Executive Ghostwriting Service

“You Should Write a Book.”

You’ve heard it for years. Here’s how it finally happens: a real, published book, written in your voice by Peter Armstrong, the founder of Leanpub, from six to eight recorded conversations with you — with Claude Code running the GhostAI skills built at Leanpub for exactly this kind of book — published in four months, not two years, and followed by three translations and an audiobook. It starts with a half-hour call.

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Leanpub

The Definitive Book on Enterprise AI

by You

The case for your book

Everyone has told you to write it

It happens after the keynote, after the board meeting, after the podcast interview: someone tells you that you should write a book. They keep being right. “They wrote the book on it” is the strongest credibility sentence in the English language, and other people say it for you — in the rooms where the keynote invitations, the board seats, and the seven-figure deals get decided. Nobody carries a slide deck into those rooms. A book gets carried in.

You also know why it hasn’t happened: a book this size is five hundred hours of writing, and you have a company to run. So twenty years of thinking stays trapped in slide decks, keynote recordings, and the heads of the people you’ve mentored — everywhere except the one format you can actually hand to someone.

The traditional answer is a ghostwriting agency. The good ones charge $50,000 to $150,000 and up, take twelve to twenty-four months, and need thirty to fifty hours of your time in interviews. Most engagements end at a manuscript — publishing is a separate industry, where a hybrid publisher charges another $15,000 to $50,000 and adds about a year — and the full-service firms that do publish still measure their timelines in a year or more, not four months. Two years and six figures is a perfectly normal outcome for “you should write a book.”

We publish books for a living, we build AI writing tools for a living, and we’ve rebuilt the whole engagement end to end. The same deep interviews. The same collaboration. A fraction of the calendar and a fraction of the invoice — and it ends with a published book, in print, in your hands, not a manuscript in your inbox.

The definitive book on what you’ve spent your career learning is still unwritten. Write it, and you’re no longer one more executive with an opinion — you’re the person who wrote the book. That’s the whole trade.

How it works

You talk. We write the whole book. You review.

You talk. Recorded sessions with Peter Armstrong, the founder of Leanpub, scheduled weekly, so the book ships in four months. One architecture session to build your table of contents, then six to eight deep interviews, shaped by your material rather than a fixed script. Plus everything you already have: talks, posts, podcast appearances, internal memos. It all feeds the draft.
We write the whole book. Peter writes and edits every chapter — typing, dictating, and running Claude Code with the GhostAI writing skills built at Leanpub for exactly this kind of book, on Markdown files on one computer — with Len Epp as development editor and Peter’s assistant as copy editor. The drafting isn’t linear: the whole book takes shape as an in-progress draft about a month after your first interview, and every chapter deepens with every session — a book-in-progress in the truest Leanpub tradition. You read your whole book while it’s being written, not in month nine. The first full version arrives within 3 weeks of your last interview: not a chapter or two, but as much of the book as we can complete, very likely the entire first draft.
You review it with us. One to three recorded review sessions — as many as the draft needs, not a fixed script. In each one you react to the whole book as it stands, go deep where you want, and just talk; it feeds straight back into the next draft. The last one ends in sign-off: nothing publishes until you’ve approved it. The French, German and Spanish editions and the audiobook follow, completed for your approval within 3 weeks of that sign-off.

You choose whether to ship with a colophon — “How this book was made” — disclosing the method: your recorded conversations and your writing samples, written and edited by a named writer with Claude Code and the GhostAI skills, approved by you. Ghostwriting has always been confidential by default; disclosure is entirely your call.

What we never do is ship words you haven’t approved. Every chapter passes Peter’s edit, then the development editor and the copy editor, then your own review before it publishes.

The alternative

What the agencies charge you for

We built The Executive Book to compete directly with traditional ghostwriting agencies — so here is the comparison, on their best terms:

	A traditional agency	The Executive Book
Price	$50,000–$150,000+	$72,000 all-in
What that buys	Usually a manuscript — publishing is extra ($15,000–$50,000 via a hybrid publisher, plus about a year); even the full-service firms that publish measure timelines in years	A published book — Leanpub and Amazon, every format including hardcover, 500 paperbacks + 50 hardcovers in hand — followed by French, German and Spanish editions and an audiobook
Calendar time	12–24 months	Four months
Your time	30–50 hours of interviews	Under 25 hours
First draft you see	Month 6–9	About a month in: an in-progress draft, growing with every session
Who writes	A freelancer assigned to you, working from notes	Peter Armstrong, the founder of Leanpub — typing, dictating, and running Claude Code with the GhostAI skills — with Len Epp as development editor
Voice fidelity	The ghostwriter’s impression of you	Every chapter read against how you actually talk, by the writer who interviewed you
Launch	Not included	A podcast episode, a launch video, and newsletter features reaching 90,000 + 130,000 readers

The fit

Who the Executive Book is for

It is for a particular kind of executive, and the call is where we both find out whether you are one.

