Ghostwriting the Wrong Way (?)
I began ghostwriting romance novels in the early days of the pandemic, when I was stuck at home and waiting for my own YA novel to make it through the traditional publishing submission process (still waiting, three revisions later!). It's been fun, but with no professional contacts I started my ghost journey on Upwork, where the pay is peanuts. It may be better for blog writers, copywriters, nonfiction writers, and memoir writers, but ghost writing for fiction pays very poorly. Luckily, I write well, and fast, and enjoy what I do. I love telling a good story. But when I'm struggling to get $0.02/word, it can be a bear. Still, it keeps our self-publishing/author services business afloat. So anyway, I just finished a contract and the client loved the novel I wrote for her, but when I started looking through the listings for another gig, it became obvious what was going on. All of these "authors" on Upwork are posting jobs for ghostwriters with the exact same specs, even at nearly the same price. I believe they're taking a course in how to launch a publishing business, throw ghostwritten novels up on Amazon under their own names, and make a fortune. I don't resent them for that: everyone is trying to make it somehow. Fine. But it occurred to me that with the experience I have at writing and editing romance novels, I can do this for myself and not for two cents a word. I wrote out character sketches and a plot outline this morning, sat down and wrote the first 4000 words, and I'm on my way to a finished MS by the end of the week. The formula that they're using is this: ~ Plot a series of three novels ~ First novel: 10,000 words ~ Second novel: 30,000 words ~ Third Novel: 30-50,000 words ~ Each novel follows the format: Chp. 1: Her POV/Chp. 2: His POV/Chp. 3: Her POV/etc. with each chapter written in alternating first person from the point of view of either the hero or heroine of the novel ~ Pay a total of $1200-$1600 for the series ~ Pay a cover illustrator a few hundred dollars to design the covers for the series ~ MAYBE get an editor/proofreader to read through (although I believe most of these people are doing that themselves) ~ Hire a formatter for $49 to set up the book ~ Post it for sale on Amazon
And repeat. I won't post the name of this particular training, but here's a screenshot of their pricing:
Pretty overpriced, if you ask me. But this is just one of MANY people offering similar courses.None of the ghostwriters are making a decent living for doing this very exacting writing/development/editing work. Maybe it buys groceries. But at two cents a word/15,000 words per week/$300 pay minus the Upwork cut, the pay is pathetic. I am going out on my own, and see if I can sell my intellectual property for myself, while waiting for my trad pub career to start. Writing is tough, I won't lie. But maybe someday it will be my name on the books I write and not someone who paid me two cents a word.