Publishing – Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D.

7 Big Mistakes I Made in Ghostwriting — And What Not to Do Yourself

Gini Graham Scott — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 15:22:00 +0000

In the process of becoming a successful ghostwriter, I made several big mistakes in working with clients that I learned not to make again in the future.

Like many ghostwriters I have written my own books — in my case, about 200 books in various genres — self-help, business books, memoirs, books on social trends, and kids picture books. But like many writers, I turned to ghostwriting as a result of major changes in the publishing industry about 15 to 20 years ago.

These involved the consolidation of the bigger publishers, the shift towards books by celebrities, influencers, and individuals in the news, and the rise of self-publishing — now about 2 million books a year. Thus, the so-called “midlist” books I used to do were largely squeezed out and royalty advances dropped to a third.

In the process, I sought to bring what I learned about writing, publishing, and finding publishers and agents to my career as a ghostwriter. Yet I encountered a series of stumbles along the way. Here are the major stumbles I experienced, so other ghostwriters can avoid them, and authors hiring a ghostwriter know better what to expect.

Dos and Don’ts

Don’t lose control of the project by inviting the client to look to other providers for certain additional services.

Unfortunately, one big mistake I made early in my ghostwriting career was to refer a client seeking a narrator for a promotional sizzle reel I was creating for her to another service. I had already written most of her book about recovering from abuse as a child, so she could create a practice of helping other abuse victims, and now she wanted a short video to put on her website to promote the book.

I arranged to do this, since I had already created a series of these videos for other clients, based on writing a script and combining it with stock photos, music, and a narration. Often I used an AI narrator, since computer-generated text to speech often sounds like the real thing.

But she wanted a more emotional narration, which an AI narration can’t capture. Thus, I suggested one of the freelance services, Fiverr, which I used before to find a narrator for other videos. However, after I recommended one woman, she declined after reading the script, because the woman incorporated a deeply religious orientation in her strategy for helping victims.

At this point, I could have said I could help my client find another narrator on Fiverr, and included my fee for finding someone in my billing, But instead, I suggested that she go on Fiverr herself and find someone she liked.

BIG MISTAKE #1.

The woman narrator she found not only arranged to do the narration, but she suggested a totally different approach to creating the video. As a result, the client redid the whole video and decided to finish the book on her own. Later, when I viewed her completed video in which the music drowned out the narration and I told her this, she said she liked the video the way it was, and I lost the client who decided to make other arrangements for completing her book.

So what I learned from this experience is to keep control of the project you are doing and don’t refer out services to someone who might be able to take over your project and your client.

Even if you have successfully completed work for a client, don’t write any more with a verbal go-ahead to do more and don’t charge a client’s card based on that go-ahead. That’s what I did after I had written several chapters for a client who wanted to write a book about her behind-the-scenes experience as a child observing her father’s participation with a major sports team.

As I wrote each chapter, I charged her husband’s card in a pay-as-you-go arrangement, and everything was fine. Then, her husband, an attorney, asked me to write some material for a popular law book he was working on, so I did, telling him that I would charge his card as I did for his wife, and I got the go-ahead to do that. Unfortunately, I had nothing explicitly stating the agreement, just some emails back and forth describing what I was doing for him and some phone calls in which he said he liked what I was doing and continue to do more.

However, she and her husband encountered financial difficulties, because his business suddenly declined during a period of global recession, and I suddenly found that he filed a chargeback with his credit card company claiming that he hadn’t authorized the payments to me. After that, he was oddly unavailable to discuss this claim on the phone.

Though I tried to dispute his charge with his credit card company by sending in the manuscript I had written, along with our emails exchange about what I was doing, the woman’s husband lied and claimed he was not a party to the transaction. He even claimed he hadn’t approved what I sent him, when he clearly had done so in our phone conversations. And I suppose he knew exactly what to say, since he was an attorney who specialized in commercial transaction.

The result was, I lost the case, and besides resolving to never speak to this client and her husband again, I learned from this mistake that you need to put anything you do in writing and get the other party to agree to it in writing in an email or signed contract, even if you already have had a successful working relationship on another project.

You need to put what you are doing and the other party’s acceptance of this in writing each step along the way.

Don’t expect a new client who has written their first book will understand what it means to write a draft, get their feedback, and then you make editorial corrections. That’s because some clients expect that a draft will be written flawlessly, and they only expect to make corrections in the content. I didn’t realize to precisely explain the process, because dozens of clients I worked with understood that after I got their feedback, I would correct any typos and grammatical errors, as well as tighten up the copy and add their editorial changes.

