The Client Who Won’t Tell You They’re Unhappy: Pricing, Contracts, and Freelance Survival
Featuring Richard Lowe on Spotlight Thursday, The Xennial Traveler, hosted by Laurie
TL;DR: What This Conversation Establishes
- The hardest client problem isn’t conflict, it’s silence. People won’t say they’re unhappy until they’re very unhappy, so Richard now asks “are you happy, yes or no?” at every meeting.
- He prices at $1 a word, a number he reached by deciding he was worth it, after starting at a rate that worked out to about $2 an hour.
- It takes the same effort to land a $100 client as a $10,000 one, so he stopped chasing small jobs and now rejects more contracts than he takes.
- Contracts are non-negotiable: clear refund policies, signed and initialed on every page through DocuSign, which makes the terms provable.
- The practical basics matter, a real computer instead of a phone, the right tools, and remembering that business expenses and courses are tax-deductible.
What You’ll Learn
- The hardest client problem isn’t conflict, it’s silence. People won’t say they’re unhappy until they’re very unhappy, so Richard now asks “are you happy, yes or no?” at every meeting.
- He prices at $1 a word, a number he reached by deciding he was worth it, after starting at a rate that worked out to about $2 an hour.
- It takes the same effort to land a $100 client as a $10,000 one, so he stopped chasing small jobs and now rejects more contracts than he takes.
- Contracts are non-negotiable: clear refund policies, signed and initialed on every page through DocuSign, which makes the terms provable.
- The practical basics matter, a real computer instead of a phone, the right tools, and remembering that business expenses and courses are tax-deductible.
Richard Lowe, The Writing King, joined Laurie for Spotlight Thursday on the Xennial Traveler podcast to talk shop, the unglamorous mechanics of running a writing business. The most useful stretch isn’t about writing at all; it’s about the client who quietly hates the work and never says a word until it’s almost too late.
Laurie: Tell us a little about yourself and how you got here.
Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written more than 113 books under his own name and ghostwritten over 54 more for clients.
Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.
Full transcript of the conversation follows.
From Trader Joe’s to a dollar a word
Laurie: Tell us a little about yourself and how you got here.
Richard: I’m a professional ghostwriter, so my name generally isn’t on the books, none of the 54-plus so far, though one in the pipeline changes that. Before this I spent 20 years as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s, and I shot close to a million photographs along the way. By my twentieth year I’d hit a dead end; the management layer was thin and I’d topped out. So after 33 years working for other people I jumped off the cliff, moved from California to Florida, and became an entrepreneur with no actual plan. I tried eBay, made about $35,000 and decided it was too much manual labor, tried affiliate marketing and didn’t like the ethics of the people I met, and eventually fell into ghostwriting.
My first ghostwriting job paid $1,000 for a book, a memoir of an Afghan politician from the 1970s who built the country’s roads. He never finished it. After a couple more at that rate I worked out I was making about $2 an hour, so I told my boss I needed more. He said I wasn’t good enough to go out on my own. I disagreed, jumped ship, and the next day landed a $10,000 contract, the day after a $15,000 one, both in the computer space because of my background. The real shift was a decision: am I worth it? Yes. I started at fifty cents a word and I’m at a dollar a word now, and I learned it takes just as long to find a $100 client as a $10,000 one, so why chase the small ones?
The client who won’t tell you they’re unhappy
Laurie: Have you worked with questionable people?
Richard: The biggest problem isn’t the loud ones, it’s the silent ones. They don’t tell me when they’re not satisfied. I charge by the month, so on a ten-month, $10,000 project we’ll go along through dozens, maybe a hundred conversations, they look everything over, and then halfway in I discover they were unhappy from the very beginning. It turns out to be three paragraphs, the opening of the book wasn’t what they pictured, and everything else was fine, but by then the whole project has soured for them. People are deeply loath to tell you they’re unhappy until they’re really unhappy.
Laurie: That’s crazy. They’re investing ten or twenty thousand dollars and they’re afraid to ask for what they want.
