I don't make this up

Every so often, I gripe about insane buyer requests for ghostwriting. Pictured with this article is just the latest in unreasonable expectations. To paraphrase my father: I don't make this crap up.

Such unreasonable expectations arose from the self-publishing revolution started by Amazon. While Amazon made publication quick and easy for authors who couldn't find favor with the gatekeepers of literature--namely, agents and (traditional) publishers--it also gave rise to a hungry, rapacious industry that drove down the value of literary content.

Audiences grew accustomed to paying a mere $0.99 per e-book, if even that much, and readers began balking at the exorbitant prices of $5.99 for a book. Authors discounted their books, because getting paid 35% royalties on a $0.99 book was better than 70% royalties on a book unsold.

Audiences also began to expect frequent releases. This drove authors to writing, writing, writing at a furiously fast pace which left little things like research and editing in the dust. When expectations began to push for new content released every few weeks as opposed to a more leisurely pace that allowed for thorough research and editing of one or two books per year, book producers made choices: they turned to ghostwriters who could write quickly and cheaply or they began to release books in installments.

The former solution--hiring ghostwriters--enabled "authors" to produce multiple books quickly. Of course, both clients and writers worked a opposite ends of the spectrum: clients wanting content as quickly and cheaply as possible and writers wanting as much time and money as possible for their work. To make a long story short, the "fast and cheap" crowd won. Just take a look at the image attached to this article. RFPs like that are all too common.

For kicks and giggles, I'll break that RFP down for you. The client wants 150,000 words of content delivered in 14 days at a budget of $150. Research shows that the average writer requires 3 hours and 20 minutes to write and polish 1,000 words of content. Simple math enables a writer to estimate that this project will take 495 hours to produce a decent manuscript of the length required. Two weeks (14 days) contains only 336 total hours.

Already, a writer cannot produce polished prose within the 14-day deadline for delivery. Therefore, the writer must cut something out--like self-editing. That's one guaranteed way to reduce the quality of the work. Even at that, the ghostwriter must somehow produce 1,875 words per hour in two normal 40-hour work weeks. Finally, who among you would work 80 hours for a mere $150? Deduct the platform's 20% commission and the writer earns a mere $120 to produce 150,000 words of content.

As of this morning, that project has received 13 bids from vendors who apparently have ways around the impossibility of production and don't mind the paltry wage. Those ways include plagiarism. Content theft is rampant and supported by the ravenous publication model that puts pressure on authors to produce voluminous quantities at crazy speed for bargain prices.

For most authors, especially independently published authors who value integrity and quality, their work is a zero-sum game. They're on the losing end. They cannot keep up with the producers who hire cheap ghostwriters hungry enough to work for pennies per hour. Having flooded the market with cheaply produced and poorly written content, such "authors" are responsible for the degradation of the quality of genre literature overall and the utter devaluation of good writing.

So, why do we do it? Why do real authors write? For me, it's because I cannot not write. I have stories to tell, stories that I must tell. Sure, I'd love for them to sell at such quantities that I could live well off the royalties, but for most authors, that's a pipe dream. We can all cite the outliers, those lucky few who struck it big. We all want to be just like those few. So we write and publish: lather, rinse, repeat.

If you know an author, support him or her. Buy the book; don't expect him or her to give you a copy for free. Support the author by reading the book. (Yes, Amazon tracks whether an e-book purchased is actually read and pays the author according to pages read.) Support the author by leaving a review. Writing is work and producing good content is hard work that takes time, diligence, skill, and effort. The more "real" authors are supported, the better the market and its products will become.

Every word counts.

#henhousepublishing #hollybargobooks #amwriting