Ghostwriting, Author and Co-Author

I’ve been asked about this several times about ghostwriters. Why would a person want to work hard on a project only to give all of the rights and creativity to another person? I have several friends who ghost write for a living.

A ghost writer can make a pretty good income and they handle work from either very small articles ranging 50 to 3 thousand words. Projects ranging from magazine articles, scripts, blogs, speeches and Novels. When you hire someone to ghostwrite for you, yes you are paying for the copyright to the written word, the entire product that they produced for you. You can do anything you want with it, even make changes to it and copyright it through copyright.gov 

I’ve seen ghostwriters charge anywhere from $5/hour or a flat fee from $40-$20,000. It all depends on what is involved with the work being commissioned. Being a ghost writer can be rather lucrative depending on how many contracts you’re able to commission. Many well-known authors will have someone unknown write a novel or other piece for them. 

Some authors do not like the idea of taking the credit for another’s work so they will have either a credit/ mention of the writer’s name. Some will go as far to put the other person’s name as a co-author. 

Currently I’m working on my first co-authored novel which has been very interesting and fun. I love the chance to collaborate with another creative writer.