I have the privilege to serve many overseas clients. They’re located in Australia, Malaysia, India, the Gulf states, Singapore, the UK — all over the world. Once in a while a prospective client will ask me if I charge by the hour. I don’t charge by the hour. Think about it…. I’m halfway across the globe from my client. How is he or she supposed to know how many hours I spend working for them? It makes no sense, at least not to me.

I charge by the word, delivered and accepted by my valued client. How much do I charge for book ghostwriting services? I make a binding offer based upon these criteria:

1. The proposed length of the book (20,000 words, 40,000 words, etc.).

2. The technical difficulty of the subject matter.

3. How much raw material the client can provide – blogs, reports, any other text that they own.

The average self-help book (which is the genre I serve most often) is between 30,000 and 45,000 words. This does not include any illustrations – that’s not my department. My fees range from three cents per word for assembling or editing existing material that the client provides up to ten cents per word for original ghostwriting. I have been paid as much as 17 cents per word for ghostwriting advanced financial documents, but that’s very unusual. The average total price for a ghostwritten book project ranges from a low of $1,000 to a high of $5,000.

Writing a book is exactly like building a house. Every house is different in size, materials used, and level of detail. And, to use the house analogy, I always build just one room at a time. Each room (or chapter) may carry a different price tag based on what the client can provide. Very rarely will a client say, “I have nothing but an outline. You need to write the entire book.” most of my clients provide some amount of raw text that can be used — I’d say on average most clients have something like 10,000 or even 20,000 words of existing text that we can use as parts when “building our house.”

This may seem complicated, but it’s actually a very straightforward and fair way to structure a deal. I always encourage my clients to have a Skype call. It’s much easier to talk about things rather than write email messages, and Skype is free.

– Thomas Hauck is a professional book editor and ghostwriter serving authors in the US, UK, and globally. Are you considering writing a book? Contact Thomas for your free consultation.