Hello, I’m Robert Metzger. I’m a ghost writer. We are behind the scenes in a video studio. I’m going to take you behind the scenes in the process of ghostwriting a book.

Today’s topic is research interviews, which is the fourth in a series of videos. If you haven’t already watched the first three, please watch them first, to get the context.

You should assume that the interview process will require at least 50 hours. It might take less, it might take much more. It all depends on how much content you have. At two hours a meeting, twice a week, 50 hours of interviews takes about 3 months. We schedule them at your convenience, preferably at the same times each week.

I will record all interviews, probably on two separate devices. I don’t take shorthand, and I need to focus on understanding what you are saying, and what questions I should ask you. I will be taking brief notes, which just indicate the elapsed time and a key word or phrase I should return to, when listening to the playback or reading the transcription.

You don’t have to worry about what you say or how you sound. It’s my job to write a draft that makes you sound great. It will go through many edit cycles before it becomes a manuscript ready for publication.

I will notify you when I am ready to record, and ask permission to begin. This may be a legal necessity, depending on where you live.

After we finish an interview, I will turn the recording over to a transcription service. I don’t charge you for the expense of using these services, since I choose to use them, and I control what they do.

Since technology books tend to have more diagrams, screenshots, and listings, we may choose to use a telecommunication service that allows sharing visual content. I don’t really need to see your face during the interview, so you can just turn off the webcam on your computer, if you prefer privacy.

I will have a list of questions prepared to ask you. We won’t limit our interview to those questions, however. If the conversation goes in an unanticipated direction, that’s just fine, as long as it is relevant to the book. Asking questions is a big part of my job.

Occasionally, I will have to ask you questions that make you feel a little uncomfortable. I might point out a contradiction in your thinking, and ask you to reconcile it. I might point out an assumption that seems invalid, and ask you to justify it. I might identify an assertion you made, and ask you to square it with other known facts.

This is part of the process. Believe me, it is much less uncomfortable to have me ask you hard questions privately than to have a reviewer shred your book publicly.

When we have completed all of the interviews, I will take some time to organize all the ideas into a design or outline. It will take a week or two before I am ready to begin writing drafts.

That’s it for now. Check back soon for the fifth episode in “Technology Ghostwriter behind the Scenes.”

You can learn more about my ghostwriting business at www.robertmetzger.com.