How do You Hire a Ghostwriter For Your Novel?
Hire a Ghostwriter in 8 Easy Steps
So you want to hire a ghostwriter, or at least you’re considering it. But do you know what a “ghostwriter” is? Okay well if you’re reading this, I’m sure you do.
But how do you hire a ghostwriter? I’ll tell you in a moment. Knowing how to get the right person for your project is very important. This is because you wouldn’t want to give your project to just anyone.
When you work on a book with someone else, you’ll share ideas and opinions, solve problems, and try to connect your minds. It’s a more personal experience than hiring a plumber or a removalist.
Have you ever tried looking for the best ghostwriter to write a book for you?
Of course, finding someone you can rely on in this regard is not an easy task. But if you go about ghost hunting the proper way, you can find a great person to work with.
Do you know that some of the bestselling books you have read were written by top-notch ghostwriters?
But before you go about hiring just anybody, there are some things you need to know. Let’s take a look at them.
How do You Hire a Ghostwriter? 8 Easy steps
Choosing the perfect professional writer to work on your next project is critical if you’ve decided to look for one.
In today’s market, hiring a ghostwriter is not a simple endeavor. With so many great choices available on the market, it may seem confusing.
But if you put in the time and effort to find a ghostwriter and pay them what they’re worth, you won’t be let down.
You can hire a ghostwriter whether you’re well-known or not. Ghostwriters have a knack for putting down words and arranging sentences in a way that is pleasing to read. So before you go ahead and hire one, here are a few things you should consider.
1. Establish your project’s objectives.
You must have a crystal clear vision of what it is that you want to accomplish with this project before you can even consider investing your money in it. This will assist you later in the process when discussing your aims and goals with your ghost.
You need to know that you will be investing in time, effort, and money to identify, and hire the right ghostwriter.
In other words, before you hire someone to work on your book, figure out what you want it to do.
Understand what you intend to accomplish from the project — are you aiming to boost your brand recognition or broaden your outreach? Alternatively, maybe you want to raise your profile or expand your firm.
Regardless of the aim, you intend to achieve, these questions will aid you in making make a more guided decision.
Think about what your project will accomplish for the audience if you’re clear on your objectives.
2. Find a ghostwriter
Once your goals are in line and you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to look for a ghostwriter.
Honestly, it’s not as easy as it sounds, since ghostwriters aren’t the easiest professionals to find.
We ghostwriters often tend to keep a low profile and don’t share much of our work. For that reason, matching companies like Fiverr, Upwork, and Reedsy, are good locations to begin your quest for a ghostwriter.
3. Evaluate the expertise of a ghostwriter
Before you hire a ghost writer, there are several skills you should examine before making the ultimate pick. What is the ghost’s level of mastery in the art of storytelling?
Are they able to deliver their point effectively to the audience with good writing skills? How well-rounded are their analytical and problem-solving abilities? Can they process enormous amounts of information fast and efficiently?
These are just a few of the essentials to look for when hiring a ghostwriter. Also, the sort of project would determine the skill set you need in a ghostwriter.
The greatest experts in this industry have excellent writing and narrative abilities, smart problem-solving skills, and the capacity to comprehend and organize enormous volumes of information.
Also, they can portray the author’s actual tone and nuances. Your objectives will determine if you need the finest in the industry or merely a strong writer for your project.
If you have access to a reliable editor or literary agent, it would be in your best interest to get their opinion on any possible ghost.
Although you can identify good writing from bad, a publishing expert will be able to pick up on subtleties that may make all the difference. You may also make an evaluation based on what you enjoy and what sounds well to you.
4. Ask for past work samples
It’s important to know their experience and asking for earlier work might make your recruiting task easier.
Ask your selected prospects what they’ve written in the past and how long they’ve been ghostwriting.
Remember that you are also searching for a ‘GHOST’ writer, which implies that anything they write for you, will be credited to you with FULL rights of ownership.
Therefore, requesting prior work samples might be challenging when hiring a ghostwriter since most of the time they don’t have the authorization to display their past work.
5. Clearly state your goals
At this stage, you’ve identified a ghost to work with and reached out. So what’s next?
Make sure the ghostwriter knows how involved you want to be in the project. Are you offering them creative liberty or expecting them to keep tight to your specific plan?
It’s crucial to create clear boundaries. Are you receptive to the input and suggestions of your ghostwriter?
Rather than just depending on your thoughts, would the ghost also be able to provide their own input? Be clear about what it is you really want. This would make things easier on the ghostwriter and the work process would be much faster and flow smoothly.