Richard: Exactly. So now I ask at every single meeting: are you happy, yes or no? We talk through their actual state of mind and make corrections as we go. It’s essential, because they won’t volunteer it, and even when I prompt, sometimes I have to push hard. Catching it early is the whole game.
Choosing clients, and turning down $150,000
Laurie: So many people work from desperation, what if another client doesn’t come along?
Richard: Part of my marketing is building an ideal-customer avatar, the exercise where you describe exactly who you want to work with: reasonable, sane, communicative, no built-up resentment. I’d run into enough insane customers to know what I was screening for. This year a man came back after a couple of years and wanted not one book but nine, told me he didn’t need to discuss rates, I should just name my price. That’s $150,000 to $200,000 of work. Then the weird emails started and the alarm bells went off. We didn’t even have a contract and I already wanted to take him out back with a two-by-four, so I turned it down. That’s about six jobs I’ve turned down this year. I can do that because I keep enough good clients that losing one stings but doesn’t sink me.
Contracts, DocuSign, and the tools that matter
Laurie: What advice would you give entrepreneurs facing the same thing?
Richard: Make your policies clear and get them signed. My contracts state the refund policy plainly, no refunds, since I’m paid as I go and the work is provable. I use DocuSign, which makes the client initial every page, so there’s no question they had the chance to read it; that doesn’t mean they read it, but it’s legally airtight, and it’s about $35 a month for unlimited documents. Build the contract once and reuse it. And find your tools, whatever lets the business run. DocuSign, the Office suite, and for heaven’s sake a real, fast computer, not your whole business on a smartphone. I run a big desktop with four monitors. It’s a capital expense, written off over years, and the point is the government helps pay for anything your business uses. Spend $100 on a course and, depending on your bracket, the tax write-off might cover 40% of it, so take the courses and keep the records. (Talk to your accountant; I’m not one.)
Coaching, and the fundamentals
Laurie: You also do coaching?
Richard: Writing coaching, for people who’ve written their own manuscript and need help getting it to the next level. We work through it in blocks of hours until they’re ready to take it the rest of the way themselves, and it’s relatively inexpensive for a lot of advice. But your first tool as a writer is the language itself. If you don’t know grammar, spelling, and style, go to school, take the online courses, and practice until you do. Read the Chicago Manual of Style cover to cover and learn how to use a comma. And if you call yourself a writer, I’d better not catch you posting on LinkedIn or Facebook with misspellings and bad grammar.
Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.
Quotable moments
People are loath to tell you they’re not happy with your work, until they’re really not happy.Share on X
The first question was: am I worth it? Yes, I am. So I priced like it.Share on X
It takes just as long to find a $100 client as a $10,000 one. So why chase the small ones?Share on X
Frequently asked questions
How does a ghostwriter decide what to charge?
It starts with a decision about your own worth. Richard charges a dollar a word, having raised his rate over time once he concluded he was worth it. He also notes that landing a small client takes as much effort as a large one, so he focuses on the larger ones.
Why don’t clients say when they’re unhappy?
People are reluctant to voice dissatisfaction until it’s severe, even on a project they’ve invested thousands in. Richard often discovers a problem halfway through that traces back to the very beginning, and usually to something small like the opening paragraphs.
How do you protect against a client who turns out to be dissatisfied late?
With a clear contract stating a no-refund policy, signed and initialed on every page through DocuSign so the terms are provable, and by actively prompting for feedback at every meeting rather than waiting for the client to raise it.
What business tools matter most for a solo writer?
A clear contract system like DocuSign, a solid office suite, and above all a real, fast computer rather than running everything from a phone. These are tax-deductible business expenses, so the cost is partly offset at tax time.
Related Reading
Your story could be a book
The conversations I have as a guest all circle the same idea: the people doing interesting work usually have a book in them. If that is you, let’s talk about turning your expertise into the book that outlasts the work.
Part of Richard Lowe on Air, his complete run of podcast, radio, and video guest appearances.