Negotiating A Fair Price With Your Ghostwriter
You want it cheap. Well of course, everyone wants everything cheap – but also of course as a general rule you will get what you pay for in a ghostwriter as in most anything else in business and in life.
Copywriting – of which ghostwriting is a specialized sub-category – has no “standard” pricing models. Freelance copywriting had a traditional model of print articles for things like newspapers and magazines, which would generally be on a price per word basis. The old rule for decades was 0.10 per word. Like gas prices the rates are going up a little. The more recent standard is closer to 25 cents.
If you needed a 350 word article for a local magazine, at 10 cents a word that’s almost nothing – $35 – and at a quarter a word it’s still not much – $87.50.
If instead you needed a 100 page e-book, at 400 words per page, 25 cents per word, you’re at $10,000 – when in fact the going price for a 100 page e-book by a domestic writer on a non-specialty topic with quality is probably closer to $2,000 – 2,500.
The problem with the per-word model is first, it encourages overall length which is not necessarily a good thing. Second, it encourages use of more words per sentence, per paragraph and per page. Also not necessarily good. Third and most important, on smaller projects it is a waste of time for the writer and on bigger projects it will get too expensive for you!
Some writers will work on a per-page basis and for shorter projects this may well make economic sense for you. Expect to pay around $25-75 per page for a good US, UK or Canadian writer. You can find offshore resources who will charge $1 per page. But remember what we said about getting what you pay for…
Many writers will offer to work on hourly rates. You can find offshore rates as low as $5 per hour. Domestically, in most markets writing rates are $25-45 per hour in 2005. In some metro areas, or for specialized expertise, you can expect to pay far more – medical and technical writers can easily charge $75-100 per hour, legal writers even more. Whether it’s worth it depends on the nature of your project.
A better approach in many cases than per word, per page, or per hour is a project model, where you define what you want, and the writer agrees to do it for a set fee.
We’ll have more to say about pricing a little later. For now, we’re just touching on pricing as a decision-making element in choosing a writer.
You certainly can choose on price – but we recommend choosing on fit, quality and value as long as the price is affordable and makes sense for your business.