How to price ghostwriting jobs

Ghostwriting is writing that carries someone else's name. The client gets the byline, the audience and the credit; you get the fee. That trade has one pricing consequence people keep getting wrong: ghost work should pay MORE than your bylined rate, not less.

Why the rate goes up, not down. A byline is a real part of a writer's compensation - it markets you while you sleep. Ghostwriting pays you once and builds you nothing you can show. Price the invisibility: a common, defensible approach is 20 to 50 percent above what you would charge for the same piece under your own name. If a client argues the credit is the payment, they are describing exposure, not a fee.

Quote the project, not the word. Ghost jobs sprawl - vague briefs, extra voices, "one more pass". A per-project quote with revisions capped (two rounds is a fair default) keeps the sprawl on the client's side of the fence. When you must price per word, ghostwritten long-form commonly sits well above ordinary content rates; set your number from your own baseline with the ghost premium, not from forum folklore.

Price the input, not just the output. A ghost job often includes interviews, transcript reading and voice-matching - hours a bylined piece never asks for. Estimate those hours out loud in the quote ("includes two 30-minute interviews") so the client sees what the number buys.

The clauses that protect you. Three, always: a confidentiality or portfolio clause (can you name the client, describe the work, or show a redacted sample?), a revision cap, and payment terms that survive the client's own publishing delay - the fee is due for the writing, not the publication. This is a contracts-and-retainers conversation in miniature: the pieces in the links below carry the full detail, and the rate calculator turns your target income into the baseline number the ghost premium sits on.