Red and green flags for your ghostwriting or editing relationship

After a while, experienced ghostwriters and editors get a sense of which clients are going to be a problem. But it goes both ways: if you hire folks like us, you should also be aware of problems to watch out for in your editorial partners.

Red flags for ghostwriters, editors, or book coaches evaluating clients

If you spot more than a few of these, parachute out of there. A red flag client:

🚩 Cannot describe their objectives for publishing a book.

🚩 Cannot articulate what the book is about, has no idea of the audience, or keeps changing their mind about these fundamental questions. To be clear, these things often shift during the project, but if the client starts with no clue, you’re unlikely to have a productive outcome.

🚩 Expects expert talent at rock-bottom prices; continually questions your prices.

🚩 Expects you to already have detailed knowledge of their narrow subject area.

🚩 Is unwilling to contribute much of their own time and effort to the project.

🚩 Maintains unrealistic expectations of the publishing business and blames you for publishers’ behavior.

🚩 Keeps inviting additional reviewers to “contribute” to the project (“I want my husband to look at this; I want my boss to review it; I’d like my friend the fantasy novelist to weigh in.”).

🚩 Expects you to be both as conceptually brilliant as a Hollywood scriptwriter and as meticulous and detail-oriented as a copy editor — on every draft.

🚩 Fails to pay invoices in a timely way.

🚩 Expects you to be available any time of the day or night, including weekends and holidays.

🚩 Expects work to be turned around instantaneously or on an unrealistic schedule.

🚩 Has constant emotional demands and treats you like a therapist. (Realistically, because writing books is a challenging emotional experience, every project has some of this, but if you’re repeatedly listening to complaints about someone’s spouse or work environment, for example, they’ve crossed a line.)

🚩 Wants to make major changes in near-final drafts.

🚩 Provides feedback verbally or in scrawled handwriting, rather than with electronic tools like markup that tracks changes.

🚩 Has no concept of “out of scope” and expects you to do everything from book marketing to picking head shots for their web site.

Red flags for clients hiring ghostwriters, editors, or book coaches

Just as editorial freelancers must be wary of problem clients, clients should be wary of problematic ghostwriters, editors, and coaches. If you’re hiring someone like this, avoid a red flag editorial freelancer who:

🚩 Talks more than they listen.

🚩 Is unable, after some initial planning work, to provide a plan for the whole project including a budget.

🚩 Requires full payment up front.

🚩 Tries to force the manuscript into formats they’re most familiar with (for example, trying to turn a memoir into a self-help book, or a how-to book into a motivational book).

🚩 Provides feedback in emotionally charged terms (“You’re being a stubborn asshole here.”).

🚩 Attempts to twist the project to match their own vision for it, rather than finding ways to accomplish the client’s vision.

🚩 Is unwilling to work with you to find creative solutions to problems in the manuscript.

🚩 Keeps generating unexpected charges, especially late in the project.

🚩 Requires weeks to turn around chapters, or months to turn around critiques on a full manuscript.

🚩 Demands that you work within their editorial system with their writing and collaboration tools, rather than adapting to the tools you’re most comfortable with.

🚩 Is unwilling to discuss elements of the project beyond the writing, for example, relations with publishers, graphic design, and book promotion. (But it’s reasonable for a freelancer to point out when actual work in these areas is beyond the scope of the project.)

Green flags for a healthy editorial relationship

Let’s not concentrate completely on what’s not working. Here are the signs that things are going well:

👍 Both parties put in planning work up-front to get a clear idea of the project and its goals.

👍 Editorial freelancers are compensated fairly and at a rate that reflects the value that clients receive.

👍 There is mutual trust.

👍 There is mutual respect. Clients respect the expertise of the editorial freelancer, while freelancers respect the fact that the client must have a successful outcome and feel good about the final result.

👍 When work doesn’t go according to plan, both parties adjust efforts, schedules, and if necessary, budgets, to address the new challenges.

👍 There’s a lot of gratitude both ways: clients are grateful for expert help, and editorial freelancers are grateful to work on projects that matter.

👍 Logic determines where the project goes, which changes to make, and how to make them. All decisions go back to first principles: is this going to make the book more or less successful?

I’m happy that most of editorial and freelance relationships I’ve participated in have gone this way. But I learned about the red flags through painful experience.

What red flags have I missed? I look forward to hearing about your experiences.