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It's part two of my series on finding ghostwriters on Upwork, and today I'm writing about how to decide if the ghostwriter who's applied to your fabulously written job ad has the right skills for your project.
The first step?
Look at the ghostwriter's profile.
Start with the profile summary. Is it written well? Grammatically correct? While even the best writers make mistakes, multiple mistakes in the profile summary could point to a writer who doesn't check their work, which is an essential ghostwriting skill. Our clients expect us to submit clean copy.
Then move on to the ghostwriter's job history. Again, even the best writers make mistakes, so a few low-rated jobs aren't an immediate red flag. But if the writer repeatedly receives similar comments from clients—inability to meet deadlines or follow instructions, or not declaring AI usage—take note.
Look out for the kinds of contracts the ghostwriter works on, too. Even though their job title might say "Romance Ghostwriter," they might not actually have any romance ghostwriting jobs, or only have a few. Some clients don't mind working with newbies; heck, I got my start in ghostwriting because someone took a chance on me. But I generally recommend that clients without much experience in romance publishing stick with more seasoned ghostwriters; that way, if you recommend an unpopular trope or sub-plot, your ghostwriter will have the industry knowledge and understanding to enable them to see the pitfalls of that trope or sub-plot and steer you in a better, more marketable direction.
You might notice I've skipped over the hourly rate at the top of the profile. It doesn't really apply to ghostwriting, which is usually charged by word, not by hour. And when ghostwriters apply to your job, they're usually doing so because they accept the rate you've proposed.
The second step?
Review the ghostwriter's writing
You probably think I mean the samples included at the bottom of the profile page, in the area marked "Portfolio."
I don't.
I don't recommend hiring based on portfolio samples, because there is no way of knowing if that sample is a ghostwriter's genuine work.
I've had many clients in the last few years come to me with manuscripts written by ghostwriters whose samples seemed a perfect fit for what they were looking for. But when the clients received the manuscripts they'd commissioned, they were riddled with plot and writing errors, and often needed complete rewriting and restructuring.
Usually, the samples the client used to based their hiring decisions on was stolen from another writer's profile, or, in some cases, from a published book.
To avoid this, I now recommend what I call paid writing trials. It's not a concept I invented; it's actually something another writing client asked me to do prior to working together, and it not only gave me an opportunity to show off my skills, but because the writing trial included a brief specifically tied to the client's book idea, it let me see what type of story they wanted from me, too.
Paid writing trials are when a writer is given a brief to follow for a set number of words—usually 1000—and paid for that trial. The trial is then reviewed by an editor who understands the client's sub-genre and author brand, and can tell the client whether the writer has the skills necessary for the client's project.
The brief is written to test the skills a ghostwriter needs to competently write in the client's chosen sub-genre, niche, and with the client's tropes.
This is especially important for clients writing in niches or using tropes with very, very specific reader expectations. Dark romance, mafia romance, alphaholes, stalkers, OTT heroes are just a few examples.
The other benefit of a paid writing trial is that it's much harder to plagiarize material in a trial. And because the trial is based on a prompt, it's easier to catch AI usage, too.
Once you've gone through the trial and found your ghostwriting, there's one more step to the vetting process, though, and that's the meeting.
Meet your ghostwriter
This is an optional step, but one that I really encourage my clients to do, because of one over-used but oh so meaningful word: vibes.
When you meet someone, even just on Zoom (and using Upwork's Zoom meeting function, so you're not violating the site's guidelines), you get a much better sense of them than you do over a messaging service.
Meeting over Zoom also allows you to talk contingencies and policies, and see real-time reactions to those topics, which gives you so much more information about the person you're trusting with your story.
Which topics do I mean?
-what milestones you want to break the book up into
-whether each milestone will be edited, or you'll wait to get the whole manuscript edited once it's complete
-how long it will take you to approve submitted milestones
-how/if you compensate for editing
-what happens if the ghostwriter misses a deadline
-how either of you will handle a sudden emergency that delays the project
-how frequently you want them to check in with their progress -in what timeframe you want them to respond to any questions/queries
These topics should also be covered in your contract, which is part three in this series of posts on how to find a ghostwriter on Upwork, but it's a lot easier to hash these details out first before putting them on paper. That way, you're not sending PDFs back and forth with red-inked changes for days.
I'll be back next week with a post on contracts, which are final hurdle to jump through before you and your ghostwriter start collaborating. Until next post, happy reading and writing!