It may be tough for journos to break into book-writing, but for Denene Millner, landing her first book deal in 1997 was “a total fluke.”

The journo wrote a feature story for the New York Daily News about how the relationship book The Rules wouldn’t work for black women and, by 3:00 p.m. that day, Millner had landed a book deal for that very subject. Since then, she’s penned 21 titles, including Steve Harvey‘s bestseller, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

“It opened doors for me for other projects, because when other celebrities are considering who should write their book, they’re going to see my representation and my reputation as a writer,” Millner told Mediabistro about the runaway hit. “You know, New York Times-bestselling writer and top-selling book of 2009 is a hell of a calling card. In some other ghostwriting projects, my name hasn’t even been on the spine or the title page, but I try my best to negotiate that so that somebody knows I wrote it besides my family. It opens a lot of doors for more work, which is kind of awesome. It’s all any writer can ask.”

For more, read So What Do You Do, Denene Millner, Co-Author of Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man?

The list of celebrities that David Ritz has worked with is daunting: Ray Charles, R. Kelly, Aretha Franklin and Joe Perry, just to name a few. But the man who has ghostwritten so many autobiographies never set out to do that. In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s Hey, How’d You Do That? series, Ritz tells how he became a successful ghostwriter and gives advice to those with similar aspirations.

“When I first met Ray Charles, I didn’t know about ghostwriting; I was just going to do a biography of him,” Ritz recalled. “And then his agent asked me, ‘Which book would you be more interested in reading: a book about Ray Charles written by an egghead or a book written in his own voice?’ I told him that I would much rather read the book written in his own voice, and he told me, ‘You should write the book you would want to read, not the one you believe you should write.’ And that was a big turning point for me.”

For more, read Hey, How’d You Build a Successful Ghostwriting Career, David Ritz? [subscription required]