Twenty years of your thinking is in keynotes, slide decks and the people you have mentored, and the book itself is the point, not a date.
You want a full-length book, 40,000 to 80,000 words, and you know it takes six to eight interviews with Peter, not a weekend.
You can give it under 25 hours over four months, one conversation a week, with zero writing.

It is not for you if you cannot give it six to eight interviews, one a week, and the review sessions after them: a full-length book takes that much of you, and a thinner schedule makes a thinner book. Then The Expert Book ($24,000) is the same process from three interviews, published in 90 days. We would tell you that on the call.

What's included

One Writer. One Executive Book at a Time.

Peter Armstrong, the founder of Leanpub, writes your book — and while we’re making it, it’s the only Executive Book he is making.

One writer, one book

The Executive Book

A full-length business book — 40,000 to 80,000 words, written in your voice from six to eight recorded conversations plus your writing samples — written and edited by Peter Armstrong, the founder of Leanpub, published everywhere, hardcover included, in four months, and followed by French, German and Spanish editions and an audiobook.

We make one at a time. The deposit takes it, and closes it to everyone else until four months from the day it’s booked.

$72,000USD all-in

Paid in 6 equal monthly installments of $12,000. The first, at booking, holds your start date on Peter’s calendar.

Book a half-hour call

40,000–80,000 words — a full-length business book, roughly 180–360 pages
Written and edited chapter by chapter by Peter Armstrong, with Len Epp as development editor, Peter’s assistant as copy editor, and Claude Code running the GhostAI skills — and while we’re making your book, it’s the only Executive Book Peter is making
An architecture session, six to eight deep interviews, and one to three review sessions — plus your podcast episode — under 25 hours of your time, zero writing
Published in four months, from your first session to your book live everywhere
Every format, print-ready: hardcover, paperback, and Kindle on Amazon; PDF and EPUB on Leanpub
500 paperback copies and 50 hardcover copies sent to you via Amazon; additional copies of either at cost whenever you need them
A crawlable store page and free sample chapters — the surface answer engines read
An optional gated free edition that captures reader emails, with their consent
A launch interview video, and a launch-timed episode of the Leanpub Podcast with its host, Len Epp — published on the Leanpub YouTube channel and on your book page
A feature in our weekly newsletter, which reaches 90,000 readers, and our monthly newsletter, which reaches 130,000 readers
French, German and Spanish editions, each a Kindle and print edition with its own cover in that language, for sale on Leanpub and Amazon
An English audiobook in our AI narration, built on the ElevenLabs platform, on Leanpub
The translations and the audiobook completed for your approval within 3 weeks of the final sign-off on the English edition — each optional; skip any of them
Copyright and royalties are yours; the book publishes under your name

For calibration: this is the engagement premium ghostwriting agencies sell for $50,000 to $150,000 and up — most ending at a manuscript, with publishing left as someone else’s job and someone else’s invoice, and the full-service firms that do publish still running a year or more. Ours ends with the book published, in print, in your hands, in four months.

Against human ghostwriting of any kind, our difference is fidelity and speed: drafted from your own recorded words, written and edited by the person who interviewed you, published in four months — not reconstructed from a freelancer’s notes over a year and a half.

The Executive Book is a cash engagement — card, invoice, PO, or wire. Company-sponsored books are welcome; we’ll work with your procurement process.

These are Leanpub books — the same store that has been publishing developer books for 15 years. We decline books we don’t believe in; everything we accept goes on the shelf next to them.

