Guest Post: How Much Time Should a Ghostwriter Invest in a Prospective Client?
By Thomas Hauck

If you’re like me, you’re a sole proprietor who serves a revolving set of clients throughout the year. A new client comes on board, you write their book, and then you say goodbye and move on to the next author. I ghostwrite five or six books a year, both fiction and non-fiction, and to hit my income goals I need to keep my product pipeline full with a steady stream of new projects.
In addition to ghostwriting books, I also do manuscript editing at all levels, from development to proofreading. In all, I probably serve fifty different authors in the span of twelve months.
This means that I spend a lot of time looking for new work and, most importantly, selling myself to prospective clients. This is all done from my home office. I do not travel to meet clients; Zoom has made that unnecessary. As a rule, I offer every prospective client a free Zoom or phone consultation to discuss their project. Ideally, this is a productive session during which we nail down the structure and goals of the book, and I explain my pricing and workflow. I have a rule that I never try to “sell” myself to a client or talk them into hiring me. I never pressure them. Instead, I look for motivated clients who know what they want to accomplish, have the budget, and are ready to hit the ground running. Those are the ideal people to work with!
Many Prospects Are Just “Fishing”
Alas, not every prospect fits that description. I recently took a Zoom call with a person who told me they wanted to write a book. Fine. I asked her if it was to be fiction or non-fiction. She wanted non-fiction. A self-help book. Good! I asked her what topic. What was the problem she intended to solve for her reader?
She didn’t know. This was a big red flag, but she seemed nice, so I tried to work with her. I asked her what she did for work, or what subject she had specialized knowledge in. She was a nurse. Okay, so it could be healthcare. More specifically, she was in the business of home caregiving. She could write about how to navigate this growing industry.
But I got the impression she thought this topic would be boring, probably because it was mundane to her.
The discussion went on and on. And for me—as I’m sure it is for every ghostwriter—time is money. After an hour, I told her that she had to do her homework, and that I’d be happy to jump back in when she had made up her mind.
Will I hear from her again? My guess is, no. I’ll send her a follow-up email in a few weeks, but the vibe I got from her was more like daydreaming than anything else.
Some prospects are more serious, but they just want a free tutorial in how to write and publish a book. They quiz you for an hour, until you finally have to say, “I’ve got to go—I have a meeting. We’ll talk again.”
Another red flag is this: I spend an hour on a call, and at the end the prospect says, “Thank you. This has been a great discussion. But I have some other ghostwriters to interview. I’ll be doing that in the next few days. Then I’ll get back to you.” In my fifteen years as a professional ghostwriter, I have never been hired by someone who said that to me. My guess is that in each case, I was too expensive for them, but they didn’t want to admit that openly. So they put me off with a face-saving line.
This is my experience: If I don’t close the deal within half an hour on a Zoom call, it’s ninety percent certain the client is not going to hire me. Protracted interviews don’t produce results. That’s why I don’t let any prospect keep me on a call longer than an hour, at the very maximum. I cannot extract blood from a stone, as the old saying goes. But every ghostwriter is different—I’m sure you have your own experiences and expectations. It’s up to you to decide what works for you, and how much free time you’re willing to invest in a prospect who may ghost you—no pun intended.
Thomas Hauck is a professional ghostwriter, editor, and author. He lives and works in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He can be reached at thomasahauck@gmail.com.
Thomas, excellent article. I often wonder if I’m spending too much time on ghostwriting prospects. I get far more queries than clients and the time adds up. But I try to limit phone calls and Zoom to under 30 minutes. As a children’s rewriter, I end up reading manuscripts or drafts of picture books up to 2000 words as the prospect doesn’t know the standard guidelines, or I’ll skim through a chapter book just so I snow what I’m dealing with.
I love meeting authors at this stage, when they know they have a book somewhere inside them but they need help clarifying their vision for it. I’ve developed a process that helps them as the author and me as the ghostwriter understand what this book will be and what it will do for them and their readers. Once we both have this clarity, we’re off and running!
Thank you, Thomas, for your article. As a ghostwriter, editor, and book coach, I also experience some of the same things you do. I would like to add that obtaining warm leads via social media or other modes of communication often helps me decide whether or not prospective authors are clear about their subject matter and/or whether they are fishing or serious. Sometimes this warm lead can even determine if we should schedule a call of not. I do offer paid consultations for authors who want information regarding the book writing process as well. Best wishes, Wendy