Hi writers,
For 17 more days, you can get a book of mine that isn’t for sale anywhere.
It’s called How to Write a Memoir, and it’s everything I know about writing memoirs, your own or someone else’s. I’ve never published it. The only way to get it is to preorder my novel, Let Me Be Your Ghost, before it comes out on November 18.
Preorder one copy, in any format, from any retailer. Upload your receipt on my site, and the memoir book lands in your inbox in PDF and EPUB, usually within minutes. Buy one book, get two.
🌁 The novel, in case you missed it
Let Me Be Your Ghost is a romantic thriller about my actual day job, with a lot more espionage. Lola Whitman ghostwrites memoirs for powerful men and feeds their secrets to the FBI. One last book buys her freedom. Then her final target, billionaire Ezekiel Crane, finds her first. If you loved Verity or First Lie Wins, this one’s for you.
🔎 What’s inside the book I never published
I started How to Write a Memoir in 2021 and rewrote the whole draft in Athens coffee shops on way too many Freddo espressos. It’s the process I take my ghostwriting clients through, written down so you can use it on your own life. Then it sat in a folder for years as my private playbook.
16 chapters that take a memoir from a drawer of old photos to launch day: your theme, your cast of characters, your outline, a writing habit you can keep, the first draft, and four whole chapters on rewriting (yes, four)
11 Case Files, with names and identifying details changed. A few of the titles: “The Family Reunion Gone Wrong,” “The Chef’s Tasting Menu” and “Nobody Likes Notes.”
15 sets of writing prompts I call Open Cases, plus a questionnaire for your early readers and a checklist for your rewrites
👻 For the ghosts in the room
The book has two audiences on purpose. If you want to write your own memoir, it walks you through it. If you want to get paid to write other people’s, 13 of the chapters include an “If You’re the Ghost” section on what changes when the life on the page isn’t yours.
Chapter 15 is the job itself: how to ghostwrite someone else’s memoir. It starts from the two skills I think the career comes down to, the ability to vanish and the ability to embody. Chapter 16 flips the desk to cover how to hire a ghostwriter and be a great client, which is the fastest way I know to learn what your future clients are nervous about.
Memoir work is a real writing job, and it shows up on our job board. In September, one of our featured listings was a client looking for a line editor for a memoir manuscript and book proposal. And if you caught my Live with Katie Ludlow Rich, you heard how a historian went from “essentially a free freelancer” to building a six-figure ghostwriting and developmental editing business.
🎁 Every gift, and how to claim it
Buy one copy of Let Me Be Your Ghost, any format, and get a free copy of How to Write a Memoir. That’s the buy one, get one.
Ten print copies (about $220 in paperbacks) also gets you a year of Founding membership to 💡 Sutoscience, my personal Substack, which normally costs $550. That comes with our monthly Substack Lab calls and the 6 Week Substack Sprint. If your writing group or book club needs its next read, this is a very good excuse.
Fifty or more print copies adds a private session with me, either one-on-one coaching on writing, Substack or book marketing, or a talk for your team, institution or organization.
To claim, preorder from any retailer (Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, or The Ripped Bodice if you shop indie), then upload your receipt on the claim page. Already preordered and never claimed? Go upload it now. The free book comes with preorders only right now, and preorders end November 18.
Set the timer, write down where your spotlight was, and if you want the other 14 sets of prompts, you know where to find them.
-Amy