Ghostwriter:
David Pascal: Ghostwriting, Book Design, Book Marketing
Want to be the author of a published book or article?
I can help you make it happen.
I’m a writer. A writer with a background in marketing, internet marketing, and book design.
And a writing teacher who’s taught blocked first-time writers as well as award-winning best-selling professionals.
That combination lets me give you things no other ghostwriter can give. I can:
Write your book or article for you
Work with you to develop your book idea.
Coach or tutor you to write enjoyably and efficiently.
Proof, edit, fix up or rewrite an existing partly-finished manuscript
Help guide you through the publishing process, whether it’s traditional publishing, print-on-demand, or ebooks.
Design the cover and create the actual layout.
Help you market the book and get media attention for the author.
Help you overcome the anxiety and procrastination of writer’s block
In short: I can not only help you get your book written. I can help you get it designed to your satisfaction, help you get it published, and help you market it too.
Why Hire A Ghostwriter?
Because you want the attention, the income, and the pure personal satisfaction that comes from writing a book and being an author.
And you don’t want the hassles, the headaches, the rewriting and proofreading, the heavy investment in time, or the bad notices you could get if your publication isn’t professional level quality the first time.
Writing a book can make you an acknowledged expert or leader in your field. It can lead to lucrative speaking engagements and public appearances. The right book or article can supercharge your career and change your life– if you can find the right person to help you write it.
Why I Can Help
My experience and background brings together skills that in some ways are unique in the ghostwriting field. And uniquely suited to making our working together enjoyable and profitable. For instance:
Writing Experience
I’ve written just about every sort of business or literary document there is, from non-fiction books, articles, interviews, web content, promotional direct mail, ads, reports, commercials and business plans, to novels, short stories, poetry, and plays.
Yes, I’ve been published. And as an editor I’ve published others. I’ve taught writing to teens, adults, and the elderly. I’ve taught award-winning novelists, college administrators, retired business executives, and authors of academic dissertations — as well as housewives, high school students, and other professional writers.
Publishing Insights
I’ve seen the publishing process from the other side too. I’ve served as an editor and contributing editor, and as a regular contributor of magazine articles. I’ve served as a judge on a grants panel for the arts, worked with independent publishers, had an agent, and run an independent literary journal.
I can help you understand and deal with the publishing process. Because I’ve been part of it from both sides.
Helping People Get Over Writer’s Block
After dealing with stuck and troubled writers in writing classes, my teaching took on a special focus: helping writers get over writer’s block.
Using my background in psychology, I made a special study of writing and the factors that discourage it, and those that sustain and foster it.
In time I came to formulate methods and approaches that have been consistently successful in overcoming problems people have with writing.
Eventually I put them into a book — Writing More And Suffering Less — designed to help writers write more, and to do it without the anxiety and negativism that makes writing so hard for so many.
I can use those successful stress-reducing approaches to help you write too.
Giving Your Book The Look You Want
You can’t judge a book by its cover? Well, most people do. You’ve seen cheap book jackets and unprofessional covers. Is that what you want your book to look like?
Most ghostwriters are writers only. But I’ve been a graphic designer as well. I’ve created book covers recently for clients ranging from McMaster University in Canada, to the Bronx Historical Society, to the Kirtas Classics Series, to ebooks for ebay.
I can do more than help you write your book — I can design the jacket, do the layout, and prepare it for publication, guiding you through the process till your book is exactly what you want it to be.
Writing It And Selling It
And what happens after you write the book? Most ghostwriters simply give you the finished text, and leave. But I’ve worked for marketing firms, freelanced as a marketing consultant, written about marketing, taught and lectured about marketing, and done marketing for business clients.
So I can not only help you finish your book, but advise and assist with promoting it too.
Writing by itself’s not always enough. To get the public to read your work — even if it’s a tightly focused public like one’s business or academic peers — you have to know how to target that market and how to reach it.
And these days there are dozens of low-cost to no-cost ways of promoting your book, from digital press releases to promotional web sites to using social media like Twitter and Facebook to building buzz on blogs and mailing lists.
Promotion is the critical part of the package that can get your book off the ground and into people’s hands.
Other ghostwriters help you tell. But they won’t help you sell.
I can. And I will.
How Does The Process Work?
Things usually start with a call or an email. Someone who needs a writer hears about me, often through a referral. Once they get in touch, we chat on the phone about their project to see if we’ll be a good fit. We generally are.
Once the client feels that we can work well together, we talk about what sort of book or other form of writing they want to write, and why. Are we working on improving an existing manuscript, for instance, or does it involve starting something completely new from scratch?
