When I started to ghostwrite professionally twenty-four years ago, I had fifteen online competitor, all individuals. Two years later, there were two ghostwriting companies, but their websites were awful and they produced really awful books because they used unqualified subcontractors.
Fast forward to 2022, and there are over a hundred ghostwriting companies as well as another hundred self-publishing companies (POD) that offer ghostwriting services. Each company uses anywhere from 300 to 6,000 subcontractors. Contrary to the claims made on their websites (our writers are "on staff" and work "on site") these subcontractors are not employees, nor do they work in the company office, assuming the company even has an office. Most companies have a mail drop for an address and are run by one to three people although they want you to picture their operation as a bustling NYC office teeming with activity. Wrong.
They all claim to have award-winning and bestselling authors for your project, but let's do the math. With well over a million subcontractors--moonlighters and people who want to work from home--there would be millions of bestselling authors waiting to ghostwrite your book and propel you to literary stardom. There just aren't that many bestselling lists in the country. At any given time, maybe twenty books are on the NYT bestselling list, and a few other papers have their own lists. There are very few books that qualify for bestseller status. The companies occasionally hire someone with decent credentials so they can make their claims, but it's deceptive advertising. They even get an occasional endorsement from an editor or literary agent, but 99% of the major players in mainstream traditional publishing have ever heard of these companies.
If you read the fine print on their websites, you will discover the disclaimer that "the more money you pay, the better the writer that will be assigned to your project. Modern-day ghostwriting is a scam, and almost all the books they turn out are self-published and never achieve that coveted bestselling status.
When a client hires me, I'm the one who writes the book, and I'm the one you speak with from the very beginning. When you work with ghostwriting companies, you have to deal with sales reps, project managers, editors, final checkers, accountants, and many more. If you want a realistic evaluation of your project and a writer with the street cred to author your book, hire a qualified independent ghostwriter.
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