Your time

Your effort budget, to the minute

A traditional agency needs thirty to fifty hours of your time in interviews — and still takes a year and a half. Here is your entire time budget with us, to the minute:

What	Your time
The discovery call that starts it	30 minutes
The architecture session — table of contents, audience, sources	90 minutes
Deep interviews — six to eight, one a week, shaped by your material	Up to 12 hours
Review sessions — one to three, until the book is yours	Up to 5 hours
Recording your episode of the Leanpub Podcast	90 minutes
Recording your launch interview video	30 minutes
Total	Under 25 hours

Our promise:
“You get a real book in your voice, published everywhere, in under 25 hours of your time — with zero writing.”

A book this length normally costs its author over 500 hours of writing. Yours costs you under 25 hours, with zero writing — and the manuscript is never the bottleneck. Your calendar is the only schedule constraint.

Frequently asked questions

FAQs

Is it my voice?

Yes — and it’s checked by someone who has spent hours listening to you. GhostAI drafts only from your raw material — your recorded sessions plus your writing samples — and Peter, who interviewed you, reads every chapter against how you actually talk and edits it before you ever see it. In your review sessions you flag anything that doesn’t sound like you. Ghostwriting has always promised your voice; here the person checking it is the person who interviewed you.

Do I approve everything?

Yes — the whole book exists as an in-progress draft almost from the start, and it deepens with every session. You review it with Peter across one to three recorded review sessions — as many as the draft needs — and the last one ends in sign-off. The translations and the audiobook then come to you for approval too. Nothing publishes until you’ve approved it.

Who owns it?

You do. Copyright and royalties. The book publishes under your name — on the Leanpub store and on Amazon.

Is this confidential?

Yes. Ghostwriting has always been confidential by default, and we’re happy to sign an NDA before the discovery call. Your recordings and any internal material you share stay private. Whether the finished book discloses how it was made — the optional colophon — is entirely your choice.

Isn’t this AI slop?

No — this is ghostwriting, brought into the AI era. Business books have been ghostwritten for as long as there have been business books: Lee Iacocca’s autobiography — the defining CEO bestseller — was written with William Novak, and David Goggins wrote Can’t Hurt Me with Adam Skolnick. Most important CEO books are ghostwritten. You’re an important CEO. Yours is too — and we do it proudly. And honestly: the great literary memoirs take hundreds of interview hours and years of writing — we’re not claiming that. We’re claiming a sharp, polished, professional book in your voice, in four months instead of three years. Slop is undisclosed, unaccountable generation. This is the opposite: written from your own recorded words and your writing samples, by a named writer who edits every chapter — typing, dictating, and running Claude Code with the GhostAI skills built at Leanpub for exactly this — then a development editor and a copy editor, then you, before anything publishes.

Can my company pay for it?

Of course — company-sponsored books are welcome. We support card, invoice, PO, and wire, and we’ll work with your procurement process.

What if I want a shorter or longer book?

The 40,000–80,000-word range is deliberate. Rework (about 27,000 words) and The Mom Test (33,700) are the short form, and that is the Expert Book’s range; the Executive Book is the full-length business book above them — roughly 180 to 360 pages — which is what six to eight interviews with Peter produce. If your material genuinely wants a shorter shape, that’s a discovery-call conversation, not a problem.

I’m a startup founder on a deadline — is this the right one?

Probably not — The Founder Book is the same machinery, compressed for exactly you: a short book — 15,000 to 30,000 words — from one deep interview, published in 28 days — scheduled around your Demo Day — on startup terms: half at booking and the other half six months later. The Executive Book is for when the book itself is the point, not the deadline.

Is there a more affordable version?

Yes — The Expert Book ($24,000) is the productized service: the same GhostAI pipeline run by a professional Leanpub editor instead of Peter, a 20,000–50,000-word book from three deep interviews, published in 90 days, with its own podcast episode and launch video. What you give up is the depth — three interviews against six to eight, two reviews against up to three — Peter as the writer, the French, German and Spanish editions and the audiobook, and the print run: 500 paperbacks and 50 hardcovers against 100 and 10. What you keep is the process — and the book.

It starts with a half-hour call

Thirty minutes with Peter Armstrong, the founder of Leanpub, and it runs both ways. You find out what the book would be — the thinking you’re known for, the raw material you already have, what your table of contents could look like — and whether six to eight interviews, one a week, is what you want. We find out whether there is a book in it, and whether this is your service or the Authority Book is. If we don’t believe there’s a book in it, or it belongs with another service, we will say so right on the call. We only want to do this if the book will genuinely work for you.