How can we help you?

Media Writing Services helps people write, publish, and market their books. We were founded in 2014 by a 4x New York Times Bestselling Author, and have worked on over 2,000 books, including some major bestselling books in that time (which you can see here).

Our two most popular services are Guided Author, which is $36k, and Ghostwriting Professional, which is $48k.

We can also publish your finished manuscript.

The main difference is how much time it takes you, and who actually writes out the content of the book.

In the $36k option (which we call Guided Author), you’ll use our full process, but you will do the writing and typing yourself (with our guidance and support the entire way, described here). This option usually requires you to spend about an hour of writing a day for 6+ months.

In the $48k option (which we call Media Writing Services Professional), all you have to do is get on the phone, talk about what you already know, and then give feedback to revise the manuscript once it is written. We handle the typing and writing, but the words, ideas, and voice are still entirely yours. This option requires about two hours a week on the phone.

There are two main questions to ask yourself:

1. Do you like sitting down and writing? Do you like typing, and having your hands on the keyboard?
2. Do you have enough time to write this yourself?

Generally speaking, assume that Guided Author ($36k) requires an hour a day for a year (yes, you can do it faster), and that Media Writing Services Professional ($48k) requires 2 hours a week for 9 months.

If the answer to both questions is yes—you like writing and you have time—then Guided Author is probably the right option.

If the answer to both questions is no—you don’t like writing and you don’t have time—then Media Writing Services Professional is probably the right option.

The difficulty comes if the answer to #1 is yes (you do like writing) but the answer to #2 is no (you don’t have time). Then you’ll have to decide what gives: do you make time for writing, or do you value your time too much, and want us to do the typing for you?

That option is not right for most authors. It’s intended for those authors who require an authentic ghostwriting experience and a bespoke process to fit their needs.

Almost all authors are better off with Guided Author ($36k) or Media Writing Services Professional ($48k).

No, we cannot just work with anyone. We typically reject about 30% of authors who want to work with us. There are two criteria we use to decide which authors we’ll work with:

1. Does the author know the subject matter of their book deeply enough to write a book about it? Our process works very well, but only if the author actually knows what they’re talking about.
2. Does the author have a clear understanding of how books work, and a reasonable expectation for ROI? This means there needs to be a purpose behind writing the book.

That’s why the first step in our process is a qualification process. If the result you’re hoping for is unrealistic or impossible, we can’t work with you, because there’s no way for us to win. Even if we do a great job and we nail the book, you might still be upset because you didn’t reach a goal that was impossible to begin with.

Yes, definitely. Here is a partial list of the types of people who are not a good fit for our process:

1. Fiction writers. Our process only works for non-fiction.
2. You don’t know your topic well. If you want a book on sales, for example, but don’t know anything about sales, then we can’t help you. You’ll need to find a ghostwriter.
3. You aren’t sure how a book can help you.
4. You have no idea at all why you want to write a book, what it will say, or what goals you’ll achieve by publishing it, then we are not a fit. Our process requires an investment—of both your money and your effort—so you should have an idea of why you are doing it.

No, not right now.

No, we currently do not offer a service for fiction books, children’s books, cookbooks, or textbooks.

Yes. You own the copyright and all print and reproduction rights. You can do anything you want with your book.

Yes. We take absolutely no money from the sale of your book, and all accounts are set up in your name and under your ownership.

We have two publishing imprints at Media Writing Services: Lioncrest Publishing and Houndstooth Press. Both are wholly owned imprints of Media Writing Services.

You don’t have to use either as your publisher. We can essentially create a new publishing company for you with any name you like. It’s completely up to you who the named publisher of the book is.

You own 100% of the royalties for your book.

Although Media Writing Services doesn’t take any share of the book’s profits, there are some costs that don’t go directly in your pocket—namely, Amazon’s fees and printing costs.

For eBooks, Amazon takes 30% of your royalties and you take the other 70%. For paperbacks, Amazon takes 40% of the royalties, the printer gets approximately $3 to print the book, and the rest is yours. If you do hardcover, we’ll explain it all before you make any decisions.

No, it actually does the opposite. The best strategy to get a great book for you is to use the service-based model, where we are paid a fee and you own all rights and all royalties.

This is because under a service-based model we get paid for ensuring that your book serves your goals (such as getting speaking gigs or finding clients or creating influence), as opposed to a royalty-based model, where we are incentivized to focus only on selling copies (regardless of whether it serves your goals).

Yes, but possibly not in the sense that you are thinking about. This is a long explanation because the book publishing business is so weird.

When people ask, “Is this self-publishing?” what they tend to mean is, “Will this be unprofessional?” To that, the answer is obviously: “No, it’s professional.” You’re hiring us for that exact reason—to ensure that your book not only gets done, but is done professionally.

Furthermore, your book is published by an established publishing company. So the answer to the self-publishing question is: “No, it’s not self-publishing.”

But in fairness, this question used to be more relevant. Before self-publishing existed in its current form, there were only two options: traditional publishing, or what were called “vanity presses.” With these options, having a “traditionally published” book—which meant a New York publisher gave you an advance—was a signal that you were serious and credible, whereas being published by other means (a vanity press) was a signal that you weren’t credible.

This is just no longer the case. Today, most books are published outside of the traditional publishing system. Vanity presses have for the most part disappeared, and they have been replaced with a number of what are called “hybrid” publishing companies. These vary widely in the quality of the books they produce, but many are absolutely credible and professional.

