I take over books that one to three earlier ghostwriters worked on. Some of those writers missed the schedule. Others came back halfway through wanting more money, and a few never caught the client’s voice at all. By the time the book reaches me, the client has already paid for a manuscript they don’t have.
Two of those three failures show up on paper before anybody signs. A schedule with real dates and a price that covers the whole book, with a written rule for what happens when the book grows, would have spared those clients months of misery.
Too many quotes are built to win on the lowest number on the page. It’s a bait-and-switch. A stack of ghostwriting quotes works a lot like a page of airfares. The basic fare looks cheapest until you’re standing at the gate paying for your bag and your seat, and by then you can’t switch airlines.
How do I compare quotes from different ghostwriters?
Put them in a table. Give each proposal its own column, and give each row one question: how many words, how many interviews, how many revision rounds, how long, how you pay, who owns what, what’s left out, and how it ends if it goes wrong.
Fill in every cell from what the proposal says in writing. When a cell stays blank, write to that ghostwriter and ask, because extra charges hide in blank cells. Would you book a flight without knowing whether the fare includes a seat?
Only then look at the price. Two quotes that look far apart can come out close once you add the editing, the extra interviews and the rush fee one of them leaves out. For what drives the price in the first place, read how much a ghostwriter costs and what moves the price.
Compare the conversations too. I won’t quote a book until I’ve had an hour on the phone with the person, and I explain why in the one-hour call before I quote your book. A firm number after two emails can’t account for a book the writer hasn’t heard about yet.
What should a ghostwriting proposal include?
At minimum, a proposal should cover scope, process, schedule, payment, ownership, confidentiality, exclusions and termination. The contract or statement of work then turns each of those into terms you can enforce.
Scope means the kind of book, the target length and who it’s for. Process covers how the ghostwriter gathers the material: interviews, documents, recordings, drafts you review along the way. The schedule should have dates or at least phases with durations, and you should be able to tell from them whether the plan is padded or impossible.
Confidentiality belongs in writing even if you trust the person. My statement of work marks everything proprietary, and some clients want a signed NDA on top of it. Recordings deserve their own line. I record every call and say so in the contract. The contract also says I keep the recordings for three months after the project ends and that clients can have copies on request. You shouldn’t have to guess what happens to hours of your voice.
The proposal should also name the person who’ll write the book. If it names a company and a “team,” ask who sits in the interviews and who drafts the chapters, and get both names in the contract. A proposal signed by a salesperson tells you nothing about who’ll be living inside your story for months. The writer is the one you’re hiring.
If a proposal reads like a sales brochure, with adjectives where the terms should be, send it back.
How many words should a ghostwriting quote cover?
A quote should name a word count, and the cleanest version is an “up to” figure. My contracts set an upper limit for pricing, and if the book runs longer, that’s a change order both of us sign.
Caps protect both sides, since everyone knows what’s being paid for and where the job ends. Without one, a memoir that grows by a third because your childhood turned out to be richer than either of you expected turns into an argument about money in month five.
Compare the caps across your quotes before you compare anything else. A quote that looks cheaper because its cap is twenty thousand words lower is pricing a shorter book. Any fair change order names the new length, the new price and the new dates, and both of you sign it before the extra chapters get written.
How many interviews and revisions should a ghostwriter include?
Enough to get the book right, and the proposal should say how many or how they’re counted. I front-load interviews, lots of them, because writing in someone’s voice means becoming that person for a while, and nobody can do that from a questionnaire.
Watch for quotes that include a small, fixed number of interviews and charge for more. A life story priced as three phone calls is a bad bargain. I ask about the same event several ways because people misremember, blend two years together, or shrink the thing that mattered most, and those second and third passes are where the book comes from.
Revisions work the same way. The proposal should say how many rounds are included, what counts as a round, and what happens if you want more.
What isn’t included in a ghostwriting quote?
The usual missing pieces are editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design and publishing, and a good proposal says which of them it covers. I deliver a solid manuscript draft and refer clients to editors I trust for the editing, proofreading and formatting, and I don’t do covers.
Either arrangement works when you know which one you’re buying. Buyers get burned when one quote includes those services and another leaves them out, and the two get compared as if they were the same product. My article on whether a ghostwriter edits, proofreads, formats and designs the cover explains the split, and the all-in cost of a ghostwritten book walks through everything you’ll pay for after the writer is done.
Ask each writer to list what’s excluded, in writing. Add those costs to that column in your table, and then the prices start to mean something. Exclusions buried where you’ll find them in month six are underhanded, because the writer knew about them on day one.
How should payments to a ghostwriter be scheduled?
Match the payments to the work. Monthly billing and milestone billing both work, as long as each payment lines up with work you can see.
I compare the two models in monthly or milestone billing. The warning sign is a large payment early with nothing delivered for months after it, or a final payment so small that the writer has no reason to finish.
