The Biggest Red Flag in Ghostwriting? R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Ghostwriters are always on alert for red flags when interviewing potential book clients. Some of the most common include the client’s willingness to commit to the project, ability to make a decision, adequate financial resources to pay for the work, and a clear idea of what the work will entail, such as whether it’s a memoir, a how-to guide, or a thought leadership title.

Before investing too much time in getting up-to-speed on the work to be done, ghostwriters want to feel confident that the project will start and finish on an agreed-upon timeline and that they’ll be paid promptly.

However, one red flag ghostwriters may overlook is respect. That is, respect that the client expresses and demonstrates for the ghostwriter they are about to hire.

Are You Respected?

Sure, prospective clients may be polite and friendly and say all the right things in early conversations with you, the ghostwriter, but pay attention to how they respond to your recommendations and ideas. Are they enthusiastic? Appreciative? Excited? Or is their reaction more skeptical, unsure, or wary?

If you’re feeling any resistance to your suggestions, it may be because your prospect is not yet convinced of your expertise. That is a red flag you should take note of.

What happens when clients don’t respect you is that they will be unlikely to listen to your ideas and even less likely to take your advice.

That can create frustration and problems for you.

Leverage Your Expertise

Clients who are unwilling to let you guide them, based on your considerable professional experience, are destined not to get the results they seek.

For example, if you recommend that your client consider getting started on having their book cover designed now, so that they can start using it in their marketing activities, and they decide to wait until it’s published, that’s fine. It won’t impact your ability to finish the book and be paid, but it’s unlikely the client will achieve their sales goals as quickly or as easily. And they may then blame you.

What happened was they didn’t trust your advice, so they didn’t take it, didn’t get the results they expected, and decide the fault must be yours.

Uh, no.

A similar situation happened to me many years ago with a public relations client that was rolling out a new product. I strongly advised the company to create a comprehensive media kit, rather than a single press release, to be able to explain the product and its place in the market to the media outlets they were targeting. The product was disruptive and they would have better success explaining that with a full media kit, I told them, including photos, a backgrounder, Q&A—the works.

But they didn’t want to spend the money, or may have thought it wasn’t worth the higher fee, so they issued a single press release, AMA (against my advice).

As I expected, no one paid any attention. Slowly realizing their error, the company then decided to try to follow up with more information, but by that point they had missed their window of opportunity. There was little fanfare as the product hit the market.

And because they refused to leverage my expertise, I was no longer willing to work with them after that. They were very nice and intelligent, but when they ignored my recommendations, I knew they didn’t respect me.

Insist on the Best Possible Outcome

That meant they wouldn’t achieve the best possible results, which is what I wanted for them.

So, before you take on a new client, pay attention to how they treat you. Do they acknowledge you as a respected consultant with years of experience? Or does the client perceive you more as a worker bee who is being hired to follow their instructions?

The higher the respect, the better quality the outcome.