By Alison Schwartz, President, Gotham Ghostwriters 

There is no more meaningful credential for a thought leader or business leader than having a smart, well-written book to elevate your reputation. And with the amount of AI-driven slop showing up now, having an original concept and well-expressed ideas in a book is what’s going to make thought leaders stand out more than anything.

If you’ve started searching for a ghostwriting agency, you already know the problem: the market is enormous and the options look similar. There is no obvious way to tell the difference between a firm that will deliver a book you’re proud to put your name on and one that will be mediocre.

According to a 2024 study of almost 350 business authors co-sponsored by Gotham Ghostwriters, the median ghostwritten book generates roughly four times the gross profit of a book written without a ghostwriter — but only when the right professional is involved.

Ranking lists don’t help. They’re loosely camouflaged ads or so vague they tell you little. What helps is a framework and a way to evaluate any agency you’re considering.

That’s what this guide provides. We’ll walk you through the six factors that separate strong ghostwriting agencies from the rest, the questions you should ask before signing a contract, and the red flags that should stop you. We’ll also tell you what makes Gotham Ghostwriters different in a market full of look-alike options.

About Gotham Ghostwriters

Gotham Ghostwriters is a professional ghostwriting agency founded in 2008 by Dan Gerstein, a journalist and congressional speechwriter. Over 18 years, Gotham has built a network of 4,000+ vetted writing professionals, brokered over 1,000 author-ghostwriter collaborations, and placed books with Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and others. Its writers appear regularly in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

If you’re still early in your thinking and deliberating over whether to hire a ghostwriter at all, how the process works, or what to expect from the collaboration — start with our Executive’s Guide to Hiring a Ghostwriter before continuing here.

What Does the Ghostwriting Agency Landscape Really Look Like?

We’ve seen it all: Ghostwriting agencies are built differently and variety covers a lot more than price. The market roughly divides into three tiers:

Content platforms and mills

These prioritize volume. They offer low per-word rates and fast turnarounds by routing work through large pools of freelance writers with minimal vetting. These can work for commodity content, such as SEO blog posts, product descriptions, but they’re not built for high-stakes work. More than one executive has ended up at Gotham Ghostwriters after a turn with the content mills, after losing time and money.

Mid-market agencies

These occupy a wide and variable middle ground. Some are excellent; many are inconsistent. Quality depends on the writer you get and often the assignment process is vague.

Boutique and specialist agencies

These maintain curated networks of credentialed writers and take a high-touch approach to matching, collaboration, and quality control. They cost more and often have longer lead times — because that’s what the work requires.

This guide focuses on that third tier. If you’re a CEO writing a leadership memoir, an entrepreneur writing a business book, a thought leader building an executive content strategy, or a public figure working on a speech — you need an agency built for craft, not volume.

How Do You Evaluate a Ghostwriting Agency? Six Criteria That Matter

Before you take a sales call or request a proposal from any ghostwriting agency, run them through these six criteria. Answers to these questions will help you more than a testimonial page.

1. How Does the Agency Vet and Match Its Writers?

The most important thing a ghostwriting agency does is pair you with the right writer. Everything else — process, pricing, timeline — is secondary to this. As veteran ghostwriter Sally Collings puts it: “hiring a ghost isn’t about paying for words. It’s about buying results.” 

Start by asking how the agency sources its writers. There’s a big difference between a curated network built by a small team of experts constantly meeting writers and vetting and accepting them based on their track record, and an open marketplace where anyone can sign up and bid on projects. The former exists to protect quality. The latter exists to maintain supply.

Then ask how do they make a match? Do they have an intake process that considers your industry, your voice, your audience, and the format you’re working in? Or do they assign based on availability? A strong agency will be able to tell you specifically why a given writer is right for your project — not just that they’re ‘experienced in business writing.’

Importantly: can you meet your writer before committing? Any agency that won’t facilitate an introductory conversation before a contract is signed should raise questions. A bit tongue in cheek, one veteran ghostwriter talks about how she looks for only “love matches.” We wouldn’t take it that far, but author–ghostwriter chemistry matters.

If you’re wondering whether professional ghostwriters are just running your ideas through ChatGPT and calling it a day, the data says otherwise. According to a 2025 AI survey of more than 1,200 writing professionals, including book ghostwriters, some 68% use AI in their work, but only 5% use AI to generate publishable work without significant editing. In contrast, the areas where writing professionals use AI are research and search (77%), brainstorming (63%), finding the right word or phrase (57%).

That’s an important distinction. A ghostwriter who uses AI to prep for an interview with one of your relatives or former employees or get unstuck on a transition is doing something closer to what a skilled researcher or editor has always done. A ghostwriter who hands your ideas to a large language model and lightly polishes the output is giving you something different. Most professionals aren’t doing that.

