The ghostwriting industry will survive AI and LLMs because we are more than content generators

It’s easy to make assumptions about ghostwriting as an industry without knowing the facts, but these assumptions taint the validity of ghostwriting as a profession and lead to comments and thoughts about ghostwriting being easy, a service replaceable by AI, or that it isn’t a real job.

But let’s be real, books like Prince Harry’s Spare, Millie Bobby Brown’s Nineteen Steps, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and Kieth Richards’ Life, wouldn’t exist without ghostwriters. Many celebrity, politician, and business books are written with the collaborative assistance of a ghostwriter.

In fact, many best selling fiction books are written by ghostwriters, although the publishing industry doesn’t always call it that.

The final installments of L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries were written by a ghostwriter, as were the final books in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

Publishing houses are known to commission fiction authors to write books for them that they develop and outline and have the final say on how the finished product comes out, but the fiction author’s name is on the book.

A well-known example is the Crave series by Tracy Wolff (although this series is undergoing a legal dispute over copyrights currently), and publisher Liz Pelletier acknowledges she created the storyline for the series and picked Wolff to write it because if her writing voice, a collaborative writing project.

So, while ghostwriting comes in many forms and hides behind different rocks, it’s everywhere, and it isn’t going anywhere.

What Ghostwriters Provide that AI can’t

Business and publishers are always looking at how to cut costs, so one might assume AI is the solution to many problems, as it provides a means to generate written content without paying real, human writers. Ghostwriter colleagues of mine have encountered potential clients who refuse to work with them because they can get written content from LLMs faster for free (or cheaper).

And while LLMs certainly can yield high outputs of content in a short time, there are aspects of the writing process AI can’t provide but ghostwriters are willing, ready, and able.

Working with a ghostwriter is collaborative. They bring expertise, the book foundation, writing skills, industry knowledge, and marketability insights. You bring your personal experiences, brand identity, voice, business goals, and audience.

Together, these different elements combine in the perfect blend of nonfiction narrative designed around you, your personal journey, and your thoughts and insights while paving the way for new lead generation and business opportunities.

What happens when you take the ghostwriter out of the equation?

Well, LLMs are trained on other people’s voices, brand identities, and insights. They won’t ask the necessary questions (unless you guide them) to craft a comprehensive book plan that matches industry standards and maintains marketability. They won’t interview you to capture the true essence of your brand, your mission statement, or your purpose. They won’t adhere to your style but pull from the style and voice of the hundreds of thousands of authors, writers, creatives, and web pages they are exposed to.

You can feed an LLM your experiences and ideas, but what you’ll get back will be more regurgitation than powerful, thought provoking, impactful narrative.

Now, let’s add the ghostwriter back to the scenario.

You get an expert writer, storyteller, and book designer to lay the foundations of your book including hook, chapter by chapter outline, audience, long term goals, voice, style, niche, etc. A ghostwriter will interview you, ask follow up questions, and tie the threads together from your personal experiences to the overall theme and tone of your book.

They’ll match your voice and style based on interactions with you rather than mimicking the voice and style of other clients.

You’ll enter into a collaborative partnership where you get feedback from someone there to guide you, challenge you, and see your goals realized rather than an entity designed to answer your questions.

Collaboration works because two (or more) perspectives join forces to ensure the highest quality output.

LLMs aren’t at a level where they can be a secondary perspective. They mirror, mimic, and regurgitate more than provide original thoughts and ideas. For your book to make an impact, it needs to be innovative and unique. Since LLMs are trained purely on existing content, they can’t provide innovative or unique.

Now, Generative AI and LLMs are incredible feats of technology. I don’t dispute that, but at the end of the day it is a tool meant to assist, not replace human creativity, output, and operations.

Human ghostwriters continue to provide higher quality writing services than the quick and easy outputs of AI. Sure, it takes longer and costs more, but the adage says, “You get what you pay for,” and quality takes time and costs money.

Otherwise, no one would spend $800 on a well-aged bottle of scotch, but we all know people do, because the quality is worth the price and time it takes to get there.

Cautionary Tales of Writing Books with AI

Now, authors will use AI to write their books. That’s inevitable, because there are always people willing to take shortcuts.

Sadly, these shortcuts have backfired in many instances.

Several fiction authors wrote books with Generative AI and failed to proofread the manuscripts before hastily publishing them. As a result, they left ChatGPT bot responses in the manuscript text! Readers take pictures and head over to social media in their outrage, and it’s led to many of these books’ removal from Amazon and other marketplaces.

It’s been a rising trend setting off a lot of fury in book markets.

Now, it’s an easily avoidable mistake, but in my experience, people looking for shortcuts are prone to overlooking those mistakes which are proving detrimental.

Authoring a book is a decision designed to support your brand and company, but relying too much on AI could lead to discreditation and damage your brand.

Which is why ghostwriters aren’t going anywhere. We will be here to support book authors who are serious about producing high quality content, impactful books, and a narrative that will set them apart.