Consulting founder
Founder, Strategy consultancy
6
speaking and podcast invitations
first year
Illustrative
Voice
Thought Leadership Book Ghostwriting and Long-Form IP Planning
Thought leadership book ghostwriting turns the arguments you've already made in public into a structured book under your name. Most founders who have posted for two years have written one without noticing. We find it, decide what the book argues, build the outline, and write it with you from recorded conversations rather than from a blank page.
- A book thesis and a chapter outline drawn from content your readers already validated
- A manuscript written from recorded conversations, in your voice
- The long-form IP that comes with it: the keynote, the framework, the report
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Project-priced, scoped on the call.
Could be anyone
We lost our best engineer because I scheduled standup for 7am.
She told me in the exit interview. Not the pay. Not the roadmap. The standup. She had a school drop-off at 7.40 and she'd spent five months quietly failing at both jobs rather than ask me to move a meeting.
I'd copied the 7am standup from a blog post about high-performing teams.
We moved it to 10. Nobody has left since.
Most of what you call culture is a list of things you copied from someone else and never questioned.
Last updated:
Founders and executives in
- B2B SaaS
- Fintech
- Healthcare & MedTech
- Legal
- Consulting
- Real estate
- Manufacturing
- Hospitality
What buyers say · market research
- of B2B decision-makers trust thought leadership more than marketing materials to judge a company's capabilities
- 73%1
- of decision-makers are more receptive to outreach from a company that consistently publishes high-quality thought leadership
- 90%1
- of decision-makers say good thought leadership makes them willing to pay a premium
- 60%1
What is thought leadership book ghostwriting?
Thought leadership book ghostwriting is a collaboration in which a writer plans and drafts a business book under an executive’s name. The argument, the experience and the judgement are the author’s. The structure, the drafting and the editorial discipline are the writer’s. It is the same arrangement behind most business books you’ve read.
What makes our version different from a general book ghostwriting firm is where we start. A book ghostwriting firm starts with a blank outline and a series of interviews. We start with two years of your posts and newsletter issues, which means we start with evidence: which arguments your market responded to, which ones they pushed back on, and which ones you keep returning to without being asked.
That changes the risk profile of the project. The most common way a founder’s book fails is not bad writing. It’s a book nobody wanted, written beautifully. If the chapters come from arguments that have already been read, shared and argued with in public, you know before you write a word that the material has an audience.
From posts to newsletter to book: your IP pipeline
The pipeline is one system with three stages, and each stage de-risks the next.
Stage 1: posts. A short post is a cheap test of an idea. You find out in 48 hours whether an argument lands, who it lands with, and which objection comes back. Twelve months of ghostwritten posts is twelve months of audience research you didn’t have to commission.
Stage 2: the newsletter. The arguments that survive get room to become real arguments: the framework, the caveats, the case. A LinkedIn newsletter planned with an arc rather than as one-offs produces chapters by accident.
Stage 3: the book. Twelve long-form issues are roughly a manuscript’s worth of thinking, already ordered. The book’s job is to find the spine running through them, cut what repeats, write the connective argument that was never in a single issue, and add the material only a book can carry.
Two practical consequences. First, you don’t have to decide on a book now. If the content system runs properly, the book becomes an obvious next step rather than a leap. Second, a book written this way keeps paying back into the system: each chapter becomes posts, the posts bring readers, and the readers buy the book.
If you haven’t started the content system, the honest advice is to start there. A book is the worst possible first content project.
Who this is for, and who it isn't
Right for you if
- You have a method, a framework or a contrarian position you've been arguing in public for a year or more
- You're introduced on stages, panels or podcasts, and want something to be introduced by
- You sell expertise, and the book would shorten the trust part of your sales cycle
- You can give us two hours a month, consistently, for the length of the project
- You want the book to serve the business, not to be a memoir
Not for you if
- You want a book to establish credibility you don't yet have. It doesn't work in that direction.
- You want to write a memoir or a company history. Good projects, wrong agency.
- You want it finished this quarter. A serious book takes most of a year, at minimum.
- You haven’t published anything yet. Start with LinkedIn ghostwriting and come back.
- You want a bestseller campaign. We write and plan books. We don't run launch stunts.
Book strategy and outline
This phase is where a book is won or lost, and it's bought separately from the writing so you can stop here if the answer turns out to be no.
- The content excavation. We read everything you’ve published: posts, newsletter issues, talks, internal memos you’re willing to share, podcast transcripts. We tag it by argument and by response. The output is a map of what you’ve actually been saying, which is reliably different from what you think you’ve been saying.
- The thesis. One sentence that the whole book argues. If the book can’t be reduced to a sentence, it isn’t a book yet, it’s a collection. We’ll say so.
