How to Choose a Book Coach: The 7 Questions to Ask Before You Hire Anyone
Book coaching is one of the most unregulated spaces in publishing. There are no qualifications required, no industry board, no certification that guarantees competence. Anyone can put up a website and call themselves a book coach — and thousands of people do. Which means that the difference between a transformative experience and an expensive disappointment comes down entirely to the questions you ask before you sign anything. These are the seven questions that matter.
How to Write a Book When You Have No Time
The book isn’t waiting for a gap in your calendar. It’s waiting for the right structure. Here’s how busy founders, executives, and experts write books — without clearing their schedules.
How Long Does It Take to Write a Book? The Honest Answer for Experts
The most honest answer to “how long does it take to write a book?” is the one nobody in publishing actually wants to give you. Here it is anyway — with the real timelines, the variables that actually matter, and why the answer for most experts is probably much shorter than you’ve been told.
Book Coach vs Ghostwriter: Which One Do You Actually Need?
Everyone has an opinion on how you should write your book. Hire a ghostwriter. Get a book coach. Just start writing and see what happens. Here’s what nobody tells you: the choice between a book coach and a ghostwriter is actually dead simple — once you stop letting the internet confuse you about what each one actually does.
How to Write a Book as a Keynote Speaker (Without Losing Your Voice or Your Mind)
You’ve been stopping rooms for years. Your stories land every time. So why does the blank page feel nothing like the podium? Here’s what nobody tells speakers who want to become authors: the problem isn’t that you can’t write. It’s that you’re trying to write like a writer instead of a speaker.
How to Write About Real People in Your Book: The Complete Guide for Memoir and Nonfiction Authors
Every memoir, every leadership book, every story drawn from real life runs into the same wall: the people in your story are real. Your ex-partner. Your difficult parent. The colleague who betrayed you. The mentor who changed your life. The client who became a friend. Writing about them is not optional — they are the story. But writing about them carelessly can create legal exposure, damage relationships that matter, and produce a book that feels like a score-settling exercise rather than a genuine piece of work. Here is everything I know, after thirty years, about how to do it right.
Traditional vs. Self-Publishing vs. Hybrid: Which Is Right for You in 2026?
You Googled “how to publish a book” and now you’re more confused than when you started. Traditional. Self. Hybrid. Vanity. Assisted. Partner. The terminology alone is enough to close the tab and go back to not writing the book. After thirty years as a publishing strategist and ghostwriter, here’s the clearest, most honest breakdown of the three real options — and the one question that makes the choice obvious.
What Happened After the Book: Three Stories From Word Magic Authors
People ask me all the time whether writing a book is worth it. I never answer that question in the abstract, because the abstract doesn’t tell you anything useful. What tells you something is the specific. The hotelier who had been trying to write his book for five years, who doubled his speaking fees within months of publication. The lawyer who wanted to be the foremost authority in her field — and became exactly that. The leader who came to write one book and discovered she needed to write a completely different one — the one she’d kept off the table her entire life. These are their stories.
How Long Does It Take to Write a Book? (And How to Do It in 90 Days)
Most people believe writing a book takes years. Some spend a decade on the same half-finished manuscript, convinced that more time is what they need. My clients finish their complete draft manuscripts in 90 days. The difference isn’t talent, discipline, or a magic productivity system. It’s strategy — and it starts long before anyone sits down to write.
Writing Retreat vs Book Coaching: Which One Actually Moves Your Manuscript Forward?
A writing retreat and a book coaching engagement both promise the same thing: momentum on your manuscript. They both deliver — but in completely different ways, on completely different timescales, and for completely different reasons. Here’s how to know which one you need right now.
What Does a Ghostwriter Cost? The Real Numbers (2025–2026)
The answer you’ll find everywhere when you Google ghostwriter pricing is “it depends” — which is technically true and completely useless. Here are the actual numbers, what drives them, and what separates a smart investment from an expensive mistake.
How Much Does a Book Coach Cost? The Complete Pricing Guide for 2026
The honest answer to how much a book coach costs is: it depends enormously — and the price alone will tell you almost nothing useful about whether the coach is worth it. A $200 hourly session with someone who has spent thirty years producing New York Times bestsellers delivers a fundamentally different thing than a $200 hourly session with someone who completed a coaching certification last year. This guide breaks down what you’re actually buying at each price point, what to ask before you commit, and how to think about the investment in terms of what the book is worth to your life and career.