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| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Ask The Expert > Ghost Writing Gigs | Forum Quick Jump
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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator
      
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 5194
| Posted 11/20/2007 8:39 PM (GMT -5) |   | | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 11/21/2007 3:03 PM (GMT -5) | | Jordan,
If you start small you won't need an established track-record. Just go to any number of freelance writer resources -- or craigslist or whatever and start looking around for work.
Two cautions: 1) be very leery of paying a service fee to any website or organization which says it will ge you work but takes a percentage and/or a monthly fee from your earnings. 2) be *very* careful about who you choose as a client.
I don't want to preach about it or anything, but I am serious: client relations are the most important factor in ghost-writing. Even more important than how well you write.
Oh yeah, I would *strongly* recommend that you retain an attorney as wrangling your due payment form clients when you are a freelancer can be frighteningly difficult sometimes and you'll need an attorney to scare them into action. Also, when people become angry with you (and they will) they sometimes blow about lawsuits, so it's good to have a lawyer on your side.
When you work with small orders it's not such a big deal, but the first time someone is paying you 10-12k to ghost-write their personal memoirs about Viet Nam or whatever you are going to have loads of fun trying to get the payments made to you.
Another thing is: ghost-writing and technical writing have little or *nothing* in common with writing fiction. As different as torpedo juice and champaign.
Finally, if you are as argumentative with clients as you are on discussion boards, which is obviously a fine way to be, I'm that way myself, but I would predict serious problems with ghost-writing. As a ghost-writer you are, in some ways, a slave to whoever is paying you and it does not help in any way to argue with their wishes even when they are wrong, which is most of the time! You just have to "eat it and smile" and that's the most important advice I could give anyone about ghosting and I do it every day -- it is how I earn my living.
"Art is the celebration of the ego's destruction."
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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Daniel
Carl Jung's Waterboy
Date Joined Aug 2003
Total Posts : 4515
| Posted 11/21/2007 3:19 PM (GMT -5) | | | Yeah, ghosting is a cross between being someone's personal secretary and being their busboy.
Basically, you are hired for your supposed expertise but the client spends all their time telling you how to do everything the way they want. I have family members who run a landscaping business and it's the same there. It's the same everywhere.
Clients hire experts and most of the time, say 80%, they want to hire them just to be able to tell them what to do, mindlessly. I stay way far away from personal memoirs and fiction ghost-writing because these kinds of projects are landmines. But there are a lot of potential orders of this nature out there.
Ghost-writing isn't usually fun or creative or even very fulfilling. It's repetitious, blunts the sharpness of your imagination and writing skills and gives you the 'people horrors" from dealing with so many vain, demanding, and stingy people, but on the bright side, it pays well and you are your own boss with the ability to choose clients as you see fit.
As time goes by, my ability to choose clients seems to get better. That's the big thing: choosing the right people to hire yourself out to and making sure they'll pay.
"Art is the celebration of the ego's destruction."
Daniel | | Back to Top | | |
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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 5194
| Posted 11/21/2007 3:20 PM (GMT -5) | | | | |
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Laura Stamps
Neophyte
Date Joined Jun 2007
Total Posts : 134
| Posted 11/27/2007 11:13 AM (GMT -5) | | |
You're right, Daniel, it's mostly a thankless job, where you run into lots of Drama Queens. But the money is wonderful. No doubt about that. Up until a few years ago I would help writers and artists with their marketing from time to time, writing all kinds of copy for them. And fiction writers would also come to me sometimes with their failed novels, wanting me to edit them into something that would sell. Or to edit a bloated short story into a tight story a mag would publish.
Now, don't get me wrong...it is great fun to take a few failed novels and cut the daylights out of them and rewrite most of them to make up a book of wonderful novellas that will sell. Lots of creative fun, especially if you are working with a wonderful client. So there are definitely highs to this kind of work, which make up for some of the wear and tear on your soul.
The last few years I have been too busy to do this, which is good. And now that I know what you do I will send to you all the fiction writers who come to me for this kind of help (grin). At any rate, there are two things I have learned that helped me with this kind of business and might be helpful to others considering it:
1.) I learned never to take on clients who say "they are teachable." Not true. They turn out to be the worst Drama Queens and just want you to say how wonderful their failed novel or short story is, fighting you over every revision or change. We all know many people don't listen to advice when it is free. But it was shocking for me to learn that many also don't listen to advice when they pay for it! Sad, but true.
2.) I learned to require 100% of the payment upfront before I started the job. You are right. Getting people to pay you after you have done the work is very hard sometimes and can be costly. Sure I lost some clients this way, but not the good ones. I soon found out the ones I lost were those who never intended to pay me anyway. So requiring 100% of the payment upfront became a wonderful qualifier for me.
Laura Stamps
Magickal Urban Fantasy Novelist
The Witches of Dixie: Book One of the Witchery Series
(ISBN: 978-0-9798413-0-9, 2007, Trytium Publishing, 245 pages)
Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, your local bookstore
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