What does a ghostwriter cost in New Zealand?

I’d rather you read that number here than heard it for the first time over coffee, so this article sets out where it comes from, why quotes for what sounds like the same job can sit so far apart, and what to ask any ghostwriter before you compare one price with another.

Why do ghostwriting quotes vary so much?

When I was setting my own pricing, I asked other ghostwriters what they charged for a book, and the answers ran from $20,000 to $400,000. The New Zealand Society of Authors publishes a guide to fair rates for writers, and its 2023 figures for ghostwriting sit between $5,000 and $15,000 for a family history or a self-published book for an individual, and between $15,000 and $80,000 for a corporate history or a celebrity biography, with the Society noting that word count and the amount of research or interviewing will move the figure.¹

Ranges that wide usually mean people are quoting for different books. A friend once told me she’d had a quote from an Australian writer for a third of what I’d put forward, and when I asked about the detail, it turned out to be for a 30,000-word book padded with full-page pull quotes, while I’d quoted for 100,000 words. Word for word, we were close to the same price. Since then I’ve brought a physical book or two to quoting conversations, at the length I’m quoting for, so we can both see whether the book in your head matches the one on the table.

If you’re comparing quotes, put these questions to each writer:

• How many words will the finished manuscript be?
• How many interviews are included, and are they only with you, or with family, colleagues and others as well?
• How many rounds of drafting and review are there?
• Who does the research and fact-checking?
• Who copyedits the manuscript, and how many passes does it get?
• What happens once the manuscript is finished, and what does that cost?

Once each writer has answered those, you can compare the quotes on price, because you’ll know you’re comparing the same job.

What does the fee pay for?

Mostly, it pays for time. A book takes about a year, and for that year it gets at least half of my working week, which means I turn down other work to make room for it and only take on a small number of books at once.

Interviews come first. For a memoir I’ll usually record twenty or more conversations with you, most of them a couple of hours long, and often more with the people around you, and every one of them is transcribed. Ten hours of interviews produces roughly 70,000 words of transcript once my questions are taken out, and I read all of it, sorting what’s useful into the parts of your life it belongs to before I start building a structure.

Research and checking take longer than most people expect. Names, dates, places and figures are checked against documents wherever documents exist, because a reader who finds one wrong date starts doubting the rest of the book.

Then comes the writing, which is the part most people picture, although a large share of it is rewriting. Early on I send a sample of around 5,000 words so we can check that the voice sounds like you before I’m ten chapters deep, and after that the manuscript goes through three rounds of review with you. Two professional copy editors read it at different stages, and the second pass includes the final proofread.

Running a practice has its own costs as well. Each quote has to cover liability insurance, software, an office, the occasional sick day and the other costs of working for myself, the same as any professional service.

You’re also paying for discretion. Most ghostwriting work sits under a confidentiality agreement, and part of what the fee buys is that my name stays off your cover and your story stays between us until you decide to publish it.

When someone is surprised by the fee, I ask what they would expect to pay, over a year, for a professional with a PhD and fifteen years of writing experience whose main job that year is their book, and that question usually reframes the conversation.

What makes one quote higher than another?

I start from a ballpark range based on the length and style of the book, then write a detailed quote for each project. The things that move it most are:

• Length. A 65,000-word book takes longer to research, write and edit than a 55,000-word one.
• Interviews. How many there are, and how many people are involved, from you alone through to family, colleagues, board members or long-serving staff.
• Research. Some books rest mostly on your memory, while others need archives, company records, old newspapers or historical context.
• Travel. Some interviews are better done in person, and some books need visits to the places that matter in the story. Travel is charged at cost, on top of the fee.
• Production. Whether you’d like me to manage design, photography and printing once the manuscript is done.

A longer timeframe doesn’t add to the fee. If you’d like the book written over eighteen months instead of twelve, the same fee is spread across the longer period.

What isn’t included?

Design, typesetting, photography, printing and distribution are separate from the writing fee. Their cost depends on choices you’ll make once the manuscript exists, such as the page count, whether there are colour photographs, the binding and how many copies you print, so I can’t price them honestly at the start. Travel for interviews and visits is also charged at cost, on top of the writing fee.

I work with the same designer and photographer from project to project. If you’d like me to manage production, I pass their costs on at cost, so you deal with one person and get one bill.

How does payment work?

I charge a fixed fee for the whole book, agreed before we start. I don’t bill by the hour, because an hourly rate tells you very little about what the finished book will cost you.

The fee is invoiced monthly across the project, after either two months’ fees upfront or a 20% deposit, and the contract sets out what you’ll receive and when, including the interviews, the drafts and the review rounds.

Is a ghostwritten book worth the money?

That depends on what you want from it. Most books, however good, won’t earn back a fee of this size in sales, and I’d be doing you no favours if I suggested otherwise. People commission books for other reasons. Some want their story kept for their family, while others, often founders and organisations, want a record of what they built, written while the people who built it can still tell it.

If the budget is the sticking point, tell me early. Scope and price move together, so a shorter book or fewer interviews will bring the figure down, and I’d rather have that conversation at the start than halfway through.

Frequently asked questions

Do you charge by the hour?

No, every book has a fixed fee, agreed before we start and written into the contract.

Is GST included?

No, my fees are quoted plus GST.

Can I pay in instalments?

Yes, the fee is invoiced monthly across the project, after either two months’ fees upfront or a 20% deposit.

Does a company history cost the same as a memoir?

Company histories sit in the same range of $90,000 to $190,000 plus GST. Where a particular book falls in that range depends on the number of interviews and the amount of research it needs. There’s more on that in What’s involved in a company history book.

Will my name be on the cover?

That’s by negotiation. Most clients have only their own name on the cover, and some prefer a named author, which is how The Branches was credited. I work under confidentiality and don’t name clients without their permission.

Read next: Ghostwriting · How long does it take to write a memoir? · How ghostwriting interviews work · Get in touch