Cheap Ghost Writing Isn't Easy -- But It's Worthwhile
You might think that selling yourself short is a sure way to not
be a success in the ghost writing field. And your eyes are
probably dancing with the very large figures of money that
you've heard ghost writers pull down, in yearly figures such as
$60,000 to $100,000, or amounts such as $15,000 to $60,000 per
each book you write.
This is especially so if you're breaking into the field of
ghosting for the first time, and if you're a ghost writer (or
ghostwriter) who has never really ghosted a book for someone
else before. You're probably thinking big bucks, major book
contracts, large amounts of cash advances from publishers and
huge percentages from the books you will be anonymously writing
for big time authors.
But let's face some facts. The first time writers, people with
no time to invest in writing a book, and who may have fantastic
stories to tell don't always have the enormous amount of
financial capital available to hire any such "cheap" ghost
writers. They simply don't have the money. They're bound to
enter some psychological difficulties when they see that the
payments to you are the whopper figures such as those listed
above, and that those are the only sorts of prices accessible to
them. By laying out such enormous fees, you could be stuck
losing a huge customer base of clients with fantastic stories to
tell -- but without the major wherewithal to pay you to tell
them. What if, say, your potential author, the person hiring you
to write his or her story, has only $5000 to spend?
I know what I'm talking about, and I can create a decent work of
cheap ghost writing in a month for that amount of money. You do
that, and there's your $60,000 per year! It really isn't all
that hard.
Most other ghost writers I know are as capable of doing so as I
am, but some of them do charge the higher amounts. The clients
of the latter group tend to be people with enormous sales
potential, not the typical first time authors who have a great
story but often don't really go anywhere with it - the so called
"sucker market."
It might be worthwhile to consider charging less, or negotiating
a deal with such a "first timer." Over the years, I have drawn
the conclusion that there are an awful lot of such people out
there. I have been ghost writing books for people for as low an
amount as $2000 per book, and as I have other sources of income
from other types of writing, I have been finding an immense
amount of personal satisfaction from helping such would be
authors actually obtain what they are looking for in a cheap
ghost writer who charges a reasonable price for the quality and
quantity of work done for them.
This works out to be less "greedy" on my part and more of a
service that I provide for authors who are only dreaming of
getting their books up high on the top of the New York Times
Bestseller list, and who know that such are their dreams, not
necessarily their realities. They are often people who have come
to the end of their ropes when it comes to negotiating a lower
price for their books. They usually have nowhere else to turn
when it comes to putting out their own personal stories, and
they need someone with a willing ear and pen to listen and help
them set down their stories before it's too late for them to be
told. Also, some of these people simply don't know what they're
doing and need a guiding hand to help them, They need their
Letters of Query written up for them, their Brief Biographies
put together and their advancement letters as well, as they are
just dipping their toes into the writing field and getting them
wet for the very first time.
People like that don't need to face down what looks like to them
to be a million dollar price tag when they are looking for
what's described as a cheap ghost writer. They want an actual
inexpensive ghost writer who understands their needs, both
budgetary and otherwise, who can sit down with them and
negotiate a fairly low amount of money paid out by them so they
can figure on at least getting some return from their books.
These people are not Presidents of the United States or famous
movie actors, whose books are guaranteed to sell, and many of
them find themselves "stuck" with what used to be called vanity
publishing, nowadays called self publishing. They won't
necessarily find a commercial publisher who wants to take a
chance on huge returns from their books in today's multifaceted
but still challenging world of publishing.
These clients need literally cheap or inexpensive ghost writers.
They don't need to spend a small fortune on their books to find
out they dead ended in a warehouse, didn't sell as widely as
they thought they would, or otherwise came out on the short end
of the stick.
Help them. Consider bargaining and bartering at a lower price
sometimes, and not at a higher price. It might be worth your
while. Try it and see!