Adapting a Podcast to a Book

A handful of my clients started the process of writing their book with almost all their material on hand. They had their own podcasts.

I approach ghostwriting as an exercise in adaptation. My job is to adapt my client’s story or ideas to the written page in a way that captivates their readers. Finding the theme and the through line in their memoir is one approach. In other cases, it’s more directly adapting a wealth of material they’ve already grown through their podcasts.

Here are three ways my clients have approached this.

A compilation of their podcast episodes. The client was coming up on a milestone of her podcast, and branching out further into other public speaking. She wanted a compendium, a compilation, of some of the most insightful interviews over the years. We tried several approaches – writing out the interviews in a way that worked on the page; edited transcription of the interview; compiling the essential elements of each interview, and summarising the wisdom – before finding the approach that best suited the vision of the author.

A companion piece to the podcast. The client was a leader in his field and had been hosting a podcast and running a blog for years. In the development process, we trawled both for information to piece together to support the main ideas of the podcast. Then I adapted the piece to work as a book. The goal was to complete a book that stood by itself as a companion to the podcast. The book helped the author capitalise on further speaking engagements, and opened opportunities to work with industry leaders who read the book but hadn’t heard of his podcast.

Understanding the goals of the book and building the podcast around it. This client, a thought leader, knew he wanted to write another book and spent over a year devising the core of what he wanted in it. Then he built his podcast program around it. When we developed the book we found other directions some chapters could go, and he covered those topics and interviews while I was ghostwriting the book. This approach gave him insight into what material he already had, and showed him what else he needed to cover. This approach also developed his audience with the book in mind, meaning that he had done a heap of marketing before the book was released.

When you start writing a book in a field where you are already a leader, you’re not starting from scratch. You have a wealth of material to draw on. The trick is in adapting it to the page.