5 Hiring Questions to Ask a Ghostwriter
/
It’s estimated that more than half of all nonfiction bestsellers are penned by someone other than the person whose name is on the front cover. If the author is famous for something other than writing, you can almost guarantee their book was written by a “ghost.”
But you don’t need to be a celebrity to leverage the talents of a ghostwriter. As a storyteller, you’re trying to win the hearts of potential readers with a message, story, or an idea that lives inside you. The value of your narrative and message are generally beyond dispute. If you believe you have something important to say, you do! But you might also recognize that you need a proxy — someone who understands who you are and can portray your life, feelings, struggles, and lessons learned in a style that draws readers in and makes them crave to know more. Working with a ghostwriter is a personal experience and one that requires honesty and vulnerability, trust and commitment, to succeed. In many ways, your ghostwriter is your own personal Cyrano de Bergerac.
The single most important decision you’ll make when hiring a ghostwriter is choosing the best person for the job. Sadly, many do not choose well. Hiring a ghostwriter is not the same as engaging the services of a house painter or kitchen renovator. At any given time, two-thirds of our ghostwriting clients at Storyglu.com have come to us after realizing their first choice was not the best fit for the project. Therefore, the questions you must ask go beyond the obvious inquiries around the total cost and estimated timelines for completion.
What follows are my insider’s insights on a more effective vetting process of a potential ghostwriter for your nonfiction book. This post covers the 5 essential questions to ask before you sign on the dotted line, so you can avoid the added cost and frustration of having to switch writers in the middle of your project.
1. Which of your completed manuscripts comes closest to the type of book I’m trying to produce?
In a perfect world, your ghostwriter specializes in the exact type of book you want to write. But, unless you’re prepared to spend really big bucks (i.e., a minimum of six figures), you’re probably going to interview candidates who work in more than one genre and possess a diverse résumé of finished projects.
Even if your prospective ghostwriter has only written a handful of books, one of them should bear similarities to how they envision telling your story. Most ghostwriters develop a discernible style that you can evaluate. The way they tell a story or how they draw a lesson from a challenge their client faced will be apparent enough in almost anything they’ve written, but even more so if they have a completed project that shares some common aspects to your book.
I can guarantee that once your ghostwriting candidate knows something about the type of book you want to write, they are already comparing it to the approach they used in a previous project. Asking this type of question shows that you’re a well-informed client and have more than a basic understanding of how ghostwriting works. This question forces the writer to do some serious thinking about your book before any money changes hands. They’ll have to exert some of their creative energy to describe their ghostwriting methodology and identify the obstacles a book like yours might present, which is exactly the type of conversation to have before you choose the best candidate.
2. How do you determine your fee for ghostwriting a book like mine?
Early on, many prospective clients ask me how much I charge to ghostwrite a book. I answer them by describing how I arrive at the amount. The reason I do this is to help the author understand the many factors that go into pricing a project and preparing a quote.
At Storyglu, we look at three criteria: the length of the book (word count), the résumé of the writer (experience), and complexity of the story (content). A short memoir written by a junior writer that tells a straightforward chronology of a person’s life is going to be less expensive than a longer book with a self-help or leadership message linked to multiple narratives or complex ideas that’s written by a bestselling writer. This allows us to generate a “ballpark” quote that will give the author a price range. Further discussions focus on the amount of research we’ll have to do, the client’s ability to transmit their ideas and stories, and the degree to which any prescriptive messaging has been developed already by the author. When we factor in the guidelines around changes to the manuscript (more about this later), we can generate an official quote for the client.
Another ghostwriter might be more of a solo operation. So, the résumé of the writer is set. They might have a very simple pricing approach based only on word count. The industry standard for experienced professional ghostwriters is a minimum of $1 per finished written word. The defining criteria that matters in this example is how long the manuscript will be.
What you’re trying to avoid with this essential question is what I call “surge” pricing. This is what hotels, airlines, and ride hailing companies do. If they’re busy, the price goes up. Less busy, the price goes down. You do not want to hire a writer who is desperate for the work and will take anything that comes their way so they can pay this month’s rent — only to back out of the project later because a bigger fish comes along. You want a professional writer that operates their creative enterprise in a business-like fashion. If they’ve developed a pricing approach that works for them, something they stick with, you know they’ve already made their rookie mistakes on someone else’s book.
There really isn’t a right or wrong way to price out a ghostwriting project. What matters is that your candidate has a system that works for them and makes sense for you. In a way, what you’re saying is, “I hope you’ve found a way to offer me a fair price that also makes this gargantuan effort worthwhile for you.”
All ghostwriters have horror stories about nightmare clients, so they are evaluating you as much as you are evaluating them. You’ll win points with a question like this — it’s never too early to start building the rapport between an author and their potential ghostwriter.
