Think of life as a round circle, like a pie. One slice of the pie is your area of core competency—perhaps even genius. It’s what you do so well. Next to that slice is another slice of equal size—what you know you don’t know. For example, I know I cannot add, subtract or cook anything edible.

Then there’s the rest of the pie: The three-quarters in life that we don’t even know we don’t know. In that mysterious realm, for most people, lies the secrets to successful book writing, publishing and marketing. Read more

Just about twelve years ago I made a major transition, and closed the midtown Manhattan offices of my Public Relations firm. Through running a sizeable business and the day to day drama of dealing with my staff’s personal issues, I had essentially become everyone’s Jewish mother. As a result I could not do as much actual writing as I would have loved to do. When I took this leap of faith I made two critical decisions:  First–by transitioning to ghostwriting I could do what I love: use my writing skills to help people become successful authors, then help them get published,then use my public relations skills to promote their book.

The second decision: I would not be bound by what others charged, but would instead charge what I thought I was worth. My fees were considerably higher than many other writers. But, given my many years of experience as an award-winning, in-demand writer (for magazine articles, speeches, blogs, brochures and other promotional material), I thought my asking price was justified.

At first this did seem like a foolish decision: many of the would-be authors I met were unable to pay my fees and instead wanted me to work solely for the back-end. In other words, they expected me to write their book or book proposal, reach out to get them a literary agent, who would  negotiate a large advance for the book and ancillary rights,  do promotion to make their book a New York Times bestseller (and perhaps a blockbuster motion picture) and then share a percentage of the profits.  Well, we are all delusional to some extent, but these arrangements would have had me living in a refrigerator box on the cold hard streets of Manhattan. Read more