- The reader. Who it’s written for and what they can do differently after reading it. Specific enough that the chapter list follows from it.
- The structure. A chapter outline with, for each chapter: the argument, the evidence you hold, the objection it answers, and the existing material it draws on. Typically 10 to 14 chapters.
- The commercial case. What the book is for inside your business: the sales conversation it shortens, the speaking it earns, the inbound it produces. Plus an honest view of what it won’t do.
- The decision point. At the end of this phase you have a document you could hand to any writer, any agent or any publisher. If you want to write it yourself from here, you can, and some clients do.
Fixed-fee project in phases (strategy, outline, drafting). Quoted after scoping.
Ghostwriting or co-writing
Two ways to get from the outline to a manuscript.
Ghostwriting. We draft every chapter from recorded conversations and from your existing material. You talk through each chapter for 60 to 90 minutes, we write it, you mark it up. Your name alone goes on the cover. This is the right route when the constraint is purely time, and it’s how most business books by busy executives get made.
Co-writing. You write the chapters you most want to write, and we write the rest, then edit everything to one voice. Founders with a strong writing habit usually prefer this, and it tends to produce a better book, because the chapters you want to write are the ones you care about.
What’s the same either way
- Recorded conversations as the source, not a questionnaire
- Your voice guide, extended for book-length prose: structure, transitions, how you handle evidence and caveats
- A chapter at a time, in a shared document, with your edits in line
- A chapter is not finished until you've read it twice
Your time. About two hours a month: roughly 90 minutes of recorded conversation and 30 minutes of review. More in the months where you’re reading a full draft.
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Publishing routes
Three routes, with different costs and different reasons.
Traditional. An agent, a proposal, a publisher. Best for credibility and bookshop distribution. Slowest by a wide margin: the proposal and submission process alone often runs six months, and publishers typically schedule a book 12 to 18 months after acquisition. You give up control of title, cover and timing, and advances for business books are usually modest.
Hybrid or assisted. You pay for professional production and keep more control and a faster schedule. Quality varies enormously between providers, so this route needs scrutiny.
Self-publishing. Fastest, cheapest and fully controlled. For a founder whose book exists to serve the business rather than to sell in shops, this is often the rational choice, and the stigma has largely gone in B2B.
What we’ll tell you on the call: which route matches what you want the book to do, not which one sounds most impressive. If your book’s job is to be handed to prospects and handed out after talks, waiting two years for a traditional deal is the wrong trade.
Long-form IP beyond the book
The book is the biggest asset the project produces, and not the only one. The same thesis, outline and research support several things, and planning them together is cheaper than commissioning them separately.
- The keynote. A book’s thesis is a talk. We build the 20-minute and 45-minute versions from the same spine, so your stage argument and your book argument reinforce each other instead of diverging.
- The named framework. Most durable thought leadership has a named thing at the centre: a model, a sequence, a diagnostic. Naming it properly, and defining it the same way every time, is what makes other people able to repeat it.
- The research report. An annual piece of original data in your market. The hardest asset to produce and the most linkable, which makes it the best thing you can publish if you want other people to cite you.
- The diagnostic or assessment. A scored tool that turns your framework into something a prospect can use on themselves. These generate conversations years after publication.
- Chapter-level content. Each chapter becomes posts, an issue, and a talk section. The book funds a year of content rather than consuming one.
How we measure
A book is a long project, so we measure progress and effect separately.
During the project
- Chapters drafted against plan, and chapters approved against plan. Both, because drafted and approved are different numbers.
- Your time spent per month against the two-hour estimate. If it's creeping, we say so early.
- Material sourced from existing content against material written fresh. A healthy project draws heavily on what already exists.
After publication
- Baseline first. Inbound conversations, speaking invitations and profile views in the 90 days before launch.
- Sales conversations where the book appears. Tracked by asking your sales team, because no attribution tool catches “I read your book”.
- Speaking and podcast invitations, counted before and after.
- Citations and references by other people, which is the signal that the framework has escaped your own channels.
- Content yield. Posts, issues and talks produced from the manuscript, which is a real return most people never count.
We won’t report copies sold as the headline number unless selling copies is the goal. For most founders it isn’t.
Results
Prospects now arrive having read three of my posts. The first call starts at the second conversation.
Agency owner
Managing Director, B2B growth agency
Items marked Sample are anonymised, illustrative examples written to typical industry ranges. They are not client results.
Until there’s a published project here, judge the method: ask on the call to see a content excavation map and a chapter outline. Read the LinkedIn personal branding case studies for the related content work.
