Not expecting you to share one of the books with me, but I was looking to get into this as well. I am assuming they are small, niche-specific books.
Do you perform all of the keyword research ahead of time (before finding your writer), and build out an index/table of contents so that every chapter in the book is planned ahead of time, or do you leave all of the research, chapter creation, and writing for the ghostwriter?
Much of it depends on what I am looking to publish. I mostly focus on popular romance niches.
For instance I publish a lot of LGBT erotica/romances. I write up about 1-2 paragraphs of what I want the story to be and pass it to the ghostwriter. I have a few different pen names and each stick with one genre. Example: "Mary Sue" only publishes BDSM Gay Romances. That way if you find one of my books and like gay bdsm romance, you're more likely to buy the others or subscribe to learn when new books come out.
I have a simple wordpress site for each author with an email list. I provide 1 book free for signing up.
I've used the same ghostwriting service for ~2 years so they're pretty consistent.
I'm currently working on a nonfiction politics book. I basically provided a word doc of research (news articles/etc), and a theme. I only specified 2 chapters and a word count. The other chapters are up to them.
Do you perform all of the keyword research ahead of time (before finding your writer), and build out an index/table of contents so that every chapter in the book is planned ahead of time, or do you leave all of the research, chapter creation, and writing for the ghostwriter?