Yes and no. This is a complicated answer, again because the publishing business is so weird.

Yes, we make your book available for order and sale in bookstores and retail outlets. All our books are put into the Ingram database, and can be ordered in every bookstore in the country.

No, we do not automatically put your book in bookstores. This is because bookstores carry very few books, reserving their limited space for established authors or books from publishers who are paying for shelf space.

You generally need to sell at least 25,000 copies before bookstores become interested in carrying your book. That’s the bad news. The good news is that being in bookstores doesn’t really matter anymore. A book sitting on a shelf doesn’t sell in most cases. In terms of buyer behavior, most people who shop at Barnes & Noble also shop on Amazon, so if they don’t see a book at Barnes & Noble, they’ll just go to Amazon. In other words, lack of bookstore distribution in and of itself doesn’t necessarily lose you very many sales.

The reality is, for almost all authors, being in a bookstore is purely about ego, and not about actual ROI. We don’t deny that going into a bookstore and seeing your book on the shelf is nice, but having a book in a bookstore does almost nothing in terms of sales or awareness. It is only a status object.

We don’t charge you anything for copies. You get to buy copies at the print cost. For print on demand paperback, Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark not only prints books for approximately $4 a copy when they’re ordered through Amazon, but they’ll sell the author these books at the same cost. At any time after the book is published, you can order copies in any quantities you’d like at this discounted price, direct from the printer (we don’t make money on copies).

If you are looking for a larger quantity of books (1,000 or more), we set you up with a commercial offset printer to handle this request. They can provide better prices at large quantities. We take no markup.

Your book cover and manuscript interior layout will be designed by world class designers, but you have full creative control.

Our Creative Director has done dozens of New York Times Best Sellers, as well as the other book cover designers we’ve worked with. Combined, they have worked on over 100 best sellers that have sold millions of copies. You are getting the very best in design, because having a great book cover is a key to establishing your book as credible and professional.

Before we start the design process, you’ll have a long conversation with the Creative Director to understand your vision for the cover (if you have any). We organize this information into a design brief and use it to create a series of initial cover designs, which you will review and give feedback on. Just like all parts of our process, you will have full, 100% approval of your cover.

There are three goals of the marketing that’s included in the Media Writing Services Publishing package.

We will manage the logistics to run an Amazon Bestseller Campaign that focuses on maximizing early sales, reviews, and rankings, all to build the foundation of early credibility for your book’s long term success.

We will also support you in promoting the book to your connections by creating social media graphics for the book, crafting a book announcement email, gifting free copies to your friends and family, and creating a strategy for you to get the support of influencers who you know.

By the end of the first week of your book release, your book should have Amazon bestseller status, a burst of early sales, a baseline of reviews, awareness among your network, and you should have a plan for how to continue to leverage it going forward.

We do offer other add-on marketing packages as well.

You get everything you need to confidently write, publish, and market your book. Literally everything. The entire program is described in detail here.

The workshop is co-led by our Head Book Coach, Emily Gindlesparger, and our top editors. They’ll guide you along the author journey and give you individual feedback on your work.

The three days Authors spend with us are pivotal, and will get you a level of clarity and momentum that cannot be duplicated any other way. Right now, we only offer workshops in-person at our office in Austin, TX.

You will leave after three days with all of this done:

1. Book Positioning
2. Outline
3. Writing Plan
4. Editing Plan
5. Chapter deadlines
6. Editing deadlines
7. Fears brought up and addressed

After the workshop, there are three primary avenues of support:

1. Guided Author Community Platform: We have a very active author community group with all the former Guided Author participants, plus the entire senior editorial team from Media Writing Services. Questions are answered usually within an hour or so, and there is a lot of encouragement and support.
2. Weekly Group Coaching Calls: These occur every Tuesday at 12:30pm Eastern Time. The Media Writing Services Senior Editorial team is on the calls to help with any questions any authors have about anything. For most authors, these calls act as accountability and commiseration calls. Basically, authors use them as places to see their friends, learn from one another, and make sure they are on track.
3. Three One-on-One Editor Consults: Throughout the book journey, you can book up to three half-hour individual consults with an editor. Authors use these calls to troubleshoot roadblocks along the writing process, get feedback to improve their outline, or review a chapter of their work.

Here’s the main thing you need to know: we will do whatever it takes to help you write a great book, and get it published.

Yes, editing is included. Once you finish the rough draft of your manuscript, then you hand it to us for a complete structural edit. Your manuscript will be fully edited by a member of our Executive Editing team, someone who has at least 15 years experience in book editing.

As to how we edit, we tell our authors this:

“We will hurt your feelings before we let you publish a bad book.”

Our first goal in this edit is to ensure your book is not bad. If it is, we will tell you where it’s bad and how to fix it.

Once we know it’s not bad (and they are rarely bad), then the goal is to help you take it from good to great.

We will push you to write the best book possible, because our name is on the book as well as yours.

Yes, everything necessary to publish your book is included: interior layout, cover design, distribution, everything. In fact, the publishing process is the same as what we use with our Media Writing Services Professional authors.

Authors get to pay for the service over 15 months, but you can publish in as little as 9 months. The difference depends entirely on how long it takes for you to write and edit your manuscript.

The only catch is that in order for us to fully publish your book, you must be paid in full.