But not this client!

After I wrote a proposal for her which she could pitch to publishers and agents, based on her memoir about her years of grief before she got help from mediums to communicate with her deceased partner, so she could finally let go.

At first, everything seemed fine, after I wrote up the first section of the proposal which provided an overview of the book, described the promotional activities she might engage in to support the book, and included some research on Amazon about other books on the topic.

Additionally, I suggested she add some self-help chapters to advise others how to deal with their own grief, since the self-help books on grief did very well, while the memoirs only had moderate to low sales. While she agreed that this was a good idea, she also expressed surprise about how much an author is supposed to do to promote a book.

In retrospect, that was a tip-off that she was already doubting whether she could support her book as required by publishers and agents for a traditionally published book, but I advised her that I would add the chapter-by-chapter outline section.

The only problem was that she had a huge number of chapters — 24 of them, including the three self-help chapters I added, so it took much longer to write this outline than it would for a usual book with 8 to10 chapters. In fact, the proposal ended up being about twice as long, and I thought she would appreciate this, since I didn’t charge her for the extra work, because I was writing against a contract price paid in three installments.

However, after I received the first two payments and sent her the proposal with the chapter by chapter write up, she complained to the ghostwriting service which brought us together that I had made all of these editorial mistakes, because there were many typos, so she didn’t want me to do any more. She even sent back the first chapter description with the errors she noted, though I would naturally correct those in doing an editorial polish.

Though the ghostwriting rep commiserated with me that a new writer didn’t understand what it meant to create a draft and then make the final corrections, the upshot was that I cancelled the rest of our contract and didn’t receive the final payment, even though I had written almost twice as much as my original estimate.

So I learned three lessons from this experience:

1) Make it really clear what it means to write a draft, get feedback and corrections from the author, and do an editorial polish. Point out that the author should expect typos, grammatical errors, and other editorial mistakes in a draft, and these will be corrected in an editorial polish, along with incorporating the author’s corrections and comments.

2) Notice if the author has some concerns about what they will have to do to make a book successful, because it may be they don’t want to complete the proposal — so you should ask them, and if that’s the case, you shouldn’t write anymore.

3) Work against a retainer or payment in advance before you do any additional work, so you get paid in full, if a client decides to pull out of a project before you finish it completely.

Don’t spend a very long time on the phone listening to someone’s story before the person decides to hire you. That’s because someone may just want someone to hear their story, but not be ready to hire a ghostwriter.

I realized this after having a couple of long calls of about an hour each with people who went on and on describing their story without much of a break for me to say anything besides a “yes” or “umm” to indicate I was still on the phone. For example, one man went through a long saga about how he was investigating his family and discovered there were Mafia connections and murders in his background, so he thought he had a good story to tell.

Then, he proceeded to tell me in detail about exactly how he investigated, what barriers he encountered, how he flew to other countries to follow leads, and so on. In the end, he said he was still investigating, was very busy at work, wanted to do the book, and would get back to me as soon as he was ready — but I never heard from him again, although the person who referred him to me said he was impressed in talking to me, though I barely said anything.

In the other case, a woman spoke at length about the many types of domestic abuse she had experienced from several husbands, and how she wanted to use that experience to create a healing ministry and book to help other abused women. As she spoke, at times she teared up as she shared her story, so I felt like she was speaking to me as if I was her therapist, and because her sharing was so emotionally driven, I hesitated to break in and upset her.

And that conversation didn’t lead to writing her book either, because she wasn’t ready.

What I learned from those two conversations is that it is necessary to:

1) Set a time limit for initial conversations about a project, and let the person know in advance how much time you have, such as 20 or 30 minutes before another meeting or phone call. This way you have a way to cut short a conversation from someone who mainly wants to tell someone their story and isn’t ready to write a book about it.

2) Make it clear in the beginning of the conversation that you want to know about their book, so you can tell them how you can help them write it; and seek to direct the conversation back to writing their book, if they go on and on about their story.

3) Let them know that you do want to discuss their story in much more length if they choose you to write your book, and invite them to finish or summarize their story, so you can talk about the next steps in writing it. In other words, keep control of the conversation, so you don’t end up listening to a long story from someone who isn’t really serious about writing their book now.