3. How do you deal with changes to the manuscript?
To the ghostwriter and client, changes to the manuscript can create disagreements, cost overruns, heartache, and disappointment. There are typically two kinds of changes: expected changes and substantial pivots of the manuscript; one of them is easy to deal with. Expected changes are the everyday revisions to the manuscript where the writer misquoted the author or phrased something in a way the client wouldn’t normally say themselves. Most ghostwriting contracts allow for a set number of reviews per chapter, often two rounds of these kinds of changes. After that, the manuscript is locked and additional changes cost extra.
The trickier question is how to deal with substantive pivots in how the story is approached or what the message or themes of the book should be. For example, we have a client who battled an alcohol addiction during a stress-filled life as a lawyer, activist, and gay man coming out in the height of the AIDS crisis. His triumph over his addiction is one of the most satisfying moments in the book, but he’s now considering — for a number of very good reasons — having us delete or at least downplay his relationship with alcohol. This is a very big change which would require a complete rewrite of the first half of this book and would shift the focus of the book. I’m sure you can see the challenge inherent with substantive changes like this.
As with pricing, how ghostwriters deal with changes simply needs to make sense to both parties. A red flag appears when the writer has no plans for regulating changes, especially the bigger ones like my example above. The challenge is that no amount of upfront research and detailed outlining by the writer can avoid the surprises that often appear. Whether it’s the client’s wishes to edit or enhance a part of their story or message, or the writer’s discovery through the process of writing that a bigger and better idea begs for more exploration, there must be some way of handling changes.
It boils down to either writing the book you paid for or writing the best book possible. A good ghostwriter has a tried and true recipe for handling both everyday changes and more substantive pivots in themes and messages. This question should unearth their preferred process for producing the best possible book while giving you some assurances that the overall cost won’t drastically change from the initial quote.
4. Who’s your ideal client?
One of the first hurdles a ghostwriter and author must deal with is how to work together. Ghostwriting is a collaborative, creative process. Good ghostwriters are not highly paid stenographers that simply copy what you dictate to them. They are artists who, through training and experience, can identify richer concepts and more nuanced messaging. Similarly, every client is different. Some think in complete stories that flow effortlessly out of their mouths. Other clients struggle to add details to narratives or flesh out deeper meaning. This variable can greatly affect the amount of time required to write a book, and it’s all but impossible for the ghostwriter to know what kind of client you’ll be before actually diving into the project itself.
Asking this question is a sign of respect for the writer’s profession. It shows your own humility and willingness to be a good collaborator. In essence, you need to learn how to be an effective client and the only person who can teach you is your writer.
In addition to accelerating your learning curve as the author, this question can alert you to potential problems down the road. If you’re a hands-on creator who likes regular updates and ongoing opportunities to review progress but your ghostwriter wants to be left alone, undisturbed, until they produce an entire first draft of the whole manuscript, it may not be a match made in writing heaven.
Most authors looking to hire a ghostwriter have never done this before, but their candidates for the job have already worked with numerous clients. Find out what type of client allows them to be the best version of themselves and then decide if you can come close to fulfilling your role in a way that leverages the writer’s skills.
5. Will you write a sample chapter?
The best way to assess whether or not a ghostwriter is a good fit is to have them write a sample chapter. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as asking for a taster of the local brewpub’s new IPA. Producing a sample chapter is a tremendous amount of work, easily approaching 10–20% of the total effort to write the entire manuscript. This means that you will have to pay to “taste” this sample.
Many ghostwriters will not produce a sample chapter. It’s too much work and the writer can never charge as much as the effort requires. But, it doesn’t hurt to ask; even if the writer refuses, their reasons for doing so might tell you a lot about what kind of writer they are.
At Storyglu, we approach sample chapters with a fairly simple system — feel free to share this with another ghostwriter who is reluctant to embark on this method for showcasing their talents. We do a quick outline to determine the approximate number of chapters in the author’s book. Then, we develop a ballpark quote for the entire project based on the criteria I described in question #2. Let’s say the book has ten chapters and the project will cost around $25,000. One tenth of that amount is $2,500 and this is what we charge for the sample. Then we select what might be an easier chapter to write but also still demonstrates our style and vision for this particular book.
It's not a perfect solution. We spend more than 10% of the time needed for the total project. But, in most cases, the sample chapter will become one of the official chapters in the book with only minor changes. If the client agrees to work with us, they recoup their investment. On the other hand, if it doesn’t seem like a good fit, it’s still better to find that out sooner than later from the perspective of cost and time invested.
Ghostwriting combines business and art in a way that few professions can match. This creates built-in tension points; the good news is that they can be ameliorated upfront with these 5 essential questions to ask a ghostwriter before you hire them. Ultimately, try to remember my comparison of Cyrano de Bergerac. A good writer will literally make readers fall in love with your story and ideas. For that, it’s worth spending the time and asking the right questions to make the best possible choice in who you hire to ghostwrite your book.
Steve Donahue is a bestselling author, book coach, ghostwriter and speaker. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and been translated into multiple foreign editions. Steve is the founder of Storyglu.com, a book coaching and ghostwriting firm that helps nonfiction authors write books readers can’t put down.
