When You Need – and Don’t Need – a Ghostwriter Book Contract

Every once in a while a prospective client will send me a contract to sign for their book project. I always try to discourage such nonsense and urge my valued client to save the money they would otherwise pay a lawyer to write the contract. There are several reasons why, in my business, contracts are often pointless.

1) I do business on the basis of trust and respect. I allow my valued clients the right to cancel my employment at any time. This is because the worst thing in the world is to be stuck in a partnership where no one is happy. I’m like a taxi driver – you get into the cab, I drive you where you want to go, and you pay me.

2) To minimize the risk on both sides, I keep financial exposure extremely low. The basis of any contract is an exchange of value – that is, you agree to give me something (money) and I agree to give you something (writing). The way I do business, exchanges of value are always minimal, generally no more than $600. I never ask a client to pay me a hefty advance.

Contrast this with, say, a contract for a house painter. Most house painters demand 50% in advance. For an $8,000 job, this would be $4,000. This is a substantial amount of money, and if you’re going to pay that much money in advance, a contract makes sense. Some ghostwriters ask for a fat advance. I don’t.

3) A relationship with a ghostwriter is like a mini-marriage. We won’t know how well we work together until we actually begin the project. What if we got 10,000 words into the book and you said, “Gee, Thomas, this is not working out. We need to end this.” Or, “I’ve decided to postpone the book. We need to put it off until next year.” Would you really want me to have a signed contract with you specifying that you must pay me for a book I’m delivering to you? A binding contract can only serve to artificially prolong a broken marriage.

4) If you’re not sure about whether your ghostwriter is a good fit, why on earth would you want to start with a big formal contract? Doesn’t it make much more sense to say, “Please write the first 5,000 words, and then we’ll determine if we want to move forward.” By doing this you risk much less and you give both parties a manageable trial period.

5) Most ghostwriting agreements do not focus on performance. A non-disclosure/work for hire agreement focuses on two things that are much more important – the fact that the job is a work for hire and the guarantee that the ghostwriter won’t steal your ideas. These two things are what really matter.

6) Obviously, if you’re hiring a ghostwriter to fly to your home and spend six months interviewing you, you’ll both want a formal contract. This is because significant value is being exchanged before a product is delivered. But that’s not my business model. My business model is like agile software development: I deliver small batches of finished product. In the end, these small batches become a complete book.

7) I occasionally ghostwrite books for a major national subsidy publisher. It’s a big company and they have expensive lawyers who love to write contracts. So they send ’em and I sign ’em. But at the end of the day, it still comes down to picking up the phone and talking to the client. The contract is just a formality that does not dictate our real-life working relationship.

My best professional advice is to save your money and skip the lawyers. Give yourself maximum flexibility and reduce the financial risk by using my pay-as-you-go system. It’s worked for hundreds of very satisfied clients!

– Thomas Hauck is a leading independent ghostwriter and book editor serving both emerging and published authors. Questions? For your free consultation, contact Thomas today.