When to quit a ghostwriting gig

“I quit.” These are words you should almost never utter as a ghostwriter. The reason is that busted ghostwriting relationships let clients down and will damage your reputation. Word will get around that you parachuted out and that will hurt you in the future.

Writers who make their living exclusively on ghostwriting may be juggling multiple projects at once, so losing one is perhaps recoverable. But if, like me, you only do one high-priced project at a time, you’re facing an end to a huge chunk of your income: yet another reason to avoid quitting if at all possible. In worst-case scenarios, your client may actually attempt legal action to recoup the part of your fee that was already paid.

The right strategy, of course, is to be very selective in which clients you take on. I’ve written about that before, emphasizing projects where you’re well qualified, working with clients you get along with, for a fair rate of pay, and with a mutual agreement on the schedule and process. I also recommend creating ghostwriting contracts with natural milestones where either party can opt out (for example, after an idea development session or after ghostwriting a book proposal).

But none of that will help you if you’re already committed and realize that the project is a nightmare.

Should you leave?

At some level, the calculation is simple: what is the cost of continuing, and how does that compare to the cost of leaving? I’ve just described the cost of leaving, so this comes down to the cost of staying. Ask yourself these key questions (and don’t make excuses for the client; answer as honestly as you can):

• Is the end in sight? If you’ve drafted eight of 11 chapters and the publisher’s manuscript deadline is a month from now, buckle down and finish it. No matter how bad things are, you can probably live through another month. On the other hand, if you’ve drafted Chapter 1 four times and can’t seem to find a way to write that satisfies the client, this might be the right time to head for the exit, allowing the client to find somebody else better suited to the job.
• Do I hate this topic? If you find yourself ghostwriting on a topic that’s offensive, boring, or way over your head, it’s going to be tough going. I love writing about almost anything, but there are things I would hate writing about. There’s rarely enough money in a ghostwriting job to pay for writing on such topics. And let’s admit it: the results are unlikely to be satisfactory if the process of writing was like crawling across broken glass.
• Do I hate this client? Ghostwriting is a richly human and intimate relationship, so if you hate the client, it’s going to be intolerable. I’ve only had one case where the client was an actively abusive and offensive person, and I smartly opted out of that project at the very beginning. You can usually get a sense early on if a client is a reasonable person or an asshole. You can fix some cases like this by negotiating for or demanding better treatment — and some alpha-type clients will respond positively to such demands for respect. But in the end, there’s no amount of money or prestige that makes up for a client who’s an awful person.
• Is this process impossible? Clients have no idea how a ghostwriting collaboration is supposed to go, so it’s up to you to set ground rules. And I’ve found that even when you do, clients often don’t realize that their behavior is causing you undue pain, so this is a constant struggle. Examples of terrible process include contradictory sets of feedback on the same draft, taking weeks longer than promised to review drafts, unwillingness to spend significant time collaborating, bringing in unexpected outside reviewers with random requests for changes, depending on AI to make judgments on text, making wholesale changes late in the writing process on settled content, and a stubborn insistence on providing feedback with voice messages, telephone calls, scribbled illegible notes in the margin, or other unconventional text editing tools. Unlike hateful people and topics, challenging process problems often can be fixed by negotiating with your client. But if you’ve tried everything and nothing seems to work, this may be grounds for gracefully ending the relationship.
• Am I being asked to do unethical things? These include stealing information under false pretenses, failing to give credit to the work of others, and publishing information that you know is false. A client who doesn’t realize these are wrong — or who does, and doesn’t care — is not an acceptable partner. Quit.
• Am I getting stiffed? Fire a client who won’t pay you. Or at least, go on strike until you get paid. Working without agreed-upon compensation is not a problem that will resolve itself through smiles and optimism.

Almost everything else if fixable. Sometimes projects take lots more drafts than expected. Sometimes they shift in mid-project. Sometimes they include unexpected outside reviewers, or challenging feedback from the publisher. I’m willing to hang on through all of those challenges, because I can see the path to the finish line (and more importantly, the finish line looks like it’s worth getting to).

That said, happy talk, empty promises, and even extra pay don’t make up for endless, awful projects for hateful clients.

It may hurt to remove yourself from this horrible project. But it will hurt even more if you stay.