Once I get an idea of the project, I provide a quote and we work out payment arrangements. I’m open to negotiation, but I prefer to tie payments to specific deliverables along the way — after an initial deposit to start the project, payments are made once a set number of chapters or sections are completed and delivered.
When that’s all arranged, I like to collect and review any notes, research, or manuscript material my client may have already written.
If there’s enough existing material already, sometimes I start right away in developing it. If not, I arrange personal meetings or phone interviews to get the material I need to get started. Sometimes, if it’s called for, I may do additional research myself.
As a rule, my clients and I work together closely throughout the process.
In some cases it’s as simple as me sitting down and interviewing the client in person or by phone, writing up the results, revising them till they’re presentable, showing them to the client and getting his or her feedback, and then using it to produce a finished draft of that chapter.
In every case I ask for client input and use it to develop the piece further in the direction of the client’s initial vision.
Once the entire book is done, I provide one more overall revision, if necessary. Then, if the client is interested, I may help with the publication and marketing process.
What About Price?
I can’t really give you a set fee for projects in general. Projects aren’t general — they’re individual. A one-page business article is different from a six hundred page memoir or novel, and a six-page article that requires no research isn’t the same as one that requires three weeks of research.
But I like clients to know the average costs of hiring a ghostwriter. One of the best places for that is the Wikipedia page on ghostwriting. The Remuneration section says:
“Ghostwriters will often spend from several months to a full year researching, writing, and editing nonfiction works for a client, and they are paid either per page, with a flat fee, or a percentage of the royalties of the sales, or some combination thereof. Having an article ghostwritten can cost “$4 per word and more depending on the complexity” of the article.
“Literary agent Madeleine Morel states that the average ghostwriter’s advance for work for major publishers is “between $30,000 and $100,000”. In 2001, the New York Times stated that the fee that the ghostwriter for Hillary Clinton’s memoirs will receive is probably about $500,000″ of her book’s $8 million advance, which “is near the top of flat fees paid to collaborators.”
“According to Ghostwriters Ink, a professional ghostwriting service, this flat fee is usually closer to an average of $12,000 to $28,000 per book. By hiring the ghostwriter for this negotiated price, the clients ultimately keep all advances and post-publishing royalties and profits for themselves.
“In Canada, The Writer’s Union has established a minimum fee schedule for ghostwriter services. The total minimum fee for a 200-300 page book is $25,000, paid at various stages of the drafting of the book. Research fees are an extra charge on top of this minimum fee.
“In Germany the average fee for a confidential ghostwriting service is about $100.00 per page.”
How much do I charge? Again, it all depends on the project.
The first step in working out a price that’s all right with a client is to get a clear idea of what the project is, and what the client’s goals and reasons are for having a book and becoming an author.
Once that’s done, and the project and the approach are mapped out and agreed on, I normally ask a partial fee in advance to get started and to cover the time invested so far. Once the project is under way, I’ve found it’s best for both parties if partial payments arrive as milestones in the project are reached — in other words, smaller payments are made as each chapter or agreed-upon section of the book or project is finished.
And once things get started, then they generally follow the timeframe till the job is done, and the finished manuscript is in your hands.
By-Lines And Co-Authorship
My part in the creation of the book can be completely secret, and the byline and the credit and the profits can be all yours.
The question of references is a little trickier. It would certainly help ghostwriters get new clients if earlier clients were to come out and say someone helped them with their book. But non-disclosure agreements are the rule.
I do have references, of course, and writing samples galore. Sometimes I may even ask a former client if he or she would be willing to accept a phone call from a prospective client to vouch for my skills. But I don’t require it. I keep clients’ names secret. That’s just part of the job.
Publication Guaranteed
Is publication guaranteed? Yes. It’s not widely known, but the publishing process has changed totally with the rise of digitization and print-on-demand technologies. The computer and the internet have turned the formerly risky business of making your message available to the public into a certainty.
Print-on-demand has minuses as well as pluses. But some of the pluses are huge. And there are a wealth of things you can do not only to foster print-on-demand sales, but also to help bring print-on-demand work to the attention of more traditional publishers.
But is publication itself assured? Yes. No completed book needs to stay at the bottom of a desk drawer anymore. All you need to do is write the book. (Or have someone help you do it.)
Start Getting Your Book Or Article Written Today
What’s the next step?
Just sit back and think about all the positive benefits that a well-written book or article, done by a good ghostwriter, will give you.
Then contact me online or call me at 585-643-1167.
And your book or article will be on its way.
— David Pascal
“The Ghostwriters Ghostwriter”: Photograph of David Pascal by John Retallack.