Yes, you’re the sole author of your book, and it’s entirely in your voice. You are the only one contributing the ideas, the knowledge, and the content to the book, (and with the Guided Author Program, you actually write it out as well). All we do is help you with the parts of book writing that you aren’t an expert at; positioning, structuring, etc.

We’re able to do this because the book is literally created entirely from interviews with you—there is no other voice it could be but yours.

Simply put, hiring a ghostwriter means that your book will not really be your ideas in your words. With the Media Writing Services process, your book is entirely your ideas and your words, in your own voice.

Ghostwriters start with your book concept and a few of your ideas, then create a book using their own words, tone, and voice. It won’t sound like it came from you, because it generally doesn’t. In essence, a ghostwriter writes a book, and you pay them so that you can put your name on it. It’s not really your book.

With Media Writing Services, your book is authored solely by you. The ideas and words and content are entirely yours and are in your voice. We put nothing in your book that did not come out of your head and your mouth. We like to say that we help you translate your ideas into a proper, professional book, but all meaningful parts of authorship are yours, making you the sole author.

The two other differences are these:

1. Ghostwriters give you a manuscript, and they do nothing else. We do it all—including full publishing and distribution.
2. A good ghostwriter is much more expensive than our process (good ones usually run about $100k+).

If you don’t know what you’re talking about, then you need to hire a ghostwriter. That way the ghostwriter can do the research and write a book that makes sense, and you get to have your name on it.

The coolest part of the Media Writing Services process is that you end up working with some of the very best editing and ghostwriting talent in the world—you just do it through our systematic and defined process. Many of our Media Writing Servicess are former ghostwriters, but they love working with us (and our authors), because with us, they are able to avoid most of the problems that freelancers have: finding good clients, negotiating terms of the deal, collecting payment, limiting the scope of the work, etc.

Our systematic process is actually better for authors and for freelancers, because it creates a clear set of expectations and deliverables, a defined workflow, and ensures there is a trusted third party to monitor everything and ensure that it works. Our roster of freelancers includes Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy Award winners, bestselling authors, bestselling ghostwriters, etc.

This creates a three-way relationship where everyone wins: you publish a great book, the freelancer gets paid well for work they enjoy, and we make a profit by coordinating the whole exchange.

We wrote a much longer piece on the differences between ghostwriting and the Media Writing Services process. You can it read here.

No, authors do not choose their own Media Writing Services. That is why you are paying us—to do that.

To begin with, we thoroughly vet and test all our Media Writing Servicess. It’s easier to get into Harvard (6% acceptance rate) than it is to work with us as a Media Writing Services (<1% acceptance rate). Not only that, but our Media Writing Servicess have spent at least a decade (usually longer) in writing and publishing, and many of them are highly decorated—Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy nominees and winners, and National Magazine Award winners.

To assign Media Writing Servicess, we have an internal “ask system” that we use to pair up the right Media Writing Services and Author. Here’s how it works:

We get to know you, your book, and how you work. Then we create a “Project Scope” for your book, and let all 100+ Media Writing Servicess see it. They will read it, and the ones who are interested in working on your book ask to be assigned.

They answer two questions: 1. Why are you excited to work on this book, and 2. What do you bring to the book that might help the author?

We then pick the one we think will be the best match—95% of the time, this process works great.

But yes, in rare cases, the Author and Media Writing Services are not a fit. If after working together, they feel uncomfortable or unwilling to move forward with the project, we’re happy to find a replacement Media Writing Services.

Yes and no.

Many Authors come to us having written quite a bit of material. Regardless of what they have written, we always start at the beginning of our process and work through the positioning, and structuring stages. After the structure is done, we can assess whether any of your existing writing fits into the book. If it does, great. We will happily slide it in.

We do it this way because we’ve found that starting fresh enables the author to prioritize exactly what they want to get from their book, what audience they need to reach, and what they have to offer that audience (this is positioning).

Often when this becomes clear, it turns out that what they’ve written is not directly on point for the end result they want, and we don’t want pre-existing material to bias decisions or lead them astray.

It’s fairly common for authors to be unsatisfied with their rough draft—almost all authors feel this way about their book at some point in the process

That is why we have multiple rounds of revisions and corrections. You will never just “see” your book at some stage and be surprised by it. We have intentionally set up our process to include constant iterations and feedback and changes.

Virtually all of our Authors are happy with their book by the time it gets to final revisions.

But what if—after all the edits and changes—you still don’t like your book? This is possible. It’s impossible to 100% guarantee your happiness with your book, especially given that it is your ideas and your words and your voice.

But we will do everything we can on our end to ensure that you get the book you want. If that means assigning multiple editors to work on it, we’ll do it. If it means multiple editing passes, then we’ll do that. Our goal is to get the best book possible out of you. Anything reasonable we can do to achieve that, we will do.

Your book cover and manuscript interior layout will be designed by world class designers, but you have full creative control.

Our Creative Director has done dozens of New York Times Best Sellers, as well as the other book cover designers we’ve worked with. Combined, they have worked on over 100 best sellers that have sold millions of copies. You are getting the very best in design, because having a great book cover is a key to establishing your book as credible and professional.

Before we start the design process, you’ll have a long conversation with the Creative Director to understand your vision for the cover (if you have any). We organize this information into a design brief and use it to create a series of initial cover designs, which you will review and give feedback on. Just like all parts of our process, you will have full, 100% approval of your cover.

