Most people shopping for a short book have already decided it’ll be the easy version. Fewer words, fewer calls, a few weeks of work, and a price to match. They’ve got the price part right. With me, a shorter book costs less, because I price by the word and the contract’s “up to” word count sets the total.
The rest of that picture is wrong, and short books sink on it. A short book needs the same listening as a long one and a voice that holds from the first page, and the cheap short books sold online skip both. Someone who budgets in good faith for a book that was never going to sound like them has been sold a bad deal.
Picture a tailor. A made-to-measure jacket takes less cloth than an overcoat, and it costs less. It still needs the measurements and every fitting, where you stand in front of the mirror while someone pins the shoulders, because a jacket that doesn’t fit is worse than no jacket at all.
Books work the same way. Interviews and the chapters you review are the fittings, and the word count is the cloth. Buy less cloth and the price drops, and nobody sensible skips the fittings to save a little more.
Is a shorter book cheaper to ghostwrite?
Yes. My price is built on the word count, so a 25,000-word book costs less than a 60,000-word one, and the “up to” count in the contract tells you the ceiling before the first interview. The rates themselves are on my ghostwriting service page, linked at the end.
Other ghostwriters price differently. Some quote by the project and set a minimum, because interviews and research don’t shrink as fast as the word count does. A writer still needs enough hours with you to hear how you talk, how you tell a story and where your opinions get sharp. A minimum is fair when the writer can tell you what it covers. Ask, and compare it with what the same writer charges for a longer book.
Watch for the opposite trick. A short book priced low with every interview past the second billed as an extra shows its full price in month two, and a writer who promises a short book from a single call plans to skip the fittings. The calendar doesn’t shrink in step with the word count either, and how long ghostwriting takes, and why it doesn’t depend on word count alone explains why: interviews and your chapter reviews set the pace.
Deadlines and material move a short book’s price just as they move a long one’s. A short book due in six weeks for a conference carries a higher rate and a larger down payment, and a short book built from years of your recorded talks needs far less digging than one built from memory alone.
How many words is a short nonfiction book?
There’s no official line. Treat a book a reader can finish in an evening or on one flight as short. At a comfortable reading pace of around 250 words a minute, 25,000 words takes under two hours, and 40,000 takes a little under three.
I’d call 20,000 to 40,000 words a short book for a ghostwriting contract. Under about 15,000, a book starts to read like a long article with a cover on it. A business book shouldn’t go too short anyway. Too short doesn’t look professional, and you don’t want readers thinking, “Didn’t have anything to say, did he?” Aim for the middle.
Pick the number with your ghostwriter and put it in the contract as the “up to” count. Once it’s written down, the price follows from it, and every conversation about what fits in the book gets easier.
Here’s how the lengths in this article line up.
| Book type | Typical word count | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Twelve-page checklist or guide | Twelve pages | Marketing copy, not a book |
| Too-short book | Under about 15,000 words | Reads like a long article with a cover |
| Slimmed-down short book | Around 10,000 words | Coaches wanting something smaller than a full book |
| Short nonfiction book | 20,000 to 40,000 words | One job and one reader, finished in an evening |
| Lead-magnet ebook | Short book length | Given to prospects or sold cheaply as a way in |
| 200-page printed book | About 50,000 to 60,000 words | Full-length nonfiction book |
How much does a ghostwriter cost for a 200-page book?
A 200-page book is a full-length book, and it’s priced like one. Printed pages vary with the trim size, the font and how much white space the designer leaves, and 200 of them hold somewhere around 50,000 to 60,000 words, a common length for a nonfiction book.
People think in pages because pages are what they picture on the shelf. I price in words, so convert first. My contracts set an “up to” word count, and a book that grows past it gets a change order, so decide early whether you’re picturing 200 pages or 120. The gap between those two is a big share of the price, and it’s far easier to settle on day one than in month five.
Don’t assume 200 pages is automatically the right size. Nobody should pay for 200 pages because a proper book looks that thick to them, then scrape for months to find enough to fill it. Pick the length your reader will finish, and 120 pages is plenty for a lot of books.
Can a ghostwriter write an ebook or a lead-magnet book?
If it’s a book, yes. A short ebook you give away to prospects, or sell cheaply as a way into your business, needs the same voice and the same care as a hardcover, and for a lot of readers it’s the first thing they’ll ever read from you.
A twelve-page checklist or a downloadable guide with your logo on it is marketing copy, and I don’t write marketing copy. I write books, and I coach people who are writing their own.
The lead-magnet business is full of junk. Companies churn out thirty-page PDFs stuffed with AI filler and slap a client’s name on the cover. A prospect who downloads that crap and wades through two pages of mush decides you’ll put your name on anything. The person paying for it thinks they bought credibility and got the opposite, and why cheap ghostwriting is the expensive mistake goes further into what those shops sell.
Ask yourself one thing before you buy the cheap version. Would you hand your best prospect a pamphlet a stranger threw together in a weekend and tell them it’s you? A lead-magnet book is a first impression, and its price should reflect what one good client is worth to your business.
Why does a short book still need interviews?
The voice has to come from you, and a writer can’t get it from a questionnaire. Back to the tailor: you can’t skip the fittings on a jacket because it’s shorter than a coat.
In interviews I ask about the same thing several different ways, because people misremember and conflate events, and the second or third telling is where the detail shows up. I mostly ask indirect questions about your life and pull the material out of the stories you tell. None of that goes faster because the book is short. A book built from two phone calls sounds generic, and a short one in the wrong voice gives the reader fewer pages to forgive it.
