Ghostwriting
Your book. Your name. Written by us.
You have the concept and no time, or no inclination, to spend a year at a keyboard. We plan it with you, write it, and hand you a finished manuscript that belongs entirely to you.
How it works
Three stages, a third of the fee at each. You see the book arriving rather than waiting a year for a file, and you can steer it at two points along the way.
The plan, and the first third
We start with your concept and a conversation — what the book is, who it is for, what it has to deliver. From that comes an outline, the characters, and the rules the story runs on. You approve it in writing before a word of prose is drafted, because the outline is the cheapest place to change your mind.
- Outline, character work and world rules, approved by you
- Roughly the first third of the manuscript
- A checkpoint where you can call for changes at pivotal moments
The middle
The book moves through its second act, which is where most novels are won or lost. You see it as it arrives rather than in one lump at the end, and there is a second checkpoint before the final stretch.
- The manuscript to roughly two thirds
- A second checkpoint for pivotal changes
- Continuity carried forward, so nothing contradicts what came before
The finished book
The last act, then a revision pass across the whole manuscript so it reads as one book rather than three stretches. On final payment you receive the editable files and a signed assignment of rights.
- The complete manuscript
- One revision pass across the whole book
- Editable files and full transfer of rights, on payment
Whose book it is
It is your book
Your name goes on it. Ours does not appear anywhere, and we do not claim the credit, list it in a portfolio, or mention it to anyone. If you would rather nobody knew the book was ghostwritten, nobody will.
You own it outright on final payment
Copyright transfers to you in writing when the final payment clears. Complete and permanent — you can publish it, adapt it, sell it, licence it, or leave it in a drawer. There is no royalty, no continuing interest, and no revenue share.
Until then, we hold it
Rights transfer at the end, not along the way. This protects both of us: it means an unfinished project cannot be published half-written, and it means neither side is exposed if the work stops.
If it stops partway
Projects occasionally end early. Circumstances change, budgets change, sometimes a book turns out not to want writing. Here is exactly what happens, so it is not a negotiation conducted at a bad moment.
If you stop after stage one
You keep the outline, the character work and the chapters already delivered. You have paid for that work and it is yours to hold. Publication rights have not transferred, so the material cannot be published as it stands.
If you stop after stage two
The same, with roughly two thirds of a manuscript. Nothing further is invoiced and no further work is done.
If we stop
If we cannot continue for any reason on our side, any fee paid for work not yet done is returned. We would rather refund than deliver a book we are not standing behind.
The deposit
The first payment is not refundable. It buys the planning work, which has real value to you whatever happens next — you can take that outline to another writer if you choose.
What we need from you
A book written to order needs a responsive author. None of this is onerous, but all of it is worth agreeing before we start rather than discovering halfway.
Changes at pivotal moments, not line by line
At each checkpoint you can change what matters: a character's arc, the ending, the shape of what is still to come. What we are not doing at this stage is word choice and sentence rhythm — that belongs to editing, once the book exists. Structural changes after you have approved the outline are quoted separately, because rebuilding is different work from refining.
Feedback within two weeks
When a stage is delivered, we need your response inside fourteen days. If we do not hear from you the stage is treated as approved and the next one begins, because a project cannot sit open indefinitely. Tell us if you need longer and we will simply agree a date.
Your dates depend on your replies
The delivery date assumes checkpoints come back on time. If a review takes three weeks, the finish moves by three weeks. Nothing punitive — it is just how the arithmetic works.
Work stops if payment does
Drafting resumes when the next stage is paid. This is not leverage, it is scheduling: writing your book means not writing somebody else's, and that slot has to be held by something.
What counts as a change
Changes are priced by how much written work they undo, not by how big they sound. A request that takes one sentence to make can take three weeks to absorb.
Local
Free, at any pointA name, an eye colour, a line of dialogue, where one scene takes place. Findable and fixable in an afternoon. Ask for these whenever you like.
Ripple
Included once per stageSomething established that recurs — a character's job, a relationship, a physical detail described in twenty places. It needs a pass back through what is written, but the story itself does not change.
Structural
Quoted, by the chapters affectedA change to what happens: a plot turn, the ending, a character's arc. This invalidates the outline from that point forward and any chapters that leaned on it. We will tell you what it costs before doing it, and you can decide it is not worth it.
Foundational
A new projectA change to what the book is. Making the lead a woman rather than a man, which cascades into every romantic dynamic in the story. Moving from India to Siberia in 1856, which invalidates every setting, every research fact, every idiom and every season. These are not edits to a book; they are a different book, and they are quoted as one.
The same change costs different amounts depending on when you ask. Making the protagonist a woman is a paragraph rewritten at the outline stage and most of a new book at sixty thousand words. This is why the checkpoints matter, and why we would rather you were difficult early than polite late.
What it costs
A base of $1,200 covers the planning — the outline, the characters, the rules the story runs on — and the first 5,000 words. Every further 1,000 words is $350. A book of 5,050 words is the base plus one increment; a book of 90,000 is the base plus eighty-five.
| Short story | 5,000 words | $1,200 |
| Long short | 10,000 | $2,950 |
| Novelette | 25,000 | $8,200 |
| Novella | 40,000 | $13,450 |
| Short novel | 60,000 | $20,450 |
| Novel | 90,000 | $30,950 |
| Long novel | 130,000 | $45,200 |
| Epic | 180,000 | $62,450 |
Beyond 200,000 words, quoted — at that length the planning is a different job.
Most ghostwriters hand back a draft. This price includes the work that happens before the first word: the outline, the character and world documents, and the continuity record that keeps chapter forty consistent with chapter four.
Paid in three equal stages.
If you already have an outline
Bring us a worked outline, a series bible or character documents that hold up, and the quote comes down — there is less to build. But the discount is for structure we can actually build on, not for a document that exists.
Not an outline
Chapter one, we meet the vampire. Chapter two, he feeds. Chapter three, he meets a woman. Chapter four, he turns her. Chapter five, she becomes a liability and he removes her.
That is a premise with chapter numbers on it. Nothing escalates — chapter four asks no more of him than chapter two — nobody is wanting something they are being kept from, and nothing in the second half was set up in the first. There is no reason those events fall in that order rather than any other. Given a document like that, we build the structure from scratch, which is why it cannot reduce the fee. Accepting it as an outline and quoting against it only means discovering the problem in the second act, with most of the money already spent.
So we read what you have before we quote. You get a straight answer: this is usable and here is the reduction, or this is a starting point and here is what building the real structure costs. Either way you know before you commit rather than three months in.
If you want that answer on its own, The Read is $99 and credits against whatever you buy next. See the planning ladder.
Every ghostwritten book starts with a conversation about whether it should be written at all.