Book length is entirely dependent on the specific Author and the topic of their book. We don’t adhere to a fixed length, but generally find that most authors end up around 150 pages.

We’ve researched this extensively and found that for non-fiction books this is the optimal length—both for Authors and their readers. It is not an intimidating length, so readers are more likely to buy and actually read the book, and it’s about the right length for most Authors. The book is substantive, but not repetitive or padded. We believe that books should only be as long as they have to be in order to make their point.

Your publishing team, which will be led by your Publishing Manager. They are your main point of contact and are in charge of ensuring you get a great book.

Almost all of the writing will be done by your Media Writing Services. They are a professional writer and editor that has spent at least a decade working in books.

You will conceptualize your book cover with the help of our Creative Director, who has done dozens of bestselling book covers. It will be designed by her or one of her team, and you will talk to our Art Director for feedback and revisions.

Your marketing efforts will be led by our book launch and PR team to ensure your book reaches its audience and achieves your goals as a newly published Author.

That’s precisely why you should talk to us before you start—we’ll help you to make sure your idea is good enough for a book.

Our process does not work unless you actually have a book’s worth of ideas in your head to start. So the very first step in our process—before we start—is ensuring that you do, in fact, have a book in you.

Not everyone has a book in them, and we’re happy to tell you that, if that’s the case. We only want to work with people who have a good book idea that will be interesting to readers and bring the author a clear ROI.

We’ve found this to be the case with most authors—they actually have more than one book in them. Someone who has spent a lot of time gaining deep expertise in a field typically has a lot of knowledge that would be more interesting to people than they realize. For the majority of our Authors, the question is not whether they have a book in them, it’s how many, and which one should they publish first.

Our process is designed to help you figure out which book you should do first, and why. We begin by helping you to understand exactly why you’re writing a book, what results you want, which of your ideas will make the best book for you, and how to make it happen.

And note—we do this before you sign with us and get started. Before you commit to spending a dollar, we want to make sure we’re both a great fit for each other.

No. You should call us first, because this is exactly what we do—help you figure out if you have a book in you and what it would be about—and we can and should do that before you decide to work with us.

Our Author Strategists are experts at helping you understand not only what your best book is, but how it can help you. In the consult call, we will help you figure out the positioning of your book, we help you to figure out what your book is about by running you through three questions:

1. What result do you want this book to create for you?
2. What audience do you want to reach?
3. What will the book say that’ll be interesting and valuable to that audience?

How we help you nail down your book idea is explained in this post about picking the perfect book topic.

This is a super common question we get from authors, though it’s rarely phrased this directly. Author fear is expressed in so many different ways, but it almost always breaks down to “I’m afraid I’m going to look stupid.”

The biggest unspoken fear that almost every author has is that they will embarrass themselves. Literally, every author we’ve ever worked with—without exception—has had some version of this fear.

If you have this fear—or any other—you should tell us. We are experts at helping authors understand their fears and work through them. This piece explains part of what we do, but it is only a slice. We take the fears and emotions of our authors very, very seriously, as they are core to the experience of writing a book.

That depends on how you intend to make your money back. The best way to make money on a book is to look at it as an investment that leads to other profitable opportunities, and not book sales.

For example, if you’re a consultant or a coach and a client is worth $50,000 to you, then one client more than ROIs your investment in your book.

If you own a business and you sell a product that’s $150, then you need to sell at least 250 products from your book to make your money back. If your book is used to promote your business, then it is likely that the full cost of its production is tax deductible, which substantially lowers the full investment cost.

The one thing we do not recommend doing is calculating how many books you must sell to make your money back. This is because book sales is a poor measure for ROI.

Professionals see books as general marketing tools, not profit centers. Only novelists and fiction writers need to focus primarily on book sales, because that’s the only way they make money. We’ve written an entire guide to how to monetize a book, and we recommend that you read the whole article.

There are many ways to monetize a book. A book is also the best multi-purpose marketing tool there is. You can use a book to raise your visibility, develop your authority, generate leads for your business, bring you clients, get speaking gigs, sell products, launch businesses, and achieve many other objectives.

There are so many ways a book can help you raise your visibility and get media coverage. This piece covers it in general, and there are so many examples of our authors doing this. Bob Glazer used his book to get on Dr. Oz, two Harvard professors used their book to get media coverage around the world, and an entrepreneur used his book to generate millions in PR for free.

Books by their very nature enable authors to occupy a level of credibility far above where they started. This piece covers the effect in general, and we have literally hundreds of examples from our authors:

John Ruhlin used his book to establish his professional brand, become a sought after speaker, and double his firm revenue.

Deb Gabor used her book to build her own brand, and get work with Fortune 50 companies.

Cliff Lerner was a very successful entrepreneur who no one knew—until his book got him on the radar, and now he is on dozens of boards and is a high profile investor.

There are dozens of other examples here.

You can view a list of books we’ve proudly published to date here, and most of them have been very successful.

Some results from our Authors include multiple New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon bestsellers, countless media pieces, hundreds of millions in high-dollar consulting deals, New York Times profiles, celebrity endorsements…the list goes on and on. Read about all the ways our authors have succeeded here.

In terms of direct ROI, our most successful authors have made anywhere from 5 to 100 times their investment back with very few books sold. For example, Melissa Gonzalez used her book to generate millions of dollars of business, yet sold less than 1000 copies of her book. You can read about other ways authors have monetized their books on our Author Success Stories page.

