Julie Broad from Book Launchers breaks down ghostwriter costs: Wall Street Journal-level writers run $50-60k, while many charge $25-35k. Most business books hit 50-75k words and take six months. She explains how Book Launchers uses in-house writers to keep prices down.
If you're thinking of hiring a ghostwriter to write your book, stick around. I'm going to cover what it costs. Hey there, I'm Julie Broad with Book launchers dot com. I saw this quote on the Internet. I wrote this book without the aid of a co author or a ghostwriter. Which is why it's a good bet this is going to be my last book. I had no idea it would be so hard to do. That's from IBM CEO Lou Gerstner, author of who Says Elephants Can't Dance? I had to laugh because Lou's right. Writing a book is hard work. That's also why I think it's silly that some people equate a book to a business card. A great book is much more than a glorified business card. And done right, I think it's far better than even a degree. It takes time, effort and energy to write a great book and you may be thinking like a smart book CEO and you're thinking you need to outsource everything related to your book except for your expertise. Sweet. One of the best ways to do that is to you hire a great ghostwriter to write your first draft. Want to know more about what a ghostwriter does and how to find them? Watch these videos right here and here. Today we're going to talk costs. When Book Launchers first started, we only helped you write your book. Then we took it from there with our team of editors, interior architects, cover designers and marketing team. But the words were coming from you. Then one of our clients said, I don't want to be the one to put the words to my expertise. That's not a good use of my time. Find me a writer. My first call was to a great woman who I knew has written at least one Wall Street Journal bestseller. She's a well known and well respected writer. As I suspected, she was actually perfect for the job. My client loved her, but her price tag of 50 to 60 thousand dollars was a bit of a budget killer. So I brought in another writer who was a well respected sports biography ghostwriter. He couldn't disclose a lot of his clients, as many people don't want you to know that they didn't write their own book. And because it wasn't as easy to vet him, I actually expected him to be cheaper than the other one. He came in at $1 per finished word. Most business books are somewhere around 50 to 75,000 words, so you can see how a dollar a finished word could add up. I negotiated with that ghostwriter about all the things My team would be doing to reduce his workload and got him to 50 cents a word, which. Which pretty much put him exactly where the other ghostwriter was after I'd negotiated with her. Now, a lot of this does depend on the work the ghostwriter is doing, which was in the other video. But you're essentially getting a first draft of a book that still needs editing, design, layout, and so on. So I expanded my search, and I started interviewing all kinds of people who had ghostwriting experience. Most of the others came in between $25,035,000 for a book. The cheapest ghostwriter I found, and they actually were a service, not an actual single writer, was $18,000. When you understand that it will take most ghostwriters up to six months to write your book, the prices make sense. Great ghostwriters dedicate a lot of their life and time to this project. They aren't making a living if they charge much less. And it's not easy being a great ghostwriter. It's a skill to be able to write a book well and to do it in someone else's voice. Because it's not just a matter of putting words to the paper. It's a matter of making sure they be words that you, the real author of the book, would use. Now, you can hire much cheaper writers, this one, for example. And the writing might even be half decent. The issue is that it's not your voice, and that is so important. It's not your book if it's not your voice. And if someone writes in a totally different style than you would, then you have a mountain of work to do to redo it. Sure, you save money, but you add a whole lot of time, energy, and effort to the entire project, which was the goal of hiring a ghostwriter in the first place, was to save your time and energy. It's the old adage that you can get something fast, cheap, or good. Sometimes you can get two, but you can't get all three. So there you have it. To get a professional working on your book, you're looking at a minimum of $0.30 per. So there you have it. To get a professional working on your book, you're looking at a minimum of $0.30 per finished word. More like $0.50. The more experienced and the more extensive the work you're asking for them to do, the higher the price. I solved this problem for book Launchers and our clients. I found a couple of amazing writers, folks who are efficient, effective, and easy to work with, and I brought them in house by paying them a set salary and guaranteeing their income, I'm able to reduce the costs of every book they ghostwrite for our clients. So if you're looking for a great ghostwriter for your business book or nonfiction biography, we can help. And we do everything from write, publish, and set you up for launch. And when you find out how awesome we are compared to the options out there, say a silent thank you to Bruce. He's the one who pushed me to add this to our services. Got a question? Go ahead, type it in the comments below. Type it in the comments below. And of course, if you like free tips, hit that like button. If you prefer to pay for them, hit that dislike button. Make sure you subscribe and turn your notifications on so we can hang out in the comments right after my video and you'll be notified when I go live, which I'll be doing. And I'll be doing Amazon book reviews, maybe of your book. See you on the next video.
Should You Skip Amazon When You Publish Your Book? #digitalmarketing #amazonauthor
