Turn strangers' stories into your thriving writing career!
Learn how to build a thriving ghostwriting business crafting other people's memoirs — from landing your first client to delivering a polished manuscript. Master the human craft that AI simply can't replace.

"The clients who hire a memoir ghostwriter aren't paying for words — they're paying for someone who knows how to listen until the real story finally shows up."— Jonathon Kendall

What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Conduct deep-dive client interview sessions that extract compelling life stories with emotional depth and narrative arc
- Structure a full memoir manuscript using proven storytelling frameworks tailored to a real person's voice and timeline
- Write convincingly in someone else's voice — matching their vocabulary, rhythm, cadence, and personality on the page
- Use AI tools strategically as a research and drafting assistant while keeping the irreplaceable human craft at the center
- Price, package, and contract ghostwriting projects confidently — including kill fees, NDAs, and royalty or flat-fee structures
- Build a client pipeline and professional reputation through referrals, positioning, and a ghostwriting portfolio that protects client confidentiality
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
Your AI coach keeps you moving
Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 19 lessons

The Ghostwriter's Mindset & Market
Establishes the foundational understanding of what memoir ghostwriting is, who it's for, and where it sits in today's AI-disrupted writing economy. Students leave with a clear-eyed picture of the profession, its opportunities, and the mindset required to succeed — before touching a single manuscript.
- 1.1What Memoir Ghostwriters Actually Do To Make MoneyIncluded
- 1.2Who Hires Memoir Ghostwriters (and What They Really Want)Included
- 1.3Ghostwriting in the Age of AI — Threat, Tool, or Differentiator?Included
The Deep-Dive Interview: Extracting the Story
The interview is the ghostwriter's most critical and irreplaceable skill. This module teaches students how to design, conduct, and process multi-session client interviews that go far beyond surface facts — surfacing emotional truth, narrative tension, and the raw material of a compelling memoir. Prerequisite to all writing modules.
- 2.1Designing Your Interview ArchitectureIncluded
- 2.2Conducting the Interview — Listening as a CraftIncluded
- 2.3From Raw Transcript to Story MapIncluded
Structure & Voice — Building the Memoir Manuscript
The heart of the writing craft. Students learn to architect a full memoir manuscript and render it in a voice that is unmistakably the client's — not the ghostwriter's. Covers structure, scene writing, voice matching, and the ethical and emotional complexity of handling real, difficult human material. Builds directly on the Story Map produced in Module 2.
- 3.1Memoir Architecture — Choosing and Applying a StructureIncluded
- 3.2Writing in Someone Else's VoiceIncluded
- 3.3Writing Scenes, Not SummariesIncluded
- 3.4Handling Difficult Material — Trauma, Sensitivity, and Ethical BoundariesIncluded
AI as a Strategic Ghostwriting Tool
Equips students with a practical, opinionated AI workflow for memoir projects — covering where AI genuinely accelerates the work and where it must be kept out of the creative core. Positioned after the craft modules intentionally: students must understand deep human craft before integrating AI, so they can direct it with authority rather than defer to it by default.
- 4.1Your AI Workflow for Memoir ProjectsIncluded
- 4.2Using AI for Research, Fact-Checking, and Era ReconstructionIncluded
- 4.3Protecting Client Confidentiality When Using AI ToolsIncluded
Pricing, Contracts, and Client Management
Transforms ghostwriting craft into a sustainable professional service. Covers every business dimension of client engagements — from pricing strategy and package design to contract structure, legal protections, and the long-term relationship management skills that keep complex creative projects on track and clients returning with referrals.
- 5.1Pricing Your Services — Rates, Packages, and the Value ConversationIncluded
- 5.2Contracts, NDAs, and Protecting Everyone in the RoomIncluded
- 5.3Managing the Client Relationship Through a Long ProjectIncluded
Building a Ghostwriting Business That Grows
Equips students to launch, position, and sustain a professional ghostwriting practice — with a strategic reputation, a referral engine, a confidentiality-safe portfolio, and the operational systems that prevent burnout and enable long-term growth. The capstone module that synthesizes everything into a real business plan.
- 6.1Positioning and Niche — Standing Out in a Crowded MarketIncluded
- 6.2Building a Confidential Portfolio and Getting ReferralsIncluded
- 6.3Sustaining the Business — Systems, Rates, and Long-Term GrowthIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
Freelance journalists
You already know how to interview and structure a narrative — this course shows you how to package those skills into high-value memoir projects that pay far better than editorial work.
Recent College Graduates.
You have the writing chops but need a way to earn while you build your own body of work — ghostwriting memoirs is the craft-forward business that funds the writing life you actually want.
Content writers ready to level up
You're tired of commodity rates and want to offer a premium service that genuinely can't be automated — memoir ghostwriting is where your writing talent commands serious fees.
Editors and writing coaches
You spend your days deep inside other people's stories — this course helps you take the next step into ghostwriting, expanding your income without starting from scratch.
Biographers and oral historians
You already understand the craft of capturing a life on the page — learn to package it as a client-facing service with professional contracts, rates, and a referral pipeline.
Career-changers with a writing background
Whether you're coming from teaching, PR, or another writing-adjacent career, this course gives you the specific skills and business framework to launch a ghostwriting practice from the ground up.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
Jonathon Kendall
If you're a writer reading this, I'm going to guess something about where you are right now: you're good at what you do, maybe even great — but translating that skill into consistent, well-paid work feels like a puzzle with a missing piece. You've wondered whether there's a market for your talents beyond content mills and editorial rates that haven't moved in a decade. You might have heard the word "ghostwriting" float past you more than once and thought, that sounds interesting — and then had no idea where to actually start.
I've been in the room where a 70-year-old retired teacher breaks down crying because she's finally telling the story she's been carrying for fifty years. I've sat across from a first-generation entrepreneur who wants his grandchildren to understand where they came from. I've navigated the awkward conversation where a client's memory of an event doesn't match what actually happened — and I've figured out how to write through that with integrity intact. Memoir ghostwriting is intimate, demanding, and unlike anything else a writer can do. It also pays better than almost any other freelance writing service, because you're not just writing — you're doing something most writers never learn to do: disappear into someone else's voice completely.
That's what The Ghost Pen is built to teach you. Not theory. Not vague craft advice. The actual mechanics: how to design and run an interview that goes past the rehearsed version of someone's story and gets to the real one. How to read a transcript and find the spine of a memoir inside it. How to write a scene in someone else's voice so convincingly that their sister calls to say she could hear them in every line. And then — because none of that matters if you can't run it as a business — how to price the work, protect yourself legally, manage a months-long client relationship without losing your mind, and build a reputation that brings the next client to your door without you having to scramble for them.
One thing I want to be straight with you about: AI comes up in this course, and I don't dismiss it. I'll show you how I actually use it in my own workflow for research, fact-checking, and early-stage drafting support. But I'll also be honest about where it gets in the way — and why the human craft at the center of this work isn't going anywhere. The reason clients hire a ghostwriter instead of handing their transcripts to a chatbot is the same reason they hire a photographer instead of pointing their phone at the wall. The tool isn't the craft. You are.
If you're ready to stop leaving this opportunity on the table and start building a writing business that's genuinely sustainable — one that leverages everything you already know how to do — I'd love to walk you through it. The Ghost Pen is the course I wish had existed when I started. Let's get to work.
— Jonathon Kendall
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- 6 modules, 19 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
- Learn on any device, at your pace
- Full access for as long as you're subscribed