You own 100% of the royalties for your book.

Although Media Writing Services doesn’t take any share of the book’s profits, there are some costs that don’t go directly in your pocket—namely, Amazon’s fees and printing costs.

For eBooks, Amazon takes 30% of your royalties and you take the other 70%. For paperbacks, Amazon takes 40% of the royalties, the printer gets approximately $3 to print the book, and the rest is yours. If you do hardcover, we’ll explain it all before you make any decisions.

No, it actually does the opposite.

When a traditional publisher takes royalties, their goals become focused completely on maximizing book sales, because that is their only source of revenue.

But that isn’t always what best serves the author. For many authors, the goals of spreading their message, giving away free books, getting speaking gigs, or finding clients are more important than the revenue from book sales. So focusing on book sales actually hurts the success of the book.

With this in mind, the best strategy to create a great book—both for you and for us—is to use a service-based model, where our goal is only to create the best possible book to accomplish your goals. We wrote a longer explanation of this here.

We have two publishing imprints at Media Writing Services: Lioncrest Publishing and Houndstooth Publishing. Both are wholly owned imprints of Media Writing Services.

You don’t have to use either as your publisher. We can essentially create a new publishing company for you with any name you like. It’s completely up to you who the named publisher of the book is.

Yes, but probably not in the way you are thinking.

Media Writing Services is self-publishing in the best sense: you have full creative control of your book, you own all the rights for your book, and you get all the royalties. It is the business model of self-publishing, with the support of traditional publishing.

When people ask, “Is this self-published?” what they tend to mean is, “Is this an unprofessional, amateurish book that you did without any help?”

To that, the answer is obviously no. The books we have done and the authors we have worked with are of the highest caliber, so clearly self-publishing can be very professional. You’re hiring us for that exact reason—to ensure that your book is as professional as any on the market. Furthermore, your book is published by an established publishing company, Lioncrest Publishing. So the answer is, “No, it’s not self-published, in that I got assistance from a professional publishing company.”

This is explained in depth here.

Big difference. The most important difference to you is that with us, you completely own your book. With traditional publishing, they own your book.

“Traditional publishing” refers to the New York publishing houses that operate with a royalty based book model. If they decide to sign you to a book contract (which is very rare), they pay you an advance and own all the rights and royalties to your book. They do the work of publishing and distributing your book, but that’s it. They do little to market your book, and they provide no support while you write it. Traditional publishing used to be highly prestigious, but now they mainly make money off the platforms that other people have built by monetizing their audience.

Media Writing Services is an entirely different approach to books—almost the complete opposite. You pay us for our services, and you own all the rights and royalties from your book.

Furthermore, we do everything a traditional publisher does, and a whole lot more. We not only help you write your book, we invented an entirely new process to turn your ideas into a book through conversational interviewing. We help you market your book, and we can even provide full platform support if necessary.

We’ve written a long piece here about how to decide whether or not to use a traditional publisher. It boils down to the fact that there are only a limited spectrum of people for whom traditional publishing still makes sense, and for everyone else, they should use some form of professional self-publishing (like us).

Yes and no. This is a complicated answer, again, because the publishing business is so weird.

Yes, we make your book available for order and sale in bookstores and retail outlets. All our books are put into the Ingram database, and can be ordered in every bookstore in the country.

No, we do not automatically put your book in bookstores. This is because bookstores carry very few books, reserving their limited space for established authors or books from publishers, who are often paying for shelf space.

Without discussing more details, just assume your book probably won’t be in bookstores, but that we might be able to make it happen in certain cases.

Yes. We have done this many times, including recently for Tiffany Haddish’s New York Times Bestseller, The Last Black Unicorn, and Joey Coleman’s Wall Street Journal Bestseller, Never Lose a Customer Again.

We don’t charge you anything for copies. You get to buy copies at the print cost. For print on demand paperback, Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark not only prints books for approximately $4 a copy when they’re ordered through Amazon, but they’ll sell the author these books at the same cost. At any time after the book is published, you can order copies in any quantities you’d like at this discounted price, direct from the printer (we don’t make money on copies).

If you are looking for a larger quantity of books (1,000 or more), we set you up with a commercial offset printer to handle this request. They can provide better prices at large quantities. We take no markup.

Let me be straightforward with you: getting on the Amazon Bestseller list isn’t that big a deal.

Amazon divides their list into hundreds of categories and uses a relatively short time window for rankings, so with the right strategy, hitting #1 in your category is very easy.

However, this extra form of credibility does help as you use your book to secure media, book speeches, and share your book with potential clients.

To that end, we ensure that the marketing we do aligns into an Amazon Bestseller Campaign.

We discount the ebook to $0.99 for the first week, and concentrate our marketing efforts—the email to your connections, the release of a podcast episode, the publication of an excerpt, an email blast to tens of thousands of people, and much more—into that week, to maximize the short term sales and overall ranking.

An important note: These activities aren’t aimed only at hitting Amazon bestseller status. They are the best decisions for the success of your book, and hitting Amazon bestseller is a byproduct.

We do NOT run any bestseller campaigns for major lists.

Getting on a media bestseller list (like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times) is a major endeavor, and from our experience, it usually doesn’t align with the real success of your book.

Each of these lists has their own rules (which we’ve outlined here), but the basic idea is the same: they measure total sales over the course of one week, and they have rules that people use to try to game them.

