How to vet potential ghostwriting clients

Congratulations. Someone responded to your letter of introduction and wants to talk to you about ghostwriting their whitepaper, video script, business book, or motivational memoir. Or they contacted you via LinkedIn, X, or your website to ask about your availability to do the same.

But just because someone is interested in working with you doesn't mean they're a good fit for your business, or vice versa.

Time is money, as they say. Before I agree to devote 30 minutes or an hour to a get-to-know-you call I can't bill for, I try to make sure it's going to be worth my time. That means prequalifying potential clients to so they understand what I do and how I do it, and so I'm confident I can deliver what they want when they want it.

What to do before you agree to hop on a call

If a project is relatively small, such as writing a whitepaper, the vetting process could be as simple as asking the person to answer a few simple questions. The biggest: What's the scope of the project? What background material or research will it be based on? What's the deadline? What's the budget? If the prospective client is a high-level executive, this step could happen between me and an intermediary such as a PR team, marketing manager, or head of content.

For big projects that could take months to complete, like ghostwriting a book, I want to know even more before I decide. To get that information, I send prospective clients the following form to fill out. I've included brief explanations of the information I hope to glean from answers to each question:

PROSPECTIVE GHOSTWRITING FORM

• What's the tentative book title, topic, and high-level summary or description? If a prospective author can't summarize what the book is about it tells me that sorting out those elements will be the first order of business in the scope of work, and could add to the time I'll need to commit to the project.
• What’s your goal: use the book to establish yourself as a thought leader, build a personal or company brand, or something else? Knowing why someone wants to write a book will help guide my recommendations for how to structure and write it.
• Do you want to self-publish, hybrid publish, or create a book proposal and sample chapter to pursue a deal with a traditional publisher? Not sure? If someone plans to self publish or go with a hybrid publisher, there's no need for the project to include writing a book proposal to interest an agent or try to sell it to a traditional publisher, essential information for calculating my fee.
• What information will the book be based on? Ghostwriters don't just write. They can conduct primary research, including interviewing the author, and the author's clients, associates, former associates, family, and friends. They can do secondary research, including digging up articles about the author or their business, industry research, and other pertinent information. They can create a framework for the book, a chapter outline, graphics, and so on. All of which costs money. Knowing up front what materials the author or their team already have on hand can help determine the overall scope of work and the associated fee. Ghostwriter extraordinaire Josh Bernoff wrote an excellent post on this topic recently: How much does a ghostwritten chapter cost? It depends.
• What’s your availability to work with a ghostwriter? The ostensible reason for asking about availability is to find out what days of the week or times of day a prospective client prefers to be interviewed or have other project-related calls. The ulterior motive is to see how ready, willing, and able someone is to take time away from their primary business to talk to a ghost. If they're unable or unwilling to commit to weekly calls, for example, it's a clue that they might not be as ready or serious about a project as they should be - a definite red flag for me.
• How do you like to collaborate: phone, email, Zoom, Slack, it depends? Part of ghostwriting client management is making sure people are comfortable with the process. For that reason, I try to adopt a client's preferred mode of communications (within reason).
• How do you prefer to share files: email, Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox, etc.? Ditto.
• What experience do you have working with ghostwriters? If someone hasn't worked with a ghost before, I'll likely need to do more hand-holding and explaining of best practices than I would if I were working with someone who's done it before, which could also add to the time needed for the work, and therefore, influence my fee.
• What’s your expected budget? Honestly, this should be the first question on the questionnaire, but I don't want to put people off by asking about money right away. I'm looking to get at least a ballpark estimate of what a prospective client anticipates spending to make sure that it lines up with my writing business revenue goals. Ghostwriting rates vary by genre, project scope, and the experience level of the ghost. According to Gotham Ghostwriters, prospective authors can expect to pay a ghostwriter at least $30,000 to $40,000 for a quality, standard-length business book, memoir, or self-help guide. Ghosts with multiple New York Times bestsellers, especially for business and thought leadership projects, can command $100,000 or more.
• What’s your expected timeframe for the work? I ask this to ascertain the expected start date and preferred publication date, in order to work out the total time for the project, and whether that fits with my schedule and my other work and non-work commitments.

Next steps - we wait

I've sent prospective clients this questionnaire and never heard from them again - a clear sign we weren't a good match. For others, it's taken weeks, or months to hear back. In some cases, I can tell from their answers that a project isn't right for me. It could be because they hadn't thought through the topic of a book well enough to describe it succinctly. Or they couldn't afford my rates. Or their vision for the book was different from what I'd recommend for it to be successful.

Then there are the clients that provide enough information for me to know it could be a good fit and to proceed with having a call. It might sound like a lot of work to go through to get to that point, but ultimately, it sets up everyone for success.