When evaluating agencies, consider asking about their policy on AI use and how their writers apply it in practice. A credible agency will have a clear answer. [For a detailed framework on appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI in ghostwriting, see our AI guidelines for collaboration.] Hedging on this question is its own kind of red flag.

2. Does the Agency Have a Track Record in Your Specific Category?

Ghostwriting skill is not uniform across formats and industries. A writer with a strong track record in celebrity memoir may flunk in writing a technical business book. A skilled speechwriter may struggle with long-form narrative. Ask specifically about experience in your genre, your industry, and your format.

Samples are the best evidence, but ghostwriting is confidential work by definition, so expect samples to be anonymized or limited. What you want to find is voice range, intellectual credibility, and sophistication appropriate to your project.

A track record of working with recognizable clients in your category, even if the agency can’t disclose names, can also be meaningful. An agency that has consistently served senior executives, C-suite authors, or prominent public figures will have processes built around senior leaders and their expectations. The Andy Awards recognize books created through collaboration and both author and ghostwriter submit to win. To get a sense of ghostwriters who have solid track records, see the 2025 Andy Award winners.

3. What Does the Collaboration Model Look Like?

Daniel Paisner, a ghostwriter who has worked on books with Serena Williams, John Kasich, and others, told the New York Times that people once thought ghosted “books were written by having a person of renown speak into a tape recorder and then bringing in a ghostwriter to transcribe those thoughts.” It never worked like that and it doesn’t now.

Ghostwriting is not a service you hand off and wait. Even the most hands-off process requires meaningful time from you. This is especially true early on in the project. Understanding what that looks like before you commit matters.   

Ask how the agency captures your voice. The best ghostwriters don’t just write; they study how you speak. The Wall Street Journal reports that Ghostwriter Samanatha Marshall “spent weeks” interviewing Sandy Yawn of Bravo’s seafaring series “Below Deck,” for Yawn’s leadership book Be Calm or Be the Storm. 

Quality ghostwriting begins with a series of in-depth interviews and review of any source material the client provides, including past speeches, articles, interviews, profiles, and other published thought leadership content.. These are recorded conversations that give the writer the raw material to work from. Some agencies supplement this with written materials, Q&A documents, or existing content.

Ask what the typical process looks like once a project is moving ahead. What does the feedback loop look like?

4. How Robust Is the Agency’s Confidentiality Infrastructure?

Ghostwriting has always relied on discretion, but “discretion” means different things in practice. A robust confidentiality framework includes more than an NDA checkbox.

Ask whether a confidentiality contract is  standard or only available on request. Ask who signs them. If writers are independent contractors rather than employees, they should be signing individual agreements, not just the agency.

Find out how the agency handles client identity. Are you identified in any internal systems? Are samples ever shared with prospective clients without your knowledge? For executives, business leaders, and other high-profile individuals, this is important due diligence.

A firm with a track record serving prominent clients will have clear, practiced answers to all of these questions.

5. What Is the Revision Policy and Is There Editorial Oversight?

Even the best writer-client matches produce first drafts that need work. The question is how the agency handles that work, and whether there’s a quality layer above the writer.

Find out how many revision rounds are included and what the agency counts as a revision. Some firms define this narrowly (line-level changes only), others consider it more broadly (structural reconception included). This matters for budget and timeline planning.

Ask what happens if the relationship with the writer isn’t working. Agencies with confidence in their process have a clear answer. They’ll have a remediation path, a re-match policy, or another solution.

6. Is the Agency Transparent About Pricing and Contract Terms?

Ghostwriting is a real investment, and the way an agency talks about money before the contract is signed is likely a sign of how they’ll operate during the project.

Look for project-based pricing tied to clear deliverables, with milestones that track actual progress. Be cautious of vague ‘starting at’ ranges without any explanation of what drives variation, or of hourly models that put all timeline risk on you.

Ask what’s included and what isn’t. Does the quoted price cover research? Interviews? A specific number of drafts? What triggers additional billing? The answers should be clear before you sign.

Experienced ghostwriters price based on more than page count. Complexity, subject matter, timeline, and the difficulty of the collaboration all factor in. A good agency accounts for this in how it structures its fees.

One word of caution: ghostwriting scams are on the rise. One topic that often comes up with first-time authors is that It takes real money to work with a professional. If any agency is quoting you $3,000 to write a book, you’re negotiating with a con artist or a robot.

What Makes Gotham Ghostwriters Different?

Gotham Ghostwriters has been one of the most respected names in professional ghostwriting for almost two decades. Here’s how we score on the framework above.

Our network model is our foundation.