Rush projects cost more. I charge a higher rate and take a larger down payment on rush books. If one quote assumes eight months and another assumes four, you’re comparing two different products, so put the dates on the same row.
Ask what the down payment buys, too. A deposit that reserves the writer’s calendar and pays for the first round of interviews makes sense. Half the book up front, before anyone has asked you a single question, makes me nervous, and it should make you nervous too.
How do I compare a per-word quote with a flat-fee quote?
Convert them to the same book. Multiply a per-word rate by the word count you expect, and check the flat fee against the word count it assumes. Then set both against the same interviews, revisions and schedule, and the two numbers finally mean the same thing.
I price by the word, and my contract sets an “up to” word count that fixes the price. Length drives my price directly, and a longer book means a change order. Other ghostwriters quote per project, per page or by the hour. Some set project minimums, because interviews and research don’t shrink as fast as the word count does. None of those models is a trick by itself.
Hourly quotes need the most work to compare. Ask for an estimate of total hours and a cap, in writing, or you can’t budget the book at all. Every extra interview on an open-ended hourly deal starts to feel like a meter running, and nobody tells their best stories while watching a meter.
Whatever the model, ask the same question of each writer: what happens to the price if the book runs long? Put the answer in your table, right next to the price.
Who owns the manuscript in a ghostwriting contract?
You should, and the proposal should say so in plain words. Ownership of every draft, note and recording should pass to you, and the contract should also cover what happens to work in progress if the project stops.
Every extra interview on an open-ended hourly deal starts to feel like a meter running, and nobody tells their best stories while watching a meter.
Watch the wording. The U.S. Copyright Office’s circular on works made for hire says a commissioned work counts as work made for hire only when it falls into one of nine listed categories and both parties sign a written agreement. A memoir isn’t on that list. If a proposal relies on “work for hire” language alone, ask whether the contract also assigns the copyright to you in writing, and have a lawyer read it before you sign.
What questions should I ask a ghostwriter about their quote?
Ask the questions the proposal dodged. What happens if the book runs long? If I miss three interviews in a row because my mother is in the hospital, what then? And if you get sick? Does anybody besides you write any part of my book?
Pay close attention to that last answer. Agencies sell the book through a salesperson and hand it to a writer you never met, and a quote from one of them can look identical to a quote from a solo writer. A solo ghostwriter should be able to say flatly that nobody else writes your book.
Write the answers down next to each quote in your table. When two writers come in close on price and one of them answered every question without hesitating, hire that one.
What should a ghostwriting quote say about cancellation?
It should say who can end the project, what you pay for work done, and what you get back. The quote also needs to cover what happens if you go quiet.
My contract puts a project on hold after thirty days without contact, and after sixty days it’s abandoned. Some clients negotiate longer. Terms like that sound harsh until you’re the writer holding a calendar slot open for someone who stopped answering email. My article on what happens if a ghostwriter terminates the contract covers the rest.
Compare these terms carefully, and walk away from a quote that has no cancellation language.
Can a proposal tell me whether the writer will get my voice?
Only partly. The conversation tells you more than the paperwork will. Ask each writer how they capture voice, listen to what they ask you on the call, and ask for a sample chapter or a short test piece if the project is large enough to justify one.
Voice comes out of the interviews, and no proposal can promise it. Listen for whether a writer wants your stories or your adjectives. On the call, notice whether they ask about the night everything changed or ask what tone you’d like the book to have, because the first kind of question is how a book in your voice gets started. Give me a writer who asks you hard questions over one who sends a beautiful PDF, every time.
My take
A low quote leaves something out, and you’ll only see the gap when you set it next to the others. Put every proposal at the same length and scope before you compare prices, and ask in writing about anything left out. Walk away from any quote with no cancellation terms. On the call, a writer who asks about the night everything changed will get your voice, and one who asks what tone you’d like won’t. I’d take hard questions over a beautiful PDF every time.
Before you pick the cheapest fare
Build the table tonight. Ask every writer to fill in their blanks in writing, add the costs of everything they exclude, and put the schedules side by side. Then call the two you’d trust with the hardest story you’ve got, and pick the one who asked the best questions.
I’ve taken over too many books from writers who missed the schedule or wanted more money, and I’m done being polite about vague quotes. A quote that hides the change orders and says nothing about who owns your book is a con with a letterhead, and the people who pay for it are authors who trusted the number.
The Ghostwriting Hub has everything I’ve written on hiring, my current rates are on the ghostwriting service page, and the Book Discovery Intensive is a smaller first step if you want to see how I work before you commit.
Pick the fare that gets you and your bags to the destination, with your seat assigned and the return flight already on the ticket.
Proposals make more sense when you understand the work behind them. The Ghostwriting Advantage explains how to get your book written for you, so each line in a quote means something.
