How To Avoid Plagiarism With Ghostwritten Ebooks
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you may not be able to avoid ghostwriting plagiarism. At that point, you are running through all the scenarios in your head, wondering where you went wrong. A list of questions might be reverberating in your mind, fighting to gain dominance, too.
“But I typed the whole thing! How could I have copied something?”
“I thought I used the right words and phrases.”
“Wait. What?”
What makes a plagiarism warning affect us more is the fact that it is a faint reminder that we are not so original in our writing after all. Even though you might be a splendid writer with the skills of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling coursing through your veins, it is akin to hearing someone say, “Well, you might need to improve your writing skills.”
The thing is, we often look at plagiarism the wrong way. You might find out sometimes that your output might be similar to another person’s work, despite how hard you tried to maintain originality. You need to realize that you should not take it personally. In that case, you simply have to think of ways to change the content to fit an original thought process.
On the other hand, the act of plagiarism is a reminder of what you should do as a writer: make sure that your content is unique. You see, you have worked so hard to create something. It may be a piece of engineering marvel, a project you have been working on, or a new recipe you want to try out. It can be anything that you have poured a considerable amount of energy to so that you can produce an incredible output. Now, imagine if someone else comes along and takes your idea. He or she practically copies everything you have done, puts in minimal effort, and then is lauded for it. How would that make you feel? Would you be happy to know that another person got recognized for all your hard work? Don’t you feel robbed of all the accolades that you should have received?
Of course, you would. You deserve to be recognized for your skills, talents, creativity, hard work, and integrity.
For that reason, you should work towards avoiding plagiarism. Let’s see how you can achieve that.
Paraphrasing Your Ghostwritten Ebook
The idea behind paraphrasing is that you understand the information provided by a source and then write them in your own words.
When you are ghostwriting ebooks, it might not be easy to paraphrase in your own words, especially when the original author articulated the same idea so well. But if you want your work to remain unique, then try these options:
- Avoid using words that are too similar to the original content.
- Make sure that you are not adding the exact phrases as they have appeared in the original content.
The key is to keep the overall idea while providing your own twist to it.
Remember, though, that a paraphrased work in a ghostwritten ebook still needs to have a citation to let the reader see its source. After all, while you are creating your own version of the content, the main idea is still not from you.
Research
Now, let us focus on how you can write original content and avoid ghostwriting plagiarism. From the get-go, you need to perform all the necessary research for your ebook. Take inspiration from other books on the same subject. Look at how authors have approached the matter.
There are three steps that can help with your research.
Step 1: Find All The Important Topics
When you are researching a subject, you need to discover all the topics that you would like to cover for your book. Let us take an example right here.
You are given an ebook project on Forex trading. The client has not given you any particular directions. What would you do?
You look through other books or blogs on the subject matter and then make a list of all the important topics that are related to Forex. Then, bring them together and take a look at your word count. Filter through the ideas and pick the ones that you commonly find in the books and find relevant based on your own research.
List down the topics in a chapter format in which each topic or group of similar topics fall under one chapter.
Step 2: Collect All Necessary Information
This step is similar to the research process. The only difference is that you are going to collect all the necessary information for the topics that you have chosen. Look at online materials, check out videos on YouTube, browse through popular blogs, head over to the library and see if you can borrow some related books, or use other resources available. Once you have done that, you can combine your research materials and study the topic further.
The trick is not to try to learn the entire subject matter in one go. That will take your time, and you are probably going to spend hours simply looking through a lot of materials to understand what is going on.
Look at the topics that you have or the chapters that you have prepared. Pick the first one and comprehend the collected information. Once you have done that, take note of the important points that you would like to discuss in your ebook.
Finally, write a part of the book based on your understanding and the information you have collected as a reference.
If you want to see more ways to search for ideas smartly, you can refer to this informative blog.
Step 3: Create Your Book Persona
One of the important factors to make your book unique and avoid ghostwriting plagiarism is to create a persona for it.
When your ebook has a personality, you approach it from an original perspective. You use a style that you are comfortable with and make writing more fun in the process!
Let us try to understand this point through a few examples.
Imagine that you are asked to write an ebook on keto diet recipes. Now, visualize the book as a person and think of what kind of personality would make people listen to him or her.
Since it is a book about ketogenic diet, you can expect the person to have a relaxed and casual aura. He or she should also be informative and able to provide medical facts in an easy-to-understand manner. Humor should be part of the persona, but it should not be overdone. When talking about the recipes, it has to exude a sense of excitement. It is as if the individual loves to cook and enjoy food.
You now have a persona. But how can you translate it into a book?
Simple. Use key points and create an appropriate approach for it.
Based on the person mentioned above, your book should have the following features:
Casual tone
It should sound like you are talking to a friend.
Science-based information
It matters to make it easy to understand, though. If you are using complex jargon, try to explain them well and do not presume that the reader knows everything.
Exciting vibe
One way to do this is by adding a small introduction to each dish. Make it sound fun!
Humor
Toss in some humor along the way, but it should have a light tone and be easily understood by the readers. It cannot be offending to anyone as well.
And voila! You have your persona ready. Isn’t that simple? Let’s try another example.
Imagine yourself writing an ebook about sales techniques for salespeople and managers.
Your book would probably have this approach:
- The tone of voice should project confidence. Think The Wolf of Wall Street!
- Humor should be minimal. You can definitely add it to avoid making the topic too serious, but the book is not supposed to be lighthearted.
- It has short and clear sentences. Managers and salespeople are used to taking in bite-sized information, so stay away from long paragraphs that are filled with too many details.
- It is as practical as possible. The readers did not buy the ebook to merely read about a topic. They want to focus on techniques and results.
Once you have a persona, you can make sure to approach each book from a unique viewpoint. There are fewer chances for you to plagiarize anything at this point. Even if you to use particular information, you are going to do it in a way that fits the persona you have created. Hence, you have a better opportunity to make the content unique.
Checking Your Ghostwritten Ebook
Finally, one of the valuable tools that you can use to check whether you have plagiarized a piece of content or not is a plagiarism checker.
When you are in doubt, do not assume anything. Go ahead and check your content for plagiarism. If you do find a plagiarized sentence in your content, you should correct it immediately. Otherwise, your client might discover it themselves, and you will get in trouble. Yikes!
Alternatively, you can hire the writers and editors on The Urban Writers to create original content for you and avoid ghostwriting plagiarism.
Final Words
You know what they say about prevention being better than the alternative, right? It is far better to put in a little additional effort to creating unique content than to spend more time trying to fix things while managing an obviously frustrated client or customer.
So, take your time, create some original content, and get the work right on the first try.
Don’t forget to have fun while you’re ghostwriting!
