Writing your own book is a bit like doing your own dentistry. Unless you just happen to have the skills that are normally acquired through many years of training and practice, it’s a loser’s game and the results can be painful. I remember the minor sensation, a few years ago, when Bob Mortimer claimed on television that he’d been doing his own drilling and filling for fifteen years, using a leatherworker’s drill and Fuji IX dental cement… and no local anaesthetic.

Bob’s revelation was on a particular show, Would I Lie to You?, that does encourage the telling of tall tales. But he has always insisted this story was not one of his whoppers. And he did write his autobiography, And Away…, without any professional help, so maybe the dental DIY was real.

The point is, though, that most of us would be ill-advised to start waving drills around in our own mouths. And most people will find trying to write a book difficult, slow, uncomfortable, time-consuming, boring and ultimately unrewarding.

If you don’t believe me, give it a go. I wouldn’t want to stop you trying. And there will be one or two people out there who do have the patience, imagination, verbal dexterity and structural instincts to come up with sixty or seventy thousand readable words.

But despite the old ‘Everybody’s got a book in them’ cliché, most people haven’t. Or if they have, they’ll never be able to get it out without the help of a skilled midwife.

That’s why you need a ghostwriter. But how do you find the right person for the job?

There’s no ranking system that’ll help you decide what level of expertise you are looking for and how much you should be prepared to pay. There’s no Which? testing or Good Housekeeping seal of approval to guarantee the quality of what you’re buying. And, given how reticent authors tend to be about their involvement with ghostwriters, you’re not likely to find a string of customer reviews on Tripadvisor or Trustpilot.

Even when they are delighted with the service they’ve received from their collaborators, the authors we work with aren’t usually falling over themselves to tell the world that they had professional help to develop their ideas and structure and write their books.

So how do you know you’re getting what you want?

That was the thought that inspired the creation of United Ghostwriters, more than ten years ago.

What if we formed a tight, exclusive group of the best ghostwriters around and only included the fellow ghosts we had absolute faith in? What if we kept the numbers right down, to just ten or twelve writers, and only ever invited people to join if we were absolutely confident of their ability, their great personal beauty, their honesty and their commitment to the highest standards?

We didn’t want to start a business or form a company or set up a partnership. We just wanted to be able to say: ‘I can’t do this one, but I know a bunch of people who could.’

So if a project comes up that needs the skills of a novelist, I’ll pass it on. That’s not me. If there’s a harrowing story of domestic abuse to be told, that’s not my line, either. But we have several ghosts who are brilliant, sympathetic and highly experienced in working with people who’ve overcome past traumas. I’m happier with general nonfiction – business, medical, sporting, musical or perhaps some more general exploration of ideas. But if I’m not available, United Ghostwriters gives me another three or four people I can recommend unhesitatingly, knowing that any one of them will deliver a thoroughly professional book. I even have a clause in my contract for each project that nominates a suitable UG member to step in and finish the work if anything happens to me.

We don’t live in each other’s pockets. We meet up a couple of times a year – in London, Leeds, Belfast, wherever – and we have Zoom meetings every now and again just to keep us all up to speed and to have a moan about issues like the Inland Revenue’s evil Making Tax Digital revolution, which is imposing a lot of extra recordkeeping on small businesses and sole traders like us.  

As it turns out, most of the projects that come our way are interesting, stimulating and a joy to work on. That’s probably because there’s a fairly high wastage rate when it comes down to the first conversation between the author and the potential ghost. A lot of people, inevitably, choose to go elsewhere. And we, too, turn down our fair share of projects – sometimes because of the subject matter, sometimes because of potential personality clashes with the author. If you’re going to spend five or six months – often a good deal longer – working closely with someone, it helps a lot if you start off on the same wavelength.

And then there’s the money. Fees tend to be the big taboo when the subject of ghostwriting is being discussed, but it’s hardly realistic to pretend the money’s not important. If you’ve got a book in you that’s dying to be written – and you can’t commit the time or don’t have the editorial skills to do it yourself – the price tag is going to be one issue you can’t ignore.

The problem is there’s no price list. There’s a permanent race to the bottom among the beginners, bluffers and bullshitters out there who don’t value their work and are probably quite right not to. But the last thing you need is to get involved with someone who’ll do your book for a silly price because you’re not prepared to invest in yourself.

If you want to know how much you should be spending, think about how much you would want to be paid for the time the book will take. How much would you expect to pay for five or six months of even a middle manager’s time? Or, as one of my colleagues used to put it, how much are you going to pay for your next car?

Not all book projects go to plan. Some get held up when big things happen in the author’s life. Some just seem to lose momentum, as other priorities come crowding in. That’s when you need the discipline and determination of a top ghost to keep you on track and moving forward.

It won’t always be roses all the way. Just getting your book across the line can be like pulling teeth. But if that’s going to happen, believe me, that’s when you’ll really appreciate having a professional in the room with you.