Thread: How much to charge...

Someone has asked me to ghost the rest of their book for them. They are looking at about 30,000 words and asked me for a quote. So I estimated around £350 for the whole project. They want me to do it for £175 plus 10% of what they make on royalties. So I'm asking if we can round it up to £200...

Just curious as to how much you would charge for a project like this...

Cheers.

Get the money up front; don't gamble on a back-end cut that probably won't happen.

Who are they and what kind of book are you ghosting?

Either way, I wouldn't go lower than your £200, and I'd probably go higher. Assume £.03 a word, and calculate that out. Round down to the nearest £50.

He's agreed to pay me £200 for the project. More details will be discussed during the week. He's given me his phone number so I can call him. From what he's told me so far it's an autobiography of sorts. Who he is is the next phase. I did have an ad up on Gumtree.com advertising my services so I assume that's what he was responding to. I should check though to make sure.

Don't worry, not a sinlge letter is going onto Word until I know this is genuine

Cheers for the advice.

Make sure he understands that finishing the book doesn't include editing and rewriting the existing text. That's separate.

I've ghosted a dozen books and I've never done a partial. If you try to patch up what the client has written, and I'm telling you from experience, you will have a dog's breakfast that even the dog won't want. If I were doing this, my minimum, minimum, would be £1,000 to start from scratch, using what the client has written only for reference. As Chronopunk says, forget about royalties unless the client is famous enough that just his name will sell the book. If that's the case you need 15 percent. The per-word charge should be at least .05£ on top of the guaranteed minimum.

There are some rules you need to lay down before you start. The first is that neither the client nor any representative of his will look over your shoulder as you write. When you have completed a first draft, give copies to the client and to the client's lawyer. You can ask him not to get the opinion of his wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, brother-in-law, or bookie, but it won't do much good. Everyone's a critic and they will all want to see it and they will all tell your client that they could have done a much better job. Try to restrict changes to those insisted on by the client himself or his lawyer. If he is an actor or televangelist you also need input from his agent and/or pr person.

If it's an autobiography do not question the veracity of what the client tells you. If he's a televangelist and he tells you he walked from Dover to Dunkerque in a hurricane all you need to ask him is whether he was barefoot at the time. That's the sort of thing his followers will want to know.

When you are interviewing the client take copious notes by hand plus have two voice recorders going. Even then the client will find 'mistakes' in what you say he says.

Approach ghost writing with caution. You will find it to be the most frustrating and painful experience you've had since the incident with the zipper. If you go ahead with it, good luck.

Listen to this man; he knows what he's talking about.

I suspect that this isn't anybody anyone has heard of; just some ordinary person who thinks that his life would make a great story and realized partway through that he can't write for anything and needs someone to finish it. (Not that that will make him less troublesome to deal with than Garza describes. If anything, it will be worse. The clients who want to pay the least usually demand the most.) That's why I commented that the fee he's agreed to should only adding new material; what's already there is, as Garza says, a spoiled dog's breakfast, three days old. You do not want to try and sort out that mess for a measly 200 quid.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

I don't know if he is famous. I would imagine there is some credibility to his name or else why write an autobiographical piece? Then again he could be a nobody with a high ego that needs a boost. Hence why not a single word is being typed until I've spoken to him a few times and got some background information.

Thank you garza for the input. I know you can usually charge more for ghosting but as this is my first attempt I wanted something I can get my foot in the door with and also get paid without pricing myself out. I will indeed try and set some ground rules. 30,000 words is a lot to get ripped off for and although I've got the time to do it (being unemployed) I just don't have the means to write that amount and not see some cash flow of sorts...

Thanks again for the replies.

EDIT: just re-read the first email he sent me. It seems that it's more about a time he had in some place which does have a plot (and he says he has an ending in mind). So it could even be a novel just with autobiographical elements...

While I'm thinking about it, do you think it would be wise to try and get myself an agent for this kind of work? It might be small time but to have some professional backing might come in handy...

Originally Posted by garza

I've ghosted a dozen books

- garza, what type(s) of books have you ghost-written?

I can't understand why anyone would do something like this for £200. That's peanuts. How much is your time worth? With any kind of freelance work I'm associated with that's like 3 or 4 hours of work. How much time do you think you'll spend on this?

xO - Two were for televangelists - those were the most fun. Five were for politicians. BOR-ing. Four were for business people, including one who was the owner of a media house where I was doing some consulting. That was the most difficult because he already had 80 pages of typscript and wanted me to pick up from there. I refused, he got someone else, saw the mess they'd made of it, came back to me, and agreed to my terms and conditions including an increase in the fee. One was for a refugee from the Salvadoran Civil war. That was the tricky one, for many reasons. For that one there was no fee and I covered my own travel expenses.

Edit
Heid - An agent is essential. Your agent negotiates with the client's agent, lawyer, or pr person. I suppose there are ghosts who work without agents, but it would be difficult. The one book I did without a fee was done as a personal contribution and did not involve an agent.

Joe - That's why I said you start with £1,000 as a minimum, and go up, and up, from there. There are time and travel and many incidental expenses involved.

Yeah I realise - after researching and asking you guys - that £200 is not a lot at all. Fortunately he's agreed that £200 will get him a first draft and any revisions or edits after that will be extra. Oh well, live and learn eh?

We spoke last night and it certainley seems legit. And not only that but there also seems to be a lot of mileage in his story so weaving it into a narrative shouldn't be too difficult. As I'm currently unemployed I have all the time in the world. My intention is to write and polish the opening chapters within the next couple of weeks and submit them to agencies.

Cheers again for the feedback.

I hope he's paying part or all up front. I got ripped off once by someone who "seemed legit." It only takes getting burned once on this kind of thing to learn your lesson.

He has agreed to give me some money up front. He has even agreed to a binding contract. I'm aware that I'm probably coming off as naive but seeing his profile on line, talking to him and listening to what he has to say makes me think that I should give him the benefit of the doubt.