The Tricky Territory of Ghostwriting Children's Books

Much of my paid work has been ghostwriting. It's something I enjoy, especially when it comes to children's books. But it does present some challenges you don't encounter when writing a book of your own. 

Ghostwriting articles or short pieces tends to be easy because in most cases you are dealing with clients who don't really care about writing. They want the articles to make sense, of course, and usually to have the right SEO content to collect all the clicks. But they aren't going to argue with you about creative choices. 

Book authors are different. These are people who have nurtured an idea for a long time and have a strong connection to the process and the result.

Children's book authors in need of ghostwriters are often artists who have done their own illustrations and know the story they want to tell but don't have the writing skills to make it happen in a way that can put the book on the shelf next to professionally written titles. 

Occasionally, people think they can write and can't understand it when agents and publishers tell them to find a ghostwriter if they want a chance to have the book published. These people usually have bruised egos from the grueling process of attempting to sell their work, and they are (maybe subconsciously) trying to prove that you can't do it any better than they can. This takes a careful approach. 

When ghostwriting a children's book, you don't usually start with an idea. You usually start with several paragraphs of badly written, rhymed text that has no poetic structure. Becoming a successful ghostwriter for children's books means you have to become good at a couple of specific things. 

• convincing the client to dump the rhyming and go with straight prose
• making the client understand that word choice matters a lot; you have to match the words to the reading level of the story
• adding plot; you'd be surprised to know how many illustrators don't understand that a book has to tell a story, and adorable pictures of darling animals aren't enough
• finding what is great about the idea and talking it up; people who feel like their work has been rejected need a lot of building up, so you've got to find something in the original work to praise

Of course, the key to success is to present the client with something phenomenal that stays true to the original idea and style but enhances it as well. It's not easy, but you get better at it over time.

And there's a little thrill in seeing a book on a shelf at a bookstore knowing that you wrote it, even if no one else knows. That may be even better than the money.