how to make six figures writing books

"ghostwriting is similar to therapy, but ghostwriting definitely pays better!"

I have never ghostwritten a book (or a proposal) but every time I read another article about how lucrative ghostwriting is, I start to reconsider my life choices.

As much as writers and publishing professionals agonize over the existential threat AI poses to writers, ghostwriting is a sector where professional writing is highly valued. According to reporting that Publishers Lunch did last year, fees for ghostwriters start at $40,000, go up to $75,000 to $150,000 for a seasoned ghostwriter, and can go as high as $150,000 to $300,000 for a ghost with multiple New York Times bestsellers.

But breaking in to this market can be mysterious.

So this week, I interviewed

Amy Suto

, a novelist and professional ghostwriter whom I met at the Substack Bestsellers party in November, about why she left a career in TV writing to become a ghostwriter, why she thinks novelists should consider ghostwriting, and how she raised her freelance rates over time to her current hourly rate of $750. I love how transparent Amy is about money and how generous she is with sharing opportunities for writers in her Substack newsletter.

If one of your 2025 goals is to earn more income doing what you love (writing!), I hope you’ll find this interview with Amy inspiring and helpful! 🔮

Photo of Amy from her website

1. Tell me about your career in Hollywood and why you decided to leave writing for TV (a job that other writers fantasize about!)

I did everything "right" when it came to climbing the Hollywood TV writing ladder. I got my BFA at USC's coveted Writing for Screen and Television program, where I was nominated for a College TV Emmy by the Television Academy for a scripted series I wrote and produced while in school. Days after I graduated, I got hired by a TV lit agent at a buzzy talent agency to work on her desk, where I networked my heart out and met so many TV writers and fellow industry people. I worked for several high-powered showrunners, and then finally got my chance to step up to the plate and write an episode of the show CONDOR (MGM/Skydance)—the spy show of my dreams, where I collaborated with a recently retired CIA agent to get the details right.

However, at every rung of the ladder I felt like something was missing. There was a general sense of unease and unhappiness even in the friendliest of writers' rooms that I worked in, and as the TV bubble began to burst, I decided I'd be happier if I jumped over to the Creator Economy and left the old world of Hollywood behind.

Turns out I was right—when the pandemic hit, I left Hollywood and started traveling the world with friends and fellow creatives.

Now, I make $750/hour ghostwriting memoirs, and my clients fly me out all over the world to gorgeous cities like Vienna, Austria where I meet up with them to interview them and write their books.

I get quite a lot of incoming writing work I can't take on, which is why I launched my writing job board as a part of my Substack to share high-paying writing, editing, and other freelancing jobs with my community of writers and creatives!

On the creative front, I have much more free time to dedicate to my own books, and I have a new romantasy novel called The Ash Trials that's coming out this Valentine's Day!

2. How did you break into freelance writing? What kinds of projects, or clients, were you taking on at the beginning of your freelance writing career?

Initially, I started moonlighting as a freelance writer on the side of working in writers' rooms, or between shows. I took on any assignments that came my way, from copywriting to content writing jobs. My very first freelance job was a script for a tennis advertisement, so the jobs were all varied and fascinating. That's the best part about freelancing—while finding your niche is great, it's okay to be more of a generalist when you're starting out and trying your hand at a variety of different topics and formats.

In terms of rates, I started out at $17/hour, but increased my rate an additional $10/hour with every successful job. Every time I increased my rates, I felt a huge rush of imposter syndrome that I had to overcome in order to hit my current rate of $750/hour.

It didn't take long before I was quickly making way more as a freelancer than I was as a writer in Hollywood, and that's when my perspective started to shift.

3. How did you discover your niche of memoir ghostwriting?

I was freelancing on the platform Upwork, and I saw a memoir ghostwriting job that looked right up my alley. I applied with some short story samples and landed the job! I was surprised how much I enjoyed the process, and within the next year my clients were beginning to fly me out to meet and interview them in-person.

When you find a freelance writing niche that fits you and your skills, it will feel a bit like magic!

4. I know a lot of creative writers who dream of making a full-time living as writers but who have likely never considered becoming ghostwriters. My own hesitations are two-fold: one, I'm a slow writer and I just don't think I could produce fast enough to make a good hourly rate. Two, public recognition is an important part of why I write (I think it would drive me crazy if I ghostwrote a NYT bestseller and I couldn't say, that's my baby!).

What do you love about ghostwriting? If there's a novelist, a memoirist, or a poet reading this newsletter right now, and they're intrigued by what you do, give them your best pitch for why they might want to try it!

I love this question! Memoir ghostwriting isn't for everyone, but it's a freelance writing niche that has changed my life for the better.

I'll quickly break down why I love it, what types of writers will thrive in this niche, and the differences between memoir ghostwriting and co-writing with a writing credit.

There is a reason why I specialize in memoir ghostwriting—I never write fiction for anyone else. This is an important distinction because as a memoir ghostwriter, I know that the story belongs wholly to the client, and it's nothing I could tell on my own. I'm just a hired hand coming in to shape their incredible life into something readers will love. But the content, the stories? Those belong to the client (as they should!) and I'm lending my skills to help them in exchange for a writing fee that will allow me to spend time writing my fiction.