Book ghostwriting firm, book coach, write it yourself, or the LinkedIn-to-book pipeline
| Factor | LinkedIn-to-book pipeline (us) | General book ghostwriting firm | Book coach | Write it yourself |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from | Two years of published, tested arguments | Interviews and a blank outline | Your draft and your discipline | A blank document |
| Risk it addresses | Writing a book nobody wanted | Writing ability and time | Finishing | None of them |
| Your time | About 2 hours a month | 4–8 hours a month of interviews | Most of your evenings | All of your evenings |
| Typical cost | Project-priced | $30k–$150k+ for a business book | $500–$3,000/month | Your time |
| Produces content beyond the book | Yes, by design: posts, issues, keynote, framework | Rarely | No | If you plan it |
| Best when | You've been publishing and want the book to serve the business | You have the material only in your head, and no public body of work | You want to write it and keep stalling | You're a writer who happens to run a company |
Specialist book ghostwriting firms are good at what they do, and for a founder with no published body of work they’re often the better hire. Our advantage is narrow and real: if you’ve been publishing, we’re starting from evidence and you’re paying for less discovery.
Industries we write long-form for
Education & Coaching
Where a named method is the product.
Professional Services
A book as the firm's calling card.
Legal & Compliance
Long-form authority that brings referrals.
All ten on the industries hub.
What it costs
Fixed-fee project in phases (strategy, outline, drafting). Quoted after scoping.
The strategy and outline phase is bought separately from the writing, so you can make the go or no-go decision with a real document in your hands. Scoping happens on the call. For the ongoing content work that feeds the book, see our packages. Talk to us about a book project.
Thought leadership book ghostwriting FAQs
For market context, full business book ghostwriting from specialist firms generally runs from around $30,000 to well over $150,000 depending on the writer's track record and the research involved. Book coaching runs $500 to $3,000 a month. Our strategy-and-outline phase is priced separately from the writing, so the first decision is a small one. Fixed-fee project in phases (strategy, outline, drafting). Quoted after scoping.
The strategy and outline phase is always ours. Beyond that, the two routes are full ghostwriting and co-writing, and we scope which one fits on the call.
About two hours a month during drafting: roughly 90 minutes of recorded conversation and 30 minutes of review. The months where you read a full draft are heavier. Across a year that's around 24 to 30 hours, which is less than most founders expect and more than any shortcut claims.
Strategy and outline: typically four to eight weeks. A manuscript: most of a year for a serious business book. If you then go traditional, add a proposal and submission process of around six months plus a publisher's schedule that commonly runs 12 to 18 months after acquisition. Self-publishing can put a finished book in your hands within a few months of the manuscript.
Your voice guide gets extended for book-length prose: how you structure an argument, your real transitions, how you handle evidence, where you put the caveat. Beyond that, the single biggest protection is that most of the material comes from things you already said in public. You read every chapter twice, and no chapter is finished until you have.
Chapter by chapter, in a shared document, with your edits in line. Nothing is final until you've signed off the full manuscript.
You do. Author credit, copyright and all rights are yours, including the research, the outline and the material that doesn't make the final book. You own everything we write for you once it's paid for. We may show approved work in our portfolio only with your written permission.
It depends entirely on the book's job. Traditional gives credibility and bookshop distribution, and costs you around two years and most of your control. Self-publishing is fast, controlled and cheap, and in B2B the stigma has largely gone. If the book exists to be handed to prospects and given out after talks, self-publishing is usually the rational answer.
Both directions. Your posts and newsletter issues are the book’s raw material and its audience test. Then each chapter becomes posts, an issue and a talk section, so the manuscript funds a year of content instead of consuming one.
Transcription of the recorded conversations, research, fact-checking, and tagging your existing content during the excavation phase, which is genuinely useful across two years of posts. Not for drafting chapters. A book is the longest, most exposed thing you will publish, and generated prose does not survive a careful reader at that length.
Book projects are scoped by phase, so the commitment is per phase rather than monthly. Fixed-fee project in phases (strategy, outline, drafting). Quoted after scoping.
Then we tell you, and you've spent the cost of the outline rather than the cost of a manuscript. That's the main reason the phases are separate. Not every strong public argument is a book, and some are better as a report or a keynote.
Thirty minutes, and a straight answer
We read what you've already published before the call. If there's a book in it, we'll tell you what it argues. If there isn't yet, we'll tell you what to publish for the next year to get there.
We read your profile first.
Your headline, your About section and your last twenty posts, before we speak. You don't need to prepare anything.
You do most of the talking.
What you sell, who you need in the room, what you've already tried and why it stopped.
You leave with a plan, or a straight no.
If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call and point you somewhere better. We'd rather lose the retainer than take an account we can't make work.
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You own every word and every right. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call.