How does AI change the cost of editing and ghostwriting?

A typical author I work with has an idea for a nonfiction book and would like to see it published, often as part of a plan to boost their visibility and reputation. They may expect an editorial or ghostwriting professional like me to do the work of crafting a full manuscript, they may be starting further along with some source material drafted, or they may have already written a manuscript draft.

AI has changed the way these authors tend to approach the problem. They believe that having AI help them draft content will get them closer to a complete manuscript more quickly. As I’ll show, they’ve likely failed to realize some of the unexpected costs of using AI to write content.

One way to see this is to look at my rate card — what I’m charging to get a manuscript completed, depending on where the author is starting from. I don’t charge by the hour; it’s too open-ended and makes it hard for clients to plan. That means I’ve had to think hard about how much work I actually do when I work with authors, and what to charge them. (To every editorial professional reading this: You should probably do a similar exercise.)

Today I’ll show the results of my thinking about editorial work, which you can use to guide your planning regardless of whether you work with me or some other editorial professional.

Assumptions for this pricing exercise

In what follows, I’m assuming:

• Your book is a nonfiction book intended to improve your influence or reputation — typically a big idea, trends, strategy, or how-to book. I don’t work on fiction books or memoirs, which typically have very different models.
• You’ve already lined up a publishing partner. (If you haven’t, I’ll make introductions for you, and there’s no charge for that.) If you’ve got a traditional publisher lined up, then you won’t have to pay for publication. If you’re working with a hybrid publisher, you’re likely paying at least $50,000 for their services. If you’re self-publishing, you may be on the hook for help from a self-publishing consultant and other services costing $10,000 or more. This post is only about the work of getting to a publishable manuscript; what happens after that, you need to account for separately.
• For comparison purposes, I’ve analyzed costs for a book of twelve 5000-word chapters, for a total of 60,000 words. Shorter books would cost less, and longer books more, but this is typical of projects I work on.

Starting costs money. So does finishing.

Unless your manuscript is already complete, I recommend an idea development session. Most authors need to clearly define their book, its title, its main idea, and its audience before they can make significant progress. Starting without an idea development exercise is foolish, because you’ll be writing without a clear objective.

I charge $7,500 for an idea development session that leads to a “treatment” for the book. The treatment includes a title and subtitle and a one-page description that becomes the North Star for the book project. It also leads to a table of contents that doubles as your project plan.

After that we need to get the book written, for which costs vary based on how I contribute (see the next section).

I also charge $3,000 to supervise the book through the final production process, after the manuscript is complete. Most authors value my contribution to maintaining quality at the end.

AI doesn’t change these costs.

The remaining costs vary based on who does the writing and editing

People think of ghostwriting and developmental editing as two completely different tasks. For me, they’re more like points along a continuum. People who hire a ghostwriter expect that writer to do most of the work, while those who hire an editor or coach want help in improving the effectiveness of their own writing.

For the 12-chapter, 60,000-word book we’re using as a test case, here are four possible levels of editorial cost.

• Developmental editing of an existing manuscript. I review your manuscript and provide detailed suggestions that range from structural challenges to language issues. Cost: $20,000 to $30,000, depending on the level of problems in the original manuscript.
• Coaching and developmental editing. We meet regularly by video to plan chapters you’ll write and to review my edits on those drafts. This also includes a final draft review once manuscript is complete. Cost: $28,000.
• Rewriting an AI-generated manuscript. If you already wrote the book using AI, I’m going to need to rewrite the whole thing, both to preserve your copyright and to infuse a little life into what’s likely a soulless text. The good news is, your AI-generated draft probably includes most of what I need for source material. But carefully reading and rewriting AI text is drudgery, and I charge extra for that. Cost: $45,000.
• Ghostwriting a book based on detailed existing source material. If you can provide all the necessary up-front research for each chapter, you’ve basically given me an organizational and writing task. There are always holes in the source material and questions about how to organize it, but it’s far easier than starting from scratch. Cost: $90,000.
• Researching and ghostwriting a book from scratch. You’ve given me a major exercise in planning, researching, drafting, and revision. That’s time-consuming and will require a lot of work directly with the author. Cost: $120,000.

Remember, these are not the total costs — you need to account for publishing costs and publicity, as well as the idea development and supervision of production costs I mentioned in the previous section.

What this pricing exercise reveals

I’ve had to rethink my editorial work based on authors’ changing needs, inflation, and especially, how AI influences our work. In several recent cases, people have provided AI-generated text thinking that they were making my job easier (and in their minds, cheaper).

As a means of organizing source material, large language models like Claude and ChatGPT are effective. As writers, they’re deficient and dangerous. That’s why I can’t treat an AI-generated manuscript as a typical editing job. In developmental editing, I attempt to identify the author’s intent and help their language accomplish their goals. In editing an AI-generated manuscript, there is no author, and it’s therefore impossible for me to psych out the intent. And every word has to be revised, both to make the text more interesting to read and to avoid copyright risk. That’s why rewriting an AI-generated text costs twice as much as developmental editing for a text created by a human.

(And don’t try to pass off your AI slop as your own writing. I have tools that enable me to check, and even without them, I can always tell.)

The resulting job is cheaper than making me research and write your whole book — but more expensive that editing text you actually wrote.

My rate card reflects my expertise as a former analyst, bestselling writer, experienced editor, and veteran ghostwriter. You may want to work with someone whose rates are lower. But no matter who they are, if they’re any good at all, they’ll charge more for editing AI-generated text. The editors I speak with are all dealing with a flood of AI-generated content right now. They all find it challenging to edit, and most of them have realized they need to charge more for it.

If you’re an editorial professional reading this, know that your humanity and writing skill is worth more in the age of AI, because no AI can substitute for your wit and experience. Don’t be afraid to charge appropriately for what makes you a worthwhile partner. Stop charging by the word or by the hour and start charging by the effort required and the quality of the result.