Working with a ghostwriter is an intimate process. You share personal details of your life with another person and trust that person to portray your life as you wish it to be portrayed. Sharing can be unsettling, and this is where ghostwritten book examples can help assuage any unease you might retain.
A ghostwritten book is a collaboration between a person who for whatever reason wants to have help in leaving a written legacy and a memoir professional who serves as a sort of midwife for the book project. Let this ghostwritten book examples guide you.
What a ghostwriter does
Of course, an obvious function of the ghostwriter is to apply writing skills to your story. Your ghost is someone who loves to write and has spent years perfecting the craft of memoir writing. You speak your story, and your ghost writes it.
But, a good ghostwriter does more.
Memory—yours and mine—is false, flattering and failing. A prime function of your ghostwriter is to offer feedback on your recollection and help you align it with “what probably happened.”
Your ghostwriter may have to do some push back for the sake of the book. They are emotionally detached from your story and do not share your close—and sometimes blinding—involvement. They are in a solid position to point out inconsistencies in your story and to align parts of the story with other parts. The result is a more coherent and interesting story.
Ghostwritten book examples
We have ghostwritten many, many books in the last two decades plus. Below we share ghostwritten book examples gleaned from books we have co-authored, and the list is always growing.
In conclusion
Once you’ve read the ghostwritten book examples below, why not claim the free e-book, A Consumer’s Guide to Ghostwriting Services / How to Choose and Work With the Best Co-author For You?
Find more information about ghostwriting on our site.
For examples of some of our ghostwritten books, please click here.
My Mother Passes
On this blog, I have frequently offered excerpts of my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled. It has been such a satisfaction for me to have written her story and to have been able to hand her a copy. One day, after I had presented her with the hard copy of We Were Not Spoiled, […]
Writing Another Person’s Memoir: Can you use the first person pronoun?
Shouldn’t writing another person’s memoir be called writing biography rather than writing memoir? You the writer are, after all, not the subject. Doesn’t that make it a biography? But, are there occasions when a biography can justly be called a memoir? In one of my books, A Sugary Frosting / Life in a 1960s Parsonage, […]
Writing An Old Family Story
I was one of those fortunate children to have known well both sets of grandparents. My Ledoux grandparents lived upstairs for most of my growing up while by Verreault grandparents lived 10 miles away. Because of this, I’ll admit writing an old family story is somewhat easy for me as I heard so many of […]
My Mother’s Memoir: Making a Home at the Howe Street Apartment
When my parents came down, they lived in a tenement on Lisbon Street. My father worked at Dulac’s which was nearby, and while the mills were by their tenement, my mother did not seek outside work but kept house. (more…)
Writing a biography: First Franco: Albert Beliveau
Writing a biography poses specific challenges and research problems that are sometimes parallel to, but in the end quite different from, those involved in memoir and historical fiction. (more…)
Becoming an American—Why Not?
DL— Stories about immigration and citizenship form the backbone of our great American story as much today as in past times. My ancestors were among the millions who came here in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here is an excerpt about becoming an American from We Were Not Spoiled, the memoir of my mother […]
Going Up in Flames: My Dream Shop Was Burning to the Ground!
This excerpt is from Business Boy to Business Man, the memoir of Robert Verreault as told to Denis Ledoux. The memoir was published in 2013. During the summer, I took a longer supper break and, after returning to the shop — where I had over a hundred and fifty employees — I might stay until […]
Crossing the Pacific to Reach the World War 2 Theater
This excerpt is from Business Boy to Business Man, the memoir of Robert Verreault as told to Denis Ledoux. The memoir was published in 2013. The military would never tell servicemen where we were going during World War 2, but it was a fairly easy bet that we were headed for Hawaii as a first […]
My Son Denis Is Born
My second pregnancy was also easy enough. This time Albert was with me, and he and I could live it together. My mother had had most of her babies at home, but by the mid-1940s, women were… (more…)