When authors try to hit the lists, they end up optimizing for these rules—racking up presales to distribute through indie bookstores, for example, or providing bonuses to their audience to bribe them into buying the book.

In our experience, rather than focusing attention on playing games to meet the criteria of a bestseller list, the best thing an author can do is focus on reaching people who genuinely want to read the book. This is a long term activity and not something to try to squeeze into a one-week period.

For more information on how bestseller lists work and why to avoid them, you can read our more in-depth article on the topic.

Your level of involvement in the program is entirely up to you, but in order to earn referral commissions, our Ambassadors must complete a minimum of 2 successful referrals.

In order to introduce referrals to Media Writing Services, Ambassadors use their unique link to direct their referrals to sign up for a consult with our Author Strategists.

You have options for how you share your link:

1. Connect your referral with our Author Strategy team (support@mediawritingservices.com) via email. You can use this intro email template and be sure to include your unique URL.
2. Send the person you want to refer your unique link, which will prompt them to schedule a call with one of our Author Strategists.
3. Share your unique link on your personal website, blog, newsletter, social media channels, or anywhere else you have peer connections that could benefit from sharing their wisdom with the world by writing and publishing their book.

We have found that those Ambassadors who succeed in referring an author during their first 30 days end up continuing to succeed.

To determine if someone would be a good fit for our professional services, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are they an expert in their field, as an entrepreneur or an executive?
2. Can people benefit from what they teach?
3. Would publishing their book help grow their business, or start a new one?
4. Would they be able to invest $20k+ for expert guidance to write and publish their book?

Once your reward has been Approved, your funds will be available for cash out on the Rewards & Withdrawals section of your PartnerStack portal within 30 days.

You will receive an email from PartnerStack to let you know.

You can cash out any rewards that are available following these steps:

• Log in to your account
• Select Rewards  & Withdrawals in the menu on the far left
• Confirm that your connected payout provider (Stripe or PayPal) is accurate
• Click Withdraw 

Processing fees for payouts are as follows: 

• Stripe: $2.25 USD + 0.25% to a max of $20USD per payout
• PayPal: 2% to a max of $20 USD

Important: Rewards are paid out via PayPal or Stripe. Before cashing out, make sure you have the correct PayPal email address or Stripe account details linked in your Rewards & Withdrawals.

For information, please check out the following PartnerStack resources:

• How do I get paid?
• Adding a Payment Provider

• $11,000 for each Media Writing Services Elite Ghostwriting Author
• $3,500 for each Media Writing Services Professional Author
• $1,500 for each Guided Author
• $1,500 for each Publishing Author
• $500 for each Audiobook Author

Our most successful Ambassadors have gotten creative, mentioning us in speeches, reaching out to their email lists, and coming up with other ideas to get us in front of their audiences. 

Here’s a running list of our favorite ideas. As Cameron Herold would say, feel free to use these ideas for “R&D” (rip-off and duplicate).

• What we do: Media Writing Services helps entrepreneurs, executives and high-level professionals write, publish, and market their non-fiction books.
• Why we do it:
  • Media Writing Services believes everyone on earth has a story to tell.
  • We want to help people share their unique knowledge and leave a legacy of impact.
  • We believe everyone should be able to write and publish their book, while maintaining ownership and creative control—and still ensuring the highest quality and impact for readers.
• How we do it: We surround authors with a professional publishing team to help them position, write, edit, design, publish, and market their book, getting it out of their head and out into the world.
• Who we’ve worked with: We’ve worked with over 1,700 authors to create some incredible books, including 11 New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestsellers in just the last 5 years.
  • David Goggins, NY Times, WSJ Bestseller & USA Today Bestseller
  • Tiffany Haddish, NYT Bestseller, Goodreads Best Books of 2018
  • Nobel Peace Prize Committee
  • Todd Herman, WSJ Bestseller
  • Joey Coleman, WSJ Bestseller

Our service is geared towards individuals who prioritize their time over their budget. Like most things, there is a huge range in the price and quality of writing and publishing services — you can find writers on Craigslist that are $500 for a book, and premium ghostwriters as expensive as $150k.

Having a team of professionals handling every aspect of a book is inherently expensive because of the costs of such great talent. For the quality we offer, we believe our prices are extremely low. But, because it’s a lot of money, it is most beneficial for individuals who can see a clear return on investment from publishing their book, such as business owners and speakers.

For people with more time than money who would like a lower cost option, they are welcome to follow our process by downloading our book, The Media Writing Services Method, for free and following the steps on their own time.

Commissions kick in after your second successful referral. You receive 50% of your referral commission once they’ve paid half their balance. Depending on which service they’ve signed on for, this can vary anywhere from 6 to 12 months.

You receive the remaining 50% of your referral commission once they have paid off their balance in full.

In your PartnerStack dashboard, your referral commission (Reward) will show as “Pending” until 50% of your referral’s balance has been paid, at which point it will be marked “Approved” and paid out within 30 days. For your second payment, this process will repeat until 100% of your referral’s balance has been paid.

Yes. We haven’t given one away yet, but we do have Ambassadors who are getting close!

Almost always, yes. 

Unless it’s illegal, immoral, or otherwise problematic, we are always happy to test out new ideas and work with our Ambassadors to make referrals as fun and easy as possible. We’ve helped Ambassadors write speeches, host webinars, create landing pages, put together custom offers, and just about everything in between. It can’t hurt to ask 🙂

That’s great! Although our goal is to avoiding putting too much work on our Ambassadors, we are always open to creative ideas. We’ve had Ambassadors give speeches, run social media campaigns, and do all sorts of other creative marketing to help refer more authors.