6. Discuss the specifics.
Most ghostwriting requires communication and collaboration between the author and the writer, although how much of both depends on the author’s requirements and the ghost’s method.
At the beginning of the project, some ghosts will spend a lot of time with the author gathering information and asking questions, while others will read and process research or conduct interviews and then disappear for months as the chapters are drafted, showing the author batches of chapters or perhaps the entire completed manuscript to the author.
Most ghostwriters, on the other hand, work with writers chapter by chapter, collecting data and submitting draft manuscripts along the way.
You must comprehend the ghostwriter’s methods and make sure it fits your needs.
Figure out what you’ll do with the written drafts when you get them. Will you use a tracking tool to put your suggestions in the text, or will you write them as comments and let the writer decide how to use them?
7. Pay attention to quality, not just price
Quality speaks loudly.
If you feel this project is important, you should not put budget pricing above quality. Obviously, money is a component one should consider — however, this does not imply you do not pay the value of the job.
Hiring low-cost ghostwriters is a waste of time and money. This project will be the public’s impression of you. Everything you write and discuss is what you represent. Although the best ghostwriters don’t come cheap, hiring them will be well worth your money.
Readers are also harsh reviewers these days. You wouldn’t want to take any risks. Choose the best ghost possible so that your book stands out
If you don’t give them the BEST, they probably won’t tell their friends about you or buy from you again.
8. Decide on delivery date and time.
You should have decided on the ghost writer you’ll hire for your project by now. It’s a good idea to talk about the timeline at this point.
Most ghostwriters are in high demand, so it’s best to plan if you want one. To avoid any misunderstandings, be sure to discuss deadlines with your chosen ghost.
Depending on what is most acceptable, both parties may agree on a milestone-by-milestone or overall project completion basis. The length of time will also depend on how big your project is.
A ghost writer can usually finish a 50-page book in about one to two months. In the same way, the timeline for other projects, like online content marketing, is based on how much work needs to be done.
Full-length projects could take anywhere from a few months to a year to complete.
How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Ghostwriter For a book?
It will cost you between $40,000 and $70,000 to hire a skilled ghostwriter. The price for each project will depend on the ghostwriter’s level of experience and the type of book you want to write.
According to data from Reedsy taken in 2021, ghostwriters charge up to 30 cents per word for memoirs and 24 cents per word for children’s fiction manuscripts.
When it comes to ghostwriting, nonfiction is often more expensive because of the time a ghostwriter must devote to research and fact-checking.
Even within the genre of memoir, prices might vary greatly. Ghostwriters with less experience may charge between $20,000 and $30,000 to write a memoir. Ghostwriters with more than a few years of experience are more likely to charge between $40,000 and $60,000.
It is possible to find affordable ghostwriters by going to ghostwriting bidding sites or by outsourcing your project to a ghostwriter in another country.
Ghostwriters at auction sites sometimes take on such projects on a part-time or regular basis. However, though they may have lower rates than other ghostwriters, they will likely have less experience.
Bids can sometimes be unrealistic since candidates compete on price, and you might wind up with a substandard job that ends up costing you more in the long run.
For a 200-page book, overseas ghostwriters generally charge between $3,000 and $5,000. However, when working with ghostwriters from other countries, you incur the danger of inconsistent quality, linguistic inconsistency, cultural misunderstanding, and a dissonant tone.
Furthermore, these ghostwriters may potentially be unfamiliar with your industry. They probably won’t grasp the financial or medical terminologies of your region. Meaning they may not be able to effectively communicate crucial concepts. They may also lack the critical thinking skills necessary to fill in the plot gaps in your book.
However, you don’t need to be too concerned if you’re writing a fiction book. Fiction has to do with imagination and creativity. Hence, overseas ghostwriters need only do a little research to understand the lingo or culture of your region.
It doesn’t matter whether you hire an expensive, moderately priced, or low-cost ghostwriter; you’ll get what you paid for.
Ghostwriters charge in a variety of ways:
· hourly rate
· Words per page
· Project type
· profit share
Depending on how much experience the ghostwriter has and how complicated the project is, the rates can be:
· $0.1 to $3 per word
· $1 to $10 per 100 words
· $3 to $40 per page
· $50-$150 an hour
Where Can You Hire a Ghostwriter For a Book?
If you want to hire a ghostwriter, the first step is to learn where to look for prospects. So where can you find a ghostwriter for your book?
Well, there are three places to go looking to hire a ghostwriter.
