If you find a ghostwriter that you want to work with and notice their listed services and fees aren’t a perfect fit for your project or budget, you can try negotiating with a ghostwriter. Here are some creative ways to reach an agreement on the all-important issue of ghostwriter fees and your investment.
Research costs more because it adds to the work the ghostwriter has to do and the time they’ll have to dedicate to your project. If you’re conducting your own research, supplying a lot of primary research materials, or hiring an independent researcher, you can negotiate with the ghostwriter and omit research from their fee.
Not every project requires research. For example, research comprises a large part of nonfiction. But what about fiction? Research-heavy genres in fiction are generally historical, futuristic, fantasy, or sci-fi, where the fantasy world or magical or technology system are underpinned by facts. And how about creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, or memoir? If the memoir is set in a specific time period or professional field, more research will be required to make those elements ring true to readers and feel immersive, rather than distracting.
Contemporary realistic memoir and fiction require less research, but the ghostwriter will have to familiarize themselves with the setting anyway. Even contemporary fiction set in a place that many people feel they know—like New York City, a setting we’ve all seen in movies and TV shows—requires specifics to make that setting come alive.
If you’re commissioning a ghostwriter to write a work of fiction or a memoir (where the research isn’t something the writer could feasibly conduct without you), then you can negotiate based on how much information you’re providing. If you have a draft of the work and want someone to take it to the next level, you may be eligible for a ghost revision rate instead of outright ghostwriting fees.
If you give the ghostwriter an outline or a few ideas and step back to let them do most of the creative development work, this will invariably cost more. If you are willing to develop the project (by yourself or working in collaboration with the ghostwriter) and even write all or part of an initial draft, you have a strong case in negotiating with a ghostwriter to lower their fee.
This is only fair, as you will provide detailed information and work closely with the writer to minimize the amount of independent creative work they have to do on the project.