Absolutely! As long as you know people who might make great potential authors, we want to hear from you.

The most important thing to consider with an audiobook is file quality. There are strict standards for file quality that you have to meet or Audible will not accept your finished book. You can choose one of three paths: Record and produce yourself, record it and hire a professional producer, or hire us to record, produce, and distribute it.

A professional narrator can make a world of difference to the quality of the final audiobook. Most narrators who specialize in audiobooks will offer a start-to-finish turnkey solution, charging per hour. That means they do everything. You send them a manuscript, and they send you back an audiobook that’s ready to upload to Audible/Amazon and iBooks/Apple.

Yes! We have an in-house audiobook department and access to a network of thousands of narrators. This ensures the highest quality for your audiobook and the best narrator possible.

If you prefer to narrate your audiobook, we’ll set you up at CDM Studios in NYC, a premier boutique recording studio that’s been the best in business since 1998. 

Distribution is handled through our friends at Author’s Republic and will place your audiobook on all the major platforms, including Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, and more.

Absolutely. We’ll utilize our network of 1,000+ professional narrators to find the perfect voice for you based on your book and preferences.

You have a few options: 

• You can source a narrator and production team yourself and hire them to produce your audiobook. 
• You can find a local studio and narrate your own audiobook and find an audio engineer to help you with post-production. 
• You can hire us to record, produce and distribute your audiobook, with either yourself or a professional narrator handling the narration.

Dividing the word count by 9,000 will give you an estimate on the final running time of the book. For example, a typical 50,000 word manuscript (200 book pages) will be roughly 5.5 hours of finished audio.

A professional narrator will record close to a 2:1 ratio. This means that for every 2 hours they spend recording, 1 hour of audio will be used. Authors or newer narrators typically record at a 3:1 ratio which extends the recording time.

Long-form narration can be a strenuous task. To prepare, spend as much time as possible reading your manuscript out loud, restarting sentences when you make a mistake.

You can also use annotation software to give yourself subtle reminders to breathe and highlight words you’re having trouble with.

While many Authors love the idea of using their own voice to record their book, in most cases, we highly recommend working with one of our professional narrators to ensure your audiobook meets all the required audio standards and is just as enjoyable to listen to as it is to read.

Media Writing Services can deliver a retail-ready audiobook within 2-3 months from signing your agreement.

Talking about results can be tricky because results mean different things to different people.

For example, in 2018, we did a book about marketing for lawyers. It was pretty niche, and only sold a few hundred copies during the book launch. But because the author ran a large legal marketing company and did a lot with the attention we generated, he attributes over $2mm directly to the Book Promotion Process.

What we can guarantee is that you’ll receive a custom landing page and lead gen download, custom emails for your email drip campaign, social media assets to effectively talk about your book online, a Goodreads Giveaway campaign including email addresses of those who enter, an enhanced Amazon listing, PR outreach to Media Writing Services’s database of 13k+ media contacts, access to an exclusive international rights marketplace, and exposure to Media Writing Services’s email subscribers and social media followers.

No! A lot of authors obsess over pre-sales, and most of them do it only because they see other authors do it. The only people who this makes sense for are those who are trying to hit the NYT Bestseller list, or are trying to impress their publisher so they are taken more seriously.

If you are most concerned with the long term success of the book, it’s much better to focus that attention after launch.

As an example, when was the last time you pre-ordered a book? Probably not recently, if ever, right?

Instead of making an “ask” before launch, losing people, and converting poorly, we’d rather use that time to get people excited and save the ask until after launch when potential readers are more likely to pull the trigger.

We don’t focus on hitting major bestseller lists, as they have become an overpriced game. We find it more effective to focus on marketing that will sell books and increase influence, rather than just trying to get the credential of a bestseller list without real impact.

For more information on how to hit a major bestseller list, you can read this article (written by our 4x NYT bestseller co-founder, Tucker Max).

Categories are an important part of hitting Amazon bestseller. Basically, if you are selling more books than anyone else in your category over a 1-2 day period, you’ll become the #1 book in the category.

To ensure this happens, we wait until the week before launch (when we have a good sense of the competition) and we research all the relevant categories around your topic. We want to make sure they are prominent categories, but you aren’t going head to head with Malcolm Gladwell or anyone who will be impossible to beat.

Once we find the right categories, we add you to them in advance of launch week to maximize your chance of hitting bestseller status during launch week.

You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do! But consider this…

The long-term success of a book comes from word of mouth, from readers talking about it. So our goal early on in book marketing is to get as many people as possible to read the book, so they can talk about it later.

The $0.99 promotion is powerful because all the people who would regularly be on the fence, or maybe add the book to their “read later” list, decide to take the plunge right away. That gets you more readers early on, and maximizes your chances of bestseller status.

We recommend doing it for all authors, unless book sale revenue is a big factor for them AND they have a big audience that they want to earn that revenue from. Otherwise, the $0.99 discount is a no-brainer to support the book’s long-term success.

This varies by author, because a lot of the advice we give leaves a lot of room to do as much or as little as needed. Most of what we will ask from you has to do with focusing on your relationships and galvanizing them to take action to promote the book. Some authors don’t do this at all, and some dedicate all their time to it leading up to launch.