Memoir ghostwriting is especially fun for novelists and creatives, as you're essentially getting free character research and subsidized writing practice. (This is why so many great novelists worked as journalists, first! The real-life experience you get of interviewing people you might not otherwise meet in these types of professions is unmatched.)

For one of the memoir ghostwriting jobs I was on, I did an incredible interview with one of my client's friends, who was an international fugitive from justice—and had been wrongly accused of a crime he was later cleared of! In the interview, I heard all about a daring escape he made from one country to another in Southeast Asia. It was an epic interview, and it sparked lot of great ideas for my own fiction writing. I've ghostwritten quite a few true crime books, as well as inspiring family and entrepreneurship stories, and each book teaches me something new about humanity that deepens my fiction writing.

Memoir ghostwriting is a great freelancing niche for writers who are curious about what makes other people tick. Bonus points if you feel like you'd be a good therapist in another life—ghostwriting is similar to therapy, but ghostwriting definitely pays better!

Writing fast is a bit of a prerequisite for this type of work, but that can be learned over time by just showing up on the page consistently each day. Building strong outlines and setting aggressive wordcount goals are just part of the process, but it helps that as a memoir ghostwriter your client is supplying most of the content for the book — you don't have to generate a ton from scratch.

Memoir ghostwriting is a better financial setup for writers because the client is taking all of the upfront risk, and you get all of the upfront benefit. You get paid to write someone's story, and it's up to them to ensure it will be a success through marketing and getting it out there.

Sharing credit on a book (i.e., co-writing instead of ghostwriting) can be tricky because this also usually means you take a pay cut on the writing fee for the book, and then you're relying on royalties to make it worth your while. But as a co-writer, there's only so much you can do to ensure the book will be written and marketed properly—and your reputation can take a big hit if your client pushes the book in a direction that undercuts the story. As a co-writer, you are still beholden to the client's decisions—it is their book after all. So if they make choices that hurt the book (either in the drafting or marketing process), your royalties will dwindle and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ghostwriting is cleaner on a number of different fronts: you get paid more, your reputation isn't tied to the book (for better or worse!), and you can serve the client and tell the story they want to be told without it adversely affecting your pay.

Ghostwriting is a setup that makes you a more generous partner in the creative process, and if you price your services correctly, you'll also have much more time to write your own books as well.

5. If you had to identify the top three moves you made to level up your ghostwriting career and reach a place where you're able to charge $750 an hour, what would those be?

1. Leveling up my personal branding. I spent thousands of dollars on a custom website design, new headshots and branding photos, and a new PDF portfolio template to showcase my work. I made this investment before my freelancing really took off, so it was hard to part with the money at the time—but it paid off in spades, and I had one of my biggest years as a freelancer right after I overhauled my personal brand. You can't just spend money to level up your personal brand, though: you have to be really mindful about what designers you hire, what brand colors will evoke the kind of emotions you want to elicit in potential clients, and how to present your marketing materials in a way that is clear yet artful and persuasive. Branding and marketing are learned skills that differentiate top-tier freelancers from freelancers who aren't landing the highest-paying gigs.

2. Raising my rates before I was "ready." I'm lucky that my partner Kyle was always cheering me on and encouraging me to raise my rates. I find that as a woman, it can be harder to justify charging more, but every time I raised my rates I found better clients who saw the value I could provide for them.

3. Finding the right niche for you. Every writer has a natural set of superpowers, and it's important to find the type of freelance writing that speaks to your soul and makes work feel like play. You should never just pick a niche for the money, but rather find a niche that intersects with something you enjoy doing and client demand. If your target clients can't pay your rates and you're scraping by, then you need to switch to a different niche.

6. Asking for a friend (the friend is me): how do you write so many words so fast? How do you balance client writing with your novel writing? (This is what I do, too, but I'm balancing editing and coaching and teaching with my novel writing!)

Having larger projects and fewer clients helps a ton! As a memoir ghostwriter I usually only work with 3-6 book clients per year. This includes full book projects as well as developmental edits. Because of this, I'm able to be more flexible with what time I spend on client projects and carve out larger chunks of deep work for my own projects.

Back when I was doing lots of copywriting and content writing projects, the fast-turnaround deadlines and shifting client notes were really challenging to balance with the deep work required for novel writing. One year I had something like 50 different clients, and I got on a road to burnout really quickly after that. Shifting to fewer, higher-paying projects has helped immensely with everything from time management to fewer messages in my inbox, and more time to work on my creative projects.

Aside from that, I really recommend doing annual challenges like National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which encourages writers to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. You'd be surprised what setting aggressive word count goals can unlock for you in your writing process!

I also regularly share productivity and creativity tips on my blog AmySuto.com and my Substack FromTheDeskofAmySuto.Substack.com with all sorts of gadgets, tools, and mindset hacks to train your brain to be more creative on a daily basis!

---

💬 Was there anything in my interview with Amy that surprised you—or that you’d like me to cover more in 2025? Let me know in the comments! 💬

---

Upcoming Events

Join me on January 23rd for a conversation with Jackson Howard, who acquires literary fiction and nonfiction for FSG. Jackson is also a part of the team that created the FSG Writer’s Fellowship. Paid subscribers to Attention Economy will receive the Zoom link on the morning of the 23rd.