1. Online marketplaces for freelance writers, such as Reedsy, Fiverr, Upwork, and Mediabistro, let authors find clients that need ghostwriting help.
2. You could find ghostwriters through individual Searches. Start with platforms like LinkedIn and Google.
3. Go through ghostwriter agencies. A ghostwriting agency is a middleman between authors and ghostwriters who takes a percentage of the pay.
1. Online freelance marketplaces
One of the best places to find ghostwriters for hire is a freelance writer marketplace, but you’ll still have to look through a lot of profiles to find good candidates.
If you’re looking to hire a professional book ghostwriter, I’d recommend checking out Reedsy and Fiverr. If I were searching for one, this is definitely where I’d start.
For Reedsy, Book ghostwriting is an option available under services to choose from. You may filter down to fiction or non-fiction and your selected language and genre.
For Fiverr, all you need to do is enter the service you’re looking for in the search box. You can simply type “Fiction novel ghostwriter” or “Ebook Ghostwriter”, depending on what you need.
Or you could simply head over to the buyer’s request section and type in the service you are looking for. After you’ve been approved, you will have ghostwriters bidding for the job.
2. Individual Search
One way to find potential ghostwriters is to search for them on Google and LinkedIn.
These two platforms, however, are not without their flaws.
Sifting through profiles on LinkedIn is a time-consuming and tedious task. Searching for “book ghostwriter” returns tens of thousands of hits. searching through them one after the other is a highly inconvenient procedure.
Even the search filters aren’t really helpful. You may need to visit each writer’s website and read their work, to determine whether they’re qualified.
Additionally, if you use Google, you will have to filter through a plethora of results to get what you want. It takes some digging to find individual ghostwriting websites since the first few pages of results are dominated by freelancing markets and ghostwriter agencies.
3. Ghostwriting agencies.
Many companies provide ghostwriter services, but the vast majority of them are frauds.
The issue is that they only earn money when they link you with a writer. They don’t get compensated whether the pairing is a success or a failure. Therefore, they have to establish a connection as early as is humanly possible, regardless of the outcome.
If you opt to use the services of a ghostwriter agency, go with the well-known ones with a proven track record of accomplishment. They’re the ones who have shown that they care about reputation and executing excellent work.
Why Should You Hire A Ghostwriter?
1. Improves the Overall Quality of Your Book
Ghostwriters have most likely been in the game for a long time and amassed a wealth of knowledge, so they’ll know how to do the task effectively.
You can be sure that a good book writing service will give you a good job. Because they are experienced in researching and creating books, they go above and beyond to ensure that the product is of high quality. Many ghostwriters don’t just focus on books; they also ghostwrite for blogs and know about SEO.
In addition to all of this, the quality of their writing will help you become known as an expert in your niche.
2. Complete your book Quickly
Completing a book one started is one of the hardest things to do. If you’ve never written for a living, the process seems much more daunting.
To make matters worse, you may find yourself unable to go on because of a case of writer’s block, and you may later discover that your drafts are unsatisfactory as a result. In the effort to create your own book, you end up spending days, weeks, months, and perhaps even years!
A ghostwriter, on the other hand, may help you do the project in as little as two months, depending on the volume of work.
Because they have been given a deadline, plus the incentive of getting paid, a ghostwriter will be more motivated to do the task. Plus, they would want to put in their best so you recommend them to other prospective clients.
A ghostwriter, on the other hand, may help you do the project in as little as two months, depending on the volume of work.
3. One fixed price and all future earnings are yours to keep
This is another great reason to hire a ghostwriter. You get to keep all future earnings once you’ve paid the standard price to the ghostwriter. Although some book writing agencies demand a contract that allows ghostwriters to get percentage commissions on the work, you wouldn’t need to worry about that on freelancing platforms like Fiverr and Reedsy.
Once you’ve made your payment, the platform holds the money until the job is done and delivered. Afterward, all future earnings are yours to keep.
Conclusion
The choice to hire a ghostwriter to complete the writing of your book is a significant one for any author. Because you’ll collaborate with them to bring your concept and narrative to life.
You and your coworker will collaborate throughout the whole process, from idea generation to final editing.
It will be a long tiring process, hence it is crucial to have a qualified ghostwriter that you feel comfortable working with to create your book.
Want to know how to write a fantasy novel? Check here.
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Samuel is a creative writer and a freelance ghostwriter. He has written books for a number and clients and published two of his own. He’s a lifelong learner and teaches others what he learns through his writing journey.
You can check out more about his service here
