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If you look at the global market size of ghostwriting companies providing book-writing services – you’d probably end up scratching your head. An industry worth billions of dollars that works purely on trust and gut feeling. This gives birth to several problems, which people, especially budding authors, are unaware of, like:
- The confidentiality problems
- The tone of voice problems
- The reliability problems
- The miscommitment problems
- The post-publishing problems
Problems like these and many others often hinder your dream of becoming a successful author. While every company has some best-selling samples to show to its potential clients, do they really deliver? Let’s explore this and all the problems to help you understand how this industry works and where to end your search for a genuine book-writing service provider.
Delivering (on) Promises
You’ve probably heard or read a million times that the customer is king. But let me give you a bit of perspective. Every new customer who is about to pay up is the king. Once you pay up, you’ll become a regular customer who may feel unheard. But this is not the case with every company. Between delivering promises and delivering on the promises is a very blurry line that’s hard to identify. You need to tread very carefully to find a company that delivers on its promises of offering flawless book-writing services.
To find the not-so-hidden gem, look for signs like:
- What people are saying about the company (negative or positive doesn’t matter)?
- Every company can talk the talk, but can they walk the talk?
- Do they have clear refund policies?
- Are they openly telling you the names of clients they have worked with?
When someone engages a company providing book writing services, they do so with the hope that their identity will remain confidential. So, if you are seeing only positive reviews about a company with no negative comments, it’s alarming. Negative and positive comments indicate that the ghostwriting company delivers on its promise and can walk the talk. How? Since ghostwriting is about maintaining absolute confidentiality, not every satisfied customer will post a positive or negative review, unless they have used a pen name to publish their books and commented praise for a company using their actual name.
You also need to look at the refund policy (written and implied). Written policies can be found on the website; you need to look at the reviews again for implied policies. If people complain that the company is a scam and neither delivered the work nor the money – it’s a major red flag. On the contrary, in negative reviews where clients complain about just the output (since book writing is subjective and requires a collaborative approach), you can rest assured that your money is safe.
Before addressing other problems, let’s see whether the company is boasting about writing for well-known individuals. If they are – this means they are lying to your face and gives birth to confidentiality problems.
The Confidentiality Problems
Imagine President of the United States, Joe Biden, hired a ghostwriter to write his memoir. He would seek confidentiality and doesn’t want to project an image that he hired someone to write for him. We all know how it turned out for Hillary Clinton. A professional ghostwriting company may never reveal the authors’ names they have worked with. According to Lincoln Writes, a book writing service provider, there are two reasons behind it:
- The author signed an NDA with the company explicitly mentioning that the company is not allowed to use the author’s name in any marketing or promotional material.
- The original idea is the author’s intellectual property, and the company helped the author only to transform it into a book.
A consultant from Lincoln writes also mentioned that they mention some of their clients when engaging with new prospects. However, this only happens when clients consent to use their name without mentioning whether they have only edited the manuscript, provided a review, or written their book from scratch.
The Tone of Voice Problems
Great minds may think alike, but two individuals may always have their unique voices. Although ghostwriting companies try to reflect the author’s personality in the manuscript/book, it requires multiple iterations. When we spoke to the chief ghostwriter from Lincoln Writes to share her take on this problem, she said:
“Initiating a new project is always a bumpy ride for the author and the ghostwriter. To match the author’s unique voice and storytelling approach, we must go back and forth often during the early days. The secret to success is a collaborative approach and maintaining a positive attitude.”
She also highlighted that her company offers “unlimited revisions.” Since companies cannot hit the bullseye in just one go, this frustrates some authors and leads to a few negative experiences. This is why we said a few (not too many) negative reviews indicate that the company knows what it’s doing.
The Reliability Problems
If you are considering hiring a professional ghostwriting company, be sure they are reliable. There are two methods to check whether a company is reliable or not:
- Ask them to write a sample for you based on your idea
- Analyze whether they are only focused on selling you something or genuinely interested in delivering on their promise
Since this is highly subjective, you should see if they are committing something that sounds too good.
The Miscommitment Problems
To take your money, fake ghostwriting companies would go to any length to commit things that are not true. For instance, if you want to write a memoir and someone from the other side says they will write it so that you’ll see your title in New York Times Best Sellers, then you know it’s a miscommitment problem.
While giving his input on the situation, Lincoln Writes, a sales consultant, said, “Companies overpromise and underdeliver, which leaves clients dissatisfied. We at Lincoln Writes maintain transparent communication, and if a client feels like they are not getting any value out of our services despite our repeated attempts, we compensate the client. This is how we have built a global clientele who trust us with their intellectual properties, i.e., their book ideas.”
The Post-publishing Problems
Even if you solve all the problems mentioned above, you may encounter several post-publishing problems like typos, grammatical errors, or improper formatting. Sometimes – in ebooks especially – if you haven’t deleted the comments, they will appear, making it look like the work of a non-professional author.
A reliable book-writing service provider follows a meticulous process, which doesn’t leave any room for such post-publishing problems.
Your best bet in finding the right company is searching for reviews. If there are a few positive and negative reviews, it’s probably an indicator that the company is providing proper services. If you search for “Lincoln Writes Reviews” on any search engine, you’ll surely find something that will help you decide.
