Hiring help

icon by Peg Ihinger

Would-be writers often go looking for help. Most turn to free online advice and/or groups like the NaNoWriMo community, look for people who will beta-read their work, or hunt up other writers to form a critique group (this last has gotten a lot easier with the rise of Zoom—my current crit group meets online). But some writers need or want something more extensive, more official, or more in-depth. Enter hiring help.

Broadly speaking, there are four types of people one can hire if one needs help with one’s work: staff for self-publishers, ghostwriters, book doctors, and book/writing coaches. I am not going to cover self-publishing staff in this post. I’m going to talk about the other three.

First are ghostwriters. When a perfect stranger comes up to me and says “I have a great idea; you write it and we’ll split the profit,” this is usually what they want (though ghostwriters generally get a fee, not a percent of the profit). Ghostwriters write the book for you, with occasional input from you. Your name is what goes on the cover, not theirs. This means they are expensive—think mid-five-figures, up front—but because it’s basically work-for-hire, they usually don’t get royalties. They generally get hired by a) celebrities, politicians, and businesspeople who have a message to get out but neither the time or skills to write an autobiography/how-to-book/novel/nonfiction book; b) experts whose name a publisher or organization wants on a book on their subject because it will then sell a zillion copies, but who also don’t have the time and/or writing skills to writ it themselves, c) people who think they have an idea that will sell a zillion copies, but who for one reason or another disinclined to write it themselves (and who can afford the cost).

Ghostwriters are seldom a good idea for people who actually want to be a writer. If you don’t write, you won’t learn how to do it.

Second are the book doctors. Book doctors don’t write the entire book for someone; they fix problems with existing manuscripts that make them unpublishable. Some people refer to book doctoring as “extreme editing,” Maxwell Perkins style. (Perkins famously cut 90,000 words from the manuscript of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. And I don’t mean “told the author to cut 90,000 words,” though presumably Wolfe got to approve the result that appeared with his name on it. Editors don’t have time to do this anymore, so it falls to book doctors.) Book doctors can do anything from rewriting poor prose, to cutting scenes, to reorganizing/restructuring a manuscript or even adding bits, depending on what the book needs. If they’re hired by a publisher, the author may not get as much say as the author expects; if they’re hired by the author, the author can ignore everything the book doctor has done if they don’t like it but they still have to pay for the service.

Book doctors can be costly. I’m not sure what current going rates are, and they will vary depending on how bad the problems are and how much the book doctor has to do above a certain base rate. They get hired by a) publishing companies that have somehow got their hands on an unpublishable manuscript that is on a tight deadline (say, a nonfiction book by an expert in the field who turns out not to have as many writing skills as they thought, which is supposed to hit bookshelves in time to be used as a text/reference for spring semester classes), b) desperate/struggling first-time writers who can’t get their book past the initial screening at a traditional publisher, and sometimes c) writers who intend to self-publish, who want a good critique of their work but have been unable to find a crit group/beta readers (or who don’t quite trust the feedback they’re getting from whoever they have found), and/or who want professional feedback so that they can learn to be a better writer. Writers in the latter two categories should think hard about their needs, expectations, and budget constraints before hiring anyone.

Book coaches (or writer/writing coaches) are a new-ish category of writing help. I’m not sure when they split off from book doctors, and there’s a lot of overlap in terminology—quite a few of the places that call themselves “book doctors” are offering what I would term coaching services. By and large, book coaches are, well, coaches. Coaches work with writers, analyzing and pointing out problems with a manuscript, but they usually don’t go in and revise or reorganize things themselves. They expect the writer to do the actual writing/revising (much as a football coach tells the team what plays to run, but it’s the team that’s actually on the field moving the ball). Some coaches will work with a writer right from the very beginning through to the very end, starting with story development, researching, figuring out process, drafting, and on through the submission process, writing query letters, strategizing submissions, to organizing publicity and promotion after the book has been published. If you want a serious amount of hand-holding and private tutoring, this is a reasonable place to look. Costs are all over the place: by the hour, by the page, by specific once-a-month/week services…and which services a specific coach offers also vary.

If you decide you want a coach, you need to 1) figure out what kind of help you want, how much of it you want, and what you can afford to spend on it, 2) do your research (see above warnings about differences in both services and cost), and 3) make sure whoever you are hiring is a good fit for you. If you and your coach rub each other the wrong way, you aren’t likely to get much value out of the experience (that goes for ghostwriters and book doctors, too).

Also, don’t scare yourself into spending lots on something you don’t actually need, just to get reassurance. Neither ghostwriters nor book doctors nor coaches can guarantee that a book will sell or do well, and the expense may not be worth it if the purpose is to generate profit. Or to put it another way: don’t expect a monetary return; don’t spend more than you can afford to lose.

At least 95% of the professional writers I know have never used a book doctor, coach, or ghostwriter. Most of us got there by trading crit with other writers and gossiping about the market, which publishers are buying, who’s terrible to work with, what kind of publicity someone is doing, etc.