diaries
Family photos or scrapbooks
Interviews with other family members or important people in your life
School, marriage or property records

The most important part of the information-gathering process is an interview with you, the author of the book. You and the ghostwriter have already planned out the book, so you know the areas you’ll be talking about.

The ghostwriter will spend several hours interviewing you in whatever format — in person or over the phone — works best for you. The best interviews are conducted altogether over several days, but a ghostwriter can work around your busy schedule.

You’ll be asked to talk in a recorded interview about one aspect of the topic of your book, preparing for each chapter in the final product. By the time of the interview, the ghostwriter will be so familiar with the subject — and you will feel so comfortable with her — that the interview will feel safe and comfortable for you.

Once the interviews are done, the ghostwriter will have a thorough grasp of the topic of your book and your goals for creating it. She’ll take the next step of deciding how the material should be organized and creating an outline and chapters for the book that will bear your name. It is through the thorough gathering of information that the ghostwriter is able to identify your unique ideas and create a book that accurately portrays your thoughts.

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