Ghostwriters are professionals who can craft materials for others, take up a client’s ideas and stories, and help flesh them up into a book, an article or a publication. Ghostwriting is not just about writing other people’s autobiographies, memoirs, ebooks or books. It could also be writing blog posts, website content, and speeches, among others.
You may have even been involved in Ghostwriting without knowing what it is. It simply means writing for someone else and not getting the credit for it, rather you get paid.
As they say, anything that has advantages must have its downside too, and the same goes for Ghostwriting. It is an amazing career to go into and a cool way to make money online, but there are cons to it.
Here are some of them:
- Ghostwriting is a competitive field: There are few opportunities available, especially if you’re a non-fiction writer. It can be painstakingly slow to develop contacts to find potential leads as a newbie. Patience and persistence are needed to find your first clients and make them trust you.
- You have to work for someone else: When you’re ghostwriting, say, a book, it’s not yours and you have to follow the decisions of the client even if you don’t agree with them. You have to set aside your voice to write in the voice and style of your clients.
- The work may not be very interesting: Even though ghostwriters cover a myriad of topics, you may find some topics boring or beyond your expertise.
I have had to write about car tires before and trust me, it wasn’t so interesting. I got bored while writing. And there was also a time I wrote about AI (Artificial Intelligence). Oh my! I never wanted the project to end because the topic was so interesting to work on. - You have to give up your name: Yes, you get paid for the project but it’s not always easy to do all the work and not get the credit for it. No one knows you wrote the book and the rules say you’re not allowed to mention it to people also. Tough, right?
Some of the bestselling books you see by authors today may have been written by Ghostwriters, but you won’t see their names on the books. - There may be strict deadlines and fast turnaround times: Some authors just think of publishing a book at a particular time, towards a specific occasion and then contact you for the project. The time may be very close, but you still have to meet up with the publishing date. Well, this is when to charge for express delivery.
Before saying you want to specialize as a Ghostwriter, you have to consider which of these cons you can live with.
Which of them are deal-breakers?
So, you see what Ghostwriters go through behind the scene before that beautiful book becomes a bestseller.
Or before that blog post, website content, and the likes come out nice.