By Wendy Scheuring, July 3, 2025 (updated September 23, 2025)
There are many reasons why working with a ghostwriter is better than learning how to ChatGPT to write your book. (Make sure to read #17. Which one provides more ROI?)
Here are 20 of them:
1. Who’s asking the questions?
Ghostwriters ask you thought provoking questions to dive beneath the surface for answers, which helps them create unique and meaningful content for your book in your voice and your style.
When using ChatGPT, you must ask the questions. The problem is you might not know which questions to ask. Furthermore, ChatGPT has no inkling of the ideas swimming around in your heart and head.
2. Who owns the copyright of the book?
Many ghostwriters are hired as work-for-hire, which means they are paid for their work, and you own the copyrights to your book.
Books written with ChatGPT cannot apply for U.S. copyright, meaning your book content is not protected under U.S. copyright law.
3. Can you publish traditionally?
It’s commonplace for traditionally published books to be written by ghostwriters, especially celebrity and business books.
Books generated with ChatGPT are not being accepted by traditional publishers.
4. How about self-publishing?
Ghostwritten books can be self-published, published by small and big presses, and hybrid publishers.
Check your small publisher for more information if you’ve written a book with the help of ChatGPT. Amazon at this time requires a disclosure that AI was used to produce the book.
5. What do readers think about books written by ChatGPT?
Most readers realize that celebrities and business persons do not have the time to write a book. Many authors who employ ghostwriters disclose that they worked with a ghostwriter. Sometimes the ghostwriter’s name is on the book cover, as in “with Mary Smith.”
Readers are often quick to call out unedited books, typos in books, and AI-generated text, which can kill an author’s credibility and result in bad book reviews.
6. Is your story protected during the writing process?
A professional ghostwriter will sign an NDA before beginning work on your book, which protects your identity, your original ideas, your sources, and any original written materials you provide. The NDA may also include the protection of the ghostwriter’s identity, trade secrets, and processes as well.
Any prompts or ideas you type or speak into an LLM, such as ChatGPT, is available to the public. Those ideas are not protected. Only written materials are protected under U.S. copyright law.
7. How much energy are you expending?
When you choose to work with a ghostwriter, you will use less bandwidth because you are relying upon an expert writer to interview you, write the chapters, and compile the manuscript.
With ChatGPT, you will require more bandwidth because you need to learn how to use it properly. You need to learn how to create your prompts, you need to fact check (as ChatGPT is known to hallucinate or make up information), and you need to keep whittling down the text to try and make it sound like you. But, it will still sound flat.
8. What is the level of writing expertise?
You can choose to work with a beginning, an intermediate, or an expert ghostwriter, who has been writing books for decades and has perfected the process of working with authors to get their stories out of their heads and hearts and onto the page.
ChatGPT does not know how to write a book. It’s up to you to work with the LLM to write your book. If you don’t know how to write a book, or you do not have any writing skills, you have no way of determining if ChatGPT is writing a good book for you.
9. References and recommendations?
Oftentimes, good ghostwriters come with great recommendations from people who have already worked with them. Other times, you can find them by reading their own books to see if you like their writing style. This can save you a lot of time in finding the perfect ghostwriter.
ChatGPT does not have a writing style. It sounds bland and flowery and formulaic. It lacks emotion and personal experience. Anyone could write the same book as you using ChatGPT, and maybe they have.
10. What about customer service?
When working with a ghostwriter, you become part of a valuable writing team. Your ghostwriter will care about your book as much as you, or perhaps even more than you.
When using ChatGPT, you are on your own. It doesn’t care if you like the writing or not.
11. Personalization or mechanization?
When you choose to work with a ghostwriter, the ghostwriter will get to know the real you and strive to tell your story in its best light.
Working with ChatGPT is impersonal. It doesn’t care about who you are or what your story is. It will not see your story as a ghostwriter or reader would.
12. Who is your filter?
Not everything you know, think, or have experienced should appear in your book. Your ghostwriter is your filter.
ChatGPT has no filter. You must be the filter. It’s hard to be your own filter if you’ve never written a book before. Most authors work with developmental editors, beta readers or sensitivity readers, who serve as filters, too. So, you’ll need to hire those folks to help you out.
13. What is the theme of your book?
To use ChatGPT, you must know your theme. But theme is hardly known until the first draft is completed. A lot of people don’t realize that we discover our stories during the process of writing, not beforehand. When we use ChatGPT, we need to have that all figured out and we can’t. That’s why these stories fall flat.
14. What do your readers want to read?
Authors want readers to like their book. They want readers to turn pages because the story resonates with them. A good ghostwriter can write such a book. They understand that meaning is left to the imagination and often is found in between sentences and words.
But, if you’re only concerned about efficiency and time, and decide to use ChatGPT, then your readers will know it. Remember my previous post about the AI police? People who only think about the end-game rarely think about the end-user. But, what’s the point of writing a book without the reader in mind?
15. Do you know the rules so you can break them?
Ghostwriters know grammar rules. They know how to craft beautifully written sentences. They also know how to break the rules so that your book sounds more like you.
ChatGPT is an amalgamation of internet content scraping, and, most recently, copyrighted books that were pirated. It spits out grammatically correct sentences making the prose sound like a textbook.
16. Which takes more time? A ghostwriter or ChatGPT?
People gravitate to ChatGPT because it writes in seconds. The writing is only as good as your prompts. Most people do not know how to use it. They have to learn. This takes a while. Have you ever seen the cheat sheets for it? They boggle the mind. It’s hard enough writing your own story, let alone learning how to use technology that is not going to get your story right.
Ghostwriters save you valuable time. They have been writing books for decades. You do not need to learn how to write. There is no learning curve. You sit back and work with the ghostwriter. That’s it.
17. Which one provides more ROI?
Using a ghostwriter has a big pay out. Your book actually gets done and the quality is good enough to publish. You can promote your brand, your business, your legacy with a quality book and never be embarrassed.
Writing a book with ChatGPT will not bolster your credibility. People just do not respect content written with ChatGPT for a variety of reasons, too many to list here.
18. What do you really need to focus on?
Writing a book takes time, thought, consistency, and diligence. So does learning how to use ChatGPT. Most entrepreneurs prefer to focus on their business. They can’t be distracted with writing a book.
19. Do you care about human connection?
ChatGPT is a lonely number. Once your book is done, then what? Is it good? Does it need editing? What about a book cover? Forget about agents and traditional publishers and applying for copyright. None of these are options for books written with ChatGPT. Self-publishing will be your only option. But where do you go from there? Just put it on Amazon, which is already inundated with books?
Ghostwriters have connections. They know about the book industry. They know where the sharks swim. They may know agents, publishers and publicists. They may already be working with vetted cover artists, formatters, self-publishers, etc. This saves you time, focus, and money.
20. How important is quality?
When you hire a professional ghostwriter, you will receive an authentic book written in your voice and your style. When you write with ChatGPT, you have no way of knowing if your book will resonate with readers because you are not an expert book writer. Whenever you are creating a book, you must consider your readers. A ghostwriter will make sure that your readers will be delighted.
Hi. I’m Wendy, an authentic author and ghostwriter. Do you have an original idea you’d like to write about? If so, I’d like to hear about it. Let’s talk!