We don’t employ staff writers, and we’re not an open marketplace. Gotham maintains a curated network of more than 4,000 credentialed writers. These include journalists, memoirists, speechwriters, business authors, academics, and more. Each is vetted and accepted based on their track record. When you work with Gotham, you get subject-matter expertise, not a generalist. Every year we organize Gathering of the Ghosts, a conference on the business of ghostwriting, and it consistently represents a serious collection of writing talent.

Matchmaking is our signature competency.

Our intake process is rigorous. Before we pair a writer with a project, we spend time understanding your project, your voice, your audience, your industry, your timeline, and the qualities that will make this collaboration work. 

We have expertise in important categories.

Business books. Leadership memoirs. Executive thought leadership. Political speeches. Corporate narratives. Personal and family memoir. These are the formats where Gotham has operated for 18 years.

Our confidentiality infrastructure is strong.

We have worked with senators, Fortune 500 executives, bestselling authors, and media figures who depend on discretion, and we take that seriously.

We were built for quality, not scale.

Gotham is not a content engine. Our longevity in this industry comes from repeat business and referrals.

What Should You Ask a Ghostwriting Agency Before Signing?

The following questions will help you evaluate any agency you speak with — including us. A reputable firm will welcome all of them.

On writer selection and matching:

• Who specifically will write my project — and can I meet them before I commit?
• How do you match writers to clients? What factors go into that decision?
• Can you show me relevant samples — even anonymized — in my genre or industry?
• What happens if the match isn’t working once the project is underway?

On confidentiality:

• Is confidentiality standard, or do I need to request it?
• Who is bound by confidentiality — the agency, the writer, or both?

On process and quality:

• How many revision rounds are included, and what would be considered a revision?
• Is there editorial oversight above the writer — does someone review drafts before they reach the client?
• What does a typical project timeline look like for a book such as mine?

On contracts and rights:

• Who owns the copyright, and when does it transfer to me?
• What’s included in the quoted price, and what would mean additional fees?
• What are the payment milestones, and what deliverables are they tied to?
• How does the agency structure its compensation and is it clearly explained?

What Are the Red Flags?

These are warning signs that should give you pause. Several of them together should send you elsewhere.

• No writer meeting. If an agency won’t let you meet or at least talk with your writer before you agree on a collaboration, they probably don’t have confidence in the match. This is the single most important pre-contract moment in any ghostwriting engagement.
• Vague pricing with no milestone structure. ‘Starting at’ ranges with no explanation of what drives variation, or lump-sum proposals with no payment schedule tied to actual deliverables, put all the risk on you.
• Impossibly fast guarantees. High-quality ghostwriting — interviews, a writer inhabiting your voice, drafting, revising — all take time. Book manuscripts from agencies promising author intake to delivery in four to six weeks are unrealistic. In fact, the average time to write a nonfiction book is 9-10 months.
• Anonymous or unverifiable writers. Open-marketplace platforms that don’t vet their talent pass the selection risk to you. If you can’t learn anything meaningful about who will be writing your work, you can’t assess the risk.
• High-pressure sales. If the agency pushes you to make a fast decision or generally employs aggressive closing tactics, consider it a warning sign.
• One-size-fits-all process. Good agencies customize. The intake for a political memoir is different from the process for a business strategy book. If an agency describes every project the same way, they’re not matching — they’re using a cookie cutter.
• No editorial layer above the writer. In high-quality agencies, someone reviews drafts before they reach the client. If the writer and the editor are the same person, there’s no quality check.
• Ambiguous copyright language. You should own your work outright, with no licensing carve-outs, royalty arrangements, or reversion clauses.
• Generic portfolio samples. If every sample feels like it could have been written by the same person or AI, the agency may be presenting staff-written demonstration pieces, not actual client work.

How Do You Make the Final Decision?

If you’re like many clients we know, after you’ve worked through the framework and are satisfied with answers to your questions, you’ll make your final decision based on whether the agency makes you feel understood.

The sales conversation is a preview of what’s to come. An agency that listens carefully, brings up thoughtful questions about your project, and gives you well-considered answers is demonstrating how they work. An agency that talks over you, rushes you to a contract, or flubs answers to questions will very likely behave similarly after you’ve signed the contract.

Your name is going on the book, the speech, the content. It will represent your thinking, your credibility, your voice. The agency you choose should treat that responsibility with the seriousness it deserves.

Work With Gotham Ghostwriters

Gotham Ghostwriters has spent almost two decades helping executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and public figures turn their ideas into authoritative, well-crafted work. Our network of 4,000+ credentialed writers spans every serious genre and format. Our matching process is rigorous and transparent. Our confidentiality is absolute.

Alison Schwartz is the President of Gotham Ghostwriters, where she leads the client experience, including new author initiatives around marketing, thought leadership development, and other complementary services necessary for a successful book launch.

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