The problem with corporate authors

Most of my clients are individuals. They want to be more visible and have more influence. They hire me to ghostwrite or edit their business or idea books.

A few of my clients are companies. They want to publish a book by the CEO of their organization, about the ideas that their organization wants to promote.

The individuals, no matter how idiosyncratic, are nearly always easier to work with. The corporate clients are a pain.

The problem with corporate editorial clients

This is what I learned dealing with corporate clients:

• There are typically multiple people involved in the project (for example, CEO, head of marketing, head of PR, chief counsel). That means there are going to be multiple reviews of everything you create, and you’ll need to address their likely contradictory viewpoints.
• The time of the author/CEO is limited. They are running a company, so this is not their main priority.
• The corporations pay slowly.
• The corporations impose arcane accounting requirements.
• There’s an imbalance of power. If there’s ever a legal disagreement, the corporation will have far more legal firepower than I do. That’s intimidating.
• There’s almost always some last-minute gatekeeper who comes in to undermine the project.

There’s also a surprising risk. For two of the corporate authoring projects I worked on, the executives I was working for left the company before the end of the project. The books were still published, but obviously they have less impact if the author no longer works for the company that paid for the project.

Corporations have one advantage. They tend to pay more. I’d even say they overpay for the same work relative to individuals, except that such overpayments are appropriate to make up for the annoyance of working with a corporation.

Give me a passionate, creative, flawed individual every time. I stopped working as an employee eleven years ago. I don’t miss it, but every time I have a corporate client, I remember what it was like.