If you already have recorded talks, a podcast or a stack of articles, a ghostwriter can work from them and cut down on the hours of interviewing. You’ll still need some sessions, because recorded talks answer the questions you chose to answer, and a book needs the ones you didn’t think to ask yourself.
Is a short book easier to write than a long one?
No. Long books let a writer include everything. A short book forces somebody to decide what stays out, and those decisions are the hardest in the whole project.
Ever tried to explain your whole business in a two-minute elevator pitch? A long book can wander for a chapter and recover. With a short one, every page has to justify itself, so the outline has to be tighter, and a tight outline takes hard thinking.
The voice has to come from you, and a writer can’t get it from a questionnaire.
When a client wants a short book, I sometimes point them to The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer as a style model. You don’t have to copy it, but take a look and see if you like the style. It’s tiny, with a low word count, and it lays out the rules with short stories and illustrations. It’s very succinct and to the point, because it doesn’t have room, and it informs without being pushy.
Your own stories get in the way. Every author has more good material than a short book can hold, and every story that gets cut was somebody’s favorite. Would you drop the story your family asks you to tell every Thanksgiving because it doesn’t serve the book’s central idea? You’ll have to, and a good ghostwriter will say so to your face instead of padding the book to keep you happy.
I talk clients through those cuts the same way I talk them toward the middle when they drift into making themselves the hero or the villain of every story: slowly, and with the reader in the room. Cut stories can still go into a talk, a newsletter or the next book. A story kept in a book that can’t hold it costs you the reader, and I hate losing a reader over one extra anecdote.
Should my first book be a short book?
It should if the book has one job and one reader. A consultant who wants something to hand prospects after a first meeting, or a speaker who wants a book on the table at the back of the room, is a short-book client. In 2024 I toyed with a slimmed-down offer for coaches put off by the price of a full book: something around 10,000 words that I could write in a month and a half to two months. Amazon groups short Kindle books by reading time. That corner of the store is saturated, with some titles only a page long.
A short first book also shows you what working with a ghostwriter is like before you commit to something bigger, and the interviews behind it give a longer second book a running start.
Memoirs rarely fit that mold. Readers want the setbacks and the recovery along with the wins, and a life cut too short turns into a greatest-hits album that nobody believes. If your book is a life story, give it the room it needs.
Decide what the book is for before you decide its length. You’re very unlikely to earn the fee back through book sales, and I tell every client that up front. The return comes from using the book as the foundation of your marketing, in speaking, consulting and courses. A short book fits that plan well, and how to calculate the ROI of a ghostwritten book walks through the numbers.
Does a short ghostwritten book still need an editor?
Yes. What you get from me is a solid manuscript draft, and I send clients to editors I trust for the editing, proofreading and formatting. A 25,000-word book gets the same treatment as a 90,000-word one. You’ll need a cover designer too, since I don’t do covers.
Short books get read in one sitting, so a reader who trips over errors has nowhere to recover. Editors price by length as well, so editing and proofreading stay modest on a short book, and skipping them to save a little is the worst trade you can make. An unedited book makes its author look careless, and does my ghostwriter edit, proofread, format and design the cover explains who does what after the draft is done.
How can I lower the cost of a ghostwritten short book?
Narrow the book before you hire anyone. One reader and one promise to that reader is the cheapest scope there is, and it produces the best short books.
Bring your material. Notes, old talks, articles and recordings all cut down the time a ghostwriter spends finding your stories. Give yourself a reasonable deadline, too, because rush books carry a higher rate and a larger down payment, and a hard date like a conference or a launch shrinks every other option.
Whatever you trim, leave the interviews alone. If you ask a ghostwriter to cut the sessions to bring the price down, you’re asking for a book that sounds like the writer instead of you, and that’s a trade I’d talk anyone out of, however tight the budget.
Anyone who can write and is mostly stuck on structure doesn’t need a ghostwriter at all. Book coaching gets you a guide while you do the writing yourself. If the budget isn’t there for that either, write it with AI as a tool and edit hard. A reader who stays engaged is the goal, and plenty of people who use AI that way do fine.
My take
Short books are still books, and they still need the interviews. Cut the scope, never the sessions. Pick one reader and make that reader one promise. That book costs the least to commission and turns out best. Bring your old talks and recordings, give the writer a sane deadline, and keep the editor in the budget. If structure is your only problem, skip the ghostwriter and hire a coach.
Pay for the fittings
Before you ask anyone for a price, write down what this book is for, who it’s for, and a word count you’d be happy with. Send that to the ghostwriters you’re considering and ask each one how many interviews they’d plan. The answer tells you more than the quote does.
See the ghostwriting costs page for what drives the price and the ghostwriting services page for my rates. If you want help deciding what the short book should be before committing to it, start with the Book Discovery Intensive. Everything else I’ve published about hiring a ghostwriter, short book or long, sits in the Ghostwriting Hub.
The mills selling thirty-page books by the pound have made a lot of good people look careless, an unfair rap. Pay a fair price for a short book that fits you, and let them keep the cheap ones stitched together from somebody else’s advice.
A jacket cut to your shoulders looks better than any overcoat pulled off a rack, and nobody who sees you in it ever asks how much cloth it took.
Short books still need interviews, structure and your voice. The Ghostwriting Advantage explains how to get your book written for you at any length, drawn from 54+ books I’ve ghostwritten.