As estimates for a normal author, you can expect to spend about:

• 60-90 minutes per week leading up to launch
• 60-90 minutes per day during launch week
• 30-60 minutes per week after launch

Like anything that we don’t have complete control over, we can’t make guarantees around media.

We can guarantee that we’ll pitch your book to outlets that give you the best chance at landing an interview. This means that our team evaluates the content of your book and the industry you’re in to ensure we’re pitching you to our media connections looking to feature authors like you.

This means that your book about running a business will be pitched to media interested in business. If your content could apply to parents with the right spin, that outreach is better left to a dedicated Publicist (who we’re happy to recommend).

We start with creating a customized strategic plan – the Footprint Strategy. We start by identifying people who have successfully reached and impacted the audience we want to reach, and use them as our guides. We then methodically research what media the top 5-10 people in your field have secured that have been most impactful in elevating them to that level. We now have a powerful list of outlets that could make a big impact for you and your book.

We also leverage our own relationships. We have over 3,000 journalists we’ve built connections with over the course of doing hundreds of launches, so we comb through those outlets that align with the direction from the original research.

Finally, we’re a team of deeply experienced PR professionals, so sometimes it’s not so methodical and comes down to instinct.

Absolutely.

Although we have certain directions that we think would be most beneficial, our greatest focus is on any outreach that will move the needle toward your goals.

We work together to determine which outreach will be most effective. For some authors, that’s podcasts. For some, it’s taking big swings for Tier 1 media. For others, it’s something outside the box, like reaching out directly to professors to feature their book in classrooms.

We’re happy to dedicate our time and energy to whatever will support your goals most.

Yes, you’re the sole author of your book, and it’s entirely in your voice. You are the only one contributing the ideas, the knowledge, and the content to the book, (and with the Guided Author Program, you actually write it out as well). All we do is help you with the parts of book writing that you aren’t an expert at; positioning, structuring, etc.

We’re able to do this because the book is literally created entirely from interviews with you—there is no other voice it could be but yours.

Unlike other ghostwriting services, with Media Writing Services, your book is entirely your ideas and your words, in your own voice.

Other Ghostwriters start with your book concept and a few of your ideas, then create a book using their own words, tone, and voice. It won’t sound like it came from you, because it generally doesn’t. In essence, a ghostwriter writes a book, and you pay them so that you can put your name on it. It’s not really your book.

With Media Writing Services, you are the Author. The ideas and words and content are entirely yours and are in your voice. We put nothing in your book that did not come out of your head and your mouth. We like to say that we help you translate your ideas into a proper, professional book, but all meaningful parts of authorship are yours, making you the sole author.

The two other differences are these:

Ghostwriters give you a manuscript, and they do nothing else. We do it all—including full publishing and distribution.

A good ghostwriter is much more expensive than our process (good ones usually run about $100k+).

If you don’t know what you’re talking about, then you need to hire a ghostwriter. That way the ghostwriter can do the research and write a book that makes sense, and you get to have your name on it.

The coolest part of the Media Writing Services process is that you end up working with some of the very best editing and ghostwriting talents in the world—you just do it through our systematic and defined process. Our Ghostwriters love working with us (and our authors), because they are able to avoid most of the problems that freelancers have: finding good clients, negotiating terms of the deal, collecting payment, limiting the scope of the work, etc.

Our systematic process is actually better for authors and for freelancers, because it creates a clear set of expectations and deliverables, a defined workflow, and ensures there is a trusted third party to monitor everything and ensure that it works. Our roster of freelancers includes Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy Award winners, bestselling authors, bestselling ghostwriters, etc.

This creates a three-way relationship where everyone wins: you publish a great book, the freelancer gets paid well for work they enjoy, and we make a profit by coordinating the whole exchange.

We wrote a much longer piece on the differences between traditional ghostwriting and the Media Writing Services process. You can read it here.

No, authors do not choose their own Ghostwriter. That is why you are paying us—to do that.

To begin with, we thoroughly vet and test all our Ghostwriters. It’s easier to get into Harvard (6% acceptance rate) than it is to work with us as a Media Writing Services (<1% acceptance rate). Not only that, but our Ghostwriters have spent at least a decade (usually longer) in writing and publishing, and many of them are highly decorated—Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy nominees and winners, and National Magazine Award winners.

We have an internal “ask system” that we use to pair up the right Ghostwriter and Author (you). Here’s how it works:

We get to know you, your book, and how you work. Then we create a “Project Scope” for your book, and let all our Ghostwriters see it. They will read it, and the ones who are interested in working on your book ask to be assigned.

They answer two questions: 1. Why are you excited to work on this book, and 2. What do you bring to the book that might help the author?

We then pick the one we think will be the best match—95% of the time, this process works great.

But yes, in rare cases, the Author and Ghostwriter are not a fit. If after working together, they feel uncomfortable or unwilling to move forward with the project, we’re happy to find a replacement Ghostwriter.

Your publishing team, led by your Author Success Manager. They are your main point of contact and are in charge of ensuring you get a great book.

Most of the writing will be done by your Ghostwriter—a professional writer and editor that has spent at least a decade working in books.

You will conceptualize your book cover with the help of our Creative Director, who has created dozens of bestselling book covers. They will lead the creative process, but your feedback will be instrumental to guide revisions.

Your marketing efforts will be led by our book launch and PR team to ensure your book reaches its audience and achieves your goals as a newly published Author.