The official website of Stephen Hawley Martin
Stephen Hawley Martin is a former principal of The Martin Agency, the ad firm that created the GEICO Gecko and "Virginia Is for Lovers." He has ghostwritten dozens of books, has written several dozen under his own name, and has won half a dozen national awards for his work. As an independent ghostwriter, he'll write your book for a lot less than you'd pay another experienced ghostwriter that you'd work with through a big national firm. Not only that, if you want him to, he'll also publish and promote your book.
I'm a former principal of The Martin Agency, the ad firm that created the GEICO Gecko and "Virginia Is for Lovers." I've ghostwritten dozens of books, have written several dozen under my own name, and have won half a dozen national awards for my work. As a ghostwriter working on my own, I'll write your book for a lot less than you'd pay a writer you'd be assigned to if you go with a ghostwriting firm. In addition, if you don't already have a publisher, I'll publish and promote your book at no cost to you, and I'll pay you a royalty that exceeds industry standards.
Ghostwriting by an award-winning pro for a lot less than you'd pay a big, national firm.
Frequently asked questions about working with me
to bring your book to market
Please tell me about your ghostwriting process.
Following an exploratory Zoom call, if I feel I can work with an author and that the book he or she has in mind has potential, I will prepare and give my potential client a “Letter of Understanding” that spells out the details of our arrangement. Once we decide to move ahead, we will meet via Zoom, if not in person, for a detailed discussion of his or her vision of the book to be created and the subject matter to be included. If the author has made notes or started a draft, this will be shared with me. I will organize the information into a chapter outline and email it to my client for his or her input. Once we agree on the outline, we will meet at least once a week for an hour or more and work through it, usually one chapter at a time. I record these sessions, ask questions, take notes, and within a few days I will have completed a draft of the chapter that I will send to the author to edit or comment upon. We will go back and forth like this until we have a manuscript with which we both are pleased. At that point, assuming you would like me to publish the manuscript, as mentioned above, I will at no additional cost design the book’s interior, create two or three covers from which you can choose, and publish the book on Amazon, the Barnes & Noble online marketplace, and via IngramSpark, the latter of which will make the book available to bricks and mortar stores and chains and other online retailers.
What do you charge work with me to create a book?
If you have already written a draft, I'd like to see it. After reviewing the manuscript and estimating how much time and effort I think will be required to bring it to the level it needs to be in order to be published, I will give you a proposal, which will include a set fee. Obviously, much more work will be required to create a book from scratch. To work with you as purely a ghostwriter to create a book of between 200 and 300 pages, I typically charge $30,000. This can be paid in equal installments, usually over four months, which is typically how long the project will take from start to publication. I’ve found that other experienced ghostwriters charge anywhere from $40,000 to $75,000 or more for books that length, which makes my fee more than highly competitive.
What if I have a contract from a large publishing company to publish my book?
If the book is going to be published by a large publishing house, we may work out a deal whereby you share an agreed-upon percentage of the advance and the royalties with me, in which case my fee would be covered by the publisher, and it won’t cost you anything out-of-pocket.
Other than that you charge a low fee compared to other award-winning authors, why should I hire you?
The number one reason to hire me is that you can be sure that I will produce a book you will be proud of. As you know if you have done some research, I’m an award-winning author with a track record of success. I’m the world’s only three-time winner of the Writers Digest Book Award, having won twice for fiction and once for nonfiction. I have also won First Prize for Visionary Fiction from Independent Publisher, First Prize for Nonfiction from USA Book News, and two awards from Readers' Choice Book Reviews, a Bronze Medal for Visionary Fiction and the Five Star Award for a romantic suspense novel. But my writing ability isn’t the only thing that sets me apart. You may be able to find another good writer or editor to work with you, particularly if you are willing to pay top dollar, but my other leg up is that I have established business relationships with Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, and the world’s largest book distributor, Ingram, and so I can and will publish your book. I’m always on the lookout for good books and will not accept your project unless I believe your book idea has the potential to become a commercial success. This is essential because once I’m finished working to make your book all that it can be, I will publish it, and then you will receive royalties on sales at the same or higher percentage that an author with a top publishing house would receive.
Wouldn’t I be better off to self publish?
It’s fairly easy nowadays to self publish, and if you do, it's certainly possible that you might come out ahead. If that's what you want to do, and you worked with me to write your book, for a very reasonable fee, usually $500, I will design the book’s interior and the cover and create the properly formatted computer files that will be required. I will also lead you through the process.
How long does the ghostwriting process take?
The ghostwriting projects I undertake usually are completed within three to six months with the average being about four months.
What kinds of books do you typically ghostwrite?
I have ghostwritten dozens of books, including one for the governor of a state, three for clinical psychologists, two for CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and six for business management consultants. The books written for the governor and those for CEOs were memoirs that read very much like novels. I typically work out a plotline that resembles the classic “Hero’s Journey,” which is the underlying plot skeleton of most successful novels and films. Books I’ve written for business consultants typically cite success stories and case histories that illustrate the efficacy of systems, processes, techniques that set apart the authors’ firms. Those for clinical psychologists share insights and case histories concerning mental issues about which the authors have particular expertise. Once, I worked with a retired Harvard Medical School professor whose first language was not English to write an historical novel that was based on events that actually took place.