Don’t put a time-limit on how long you will spend looking at someone’s introductory material, before you will get paid to work on the book or do an in-depth review of it.

I discovered that putting a formal time limit on an initial review can be a turn-off, even though you plan to do a quick review before you get an agreement and payment to do more. I discovered this problem after I got an email from a man who found my website through an internet search for writing and publishing and felt a resonance with what I had written. In his email, he described how his book was all about turning the bad things that happen in life around so they become a source of power, and I said that I could really relate to the theme, because throughout my life I had used this turnaround approach whenever I faced challenges. Then, I thought about what I learned from the bad experience and how I might profit from it, often by writing a book based on what happened.

I suggested that we set up a phone meeting for a few days later. During the call, he described his book project a little more, and I told him how I could help. After that. he asked if he could send me the draft of his manuscript to review.

In retrospect, I could have simply said, yes, please send it along, but instead I said I could spend 5 to 10 minutes reviewing it, or if he wanted me to do a more comprehensive review, I had a package in which I would spend a couple of hours reading his material and write up a detailed 1–2 page review, which included a detailed description of the book along with my suggestions on how to develop it into a final manuscript or film.

Also, I said I might edit a couple of pages to illustrate what I could do, if I felt the manuscript needed editing.

Now it might be fine to describe this review package as I usually do when someone calls for more detail about my doing a manuscript or book-to-film review. But in this case, I was too specific too soon, because after I told him I would take 5 to10 minutes to review his book and had this more comprehensive review package for a few hundred dollars, that was a turn-off, because he said he didn’t need the more detailed package and said he would think about what we discussed.

Thus, the upshot of my offer was that he didn’t send me his manuscript for a short review, even though I sent him an email inviting him to do this, and I didn’t hear from him again.

So what I learned from this experience is this:

Don’t put a specific limit on the amount of time for an introductory review, and just plan to spend the 5, 10, or 15 minutes on it without saying how much time you will spend on it. Then, give your opinion on what should happen next with writing the book or script.

If you do have a more extensive review and commentary program, you can mention that you have this, if the person wants a more in-depth analysis, but for now you you should just offer to take a look at the material a person already has and provide your feedback.

Later, you can suggest the in-depth analysis if it is still needed; otherwise, you can propose going ahead to outline and write the book or create a treatment which is essentially a plot outline for a script and write the script.

In sum, those are five big mistakes I made and what I learned from them, leading me to change what I said or did with clients.

This has helped to create smoother relationships with future clients and I have obtained more clients as a result. In turn, I hope what I learned will help other writers and ghostwriters know what to do and what to avoid doing in their own relationships with clients.

Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D. is the author of over 50 books with major publishers and has published 30 books through her company changemakerspublishingandwriting.com.

She writes books and proposals for clients, and has written and produced 18 feature films and documentaries through changemakersproductions.com

Her latest book is I Was Scammed, available on Amazon at:https://www.amazon.com/Was-Scammed-Updated-Expanded-Becoming-ebook/dp/B09PNB38GJ.

A paperback and hardcover are available, too. She is also the author of How to Find and Work with a Good Ghostwriter.

Why Are Horror Movies So Successful Even in Horrible Times?

Gini Graham Scott — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 18:41:00 +0000

Horror movies have been so successful even in the face of real-life horrors, and that’s one reason indie filmmakers have been able to create these runaway hits despite a tiny budget by Hollywood standards. They can create these hits because it doesn’t take much to create an exciting experience of fear that creates a pleasurable rush for attendees through exploring their fears in a controlled and safe environment.

Here’s how it works — and why a small budget of $50,000 or less has resulted in some multi-million-dollar success stories.

Why Are Horror Movies So Successful Even in Horrible Times?

Why We Love to Be Scared So Much

Several psychologists have recently tackled this problem and have come up with some reasons why we love being scared.

– We can feel a great pride at making it through the movie, followed by great sense of relief combined with euphoria, as Nicole Johnson has written in an October 30, 2020 article for the National Geographic.com’s science section describing her love of horror films since 1987. As she explains: “For me, horror movies remain an invaluable coping tool. The effect is a primary tenet of what’s called exposure therapy — forcing ourselves to face fear as a way to overcome it.”

– Horror movie fans may like the experience of being scared, because that helps them feel a sense of mastery or control over their fears when they watch the film from the safety of their home or a movie theater.

– Another reason for liking these films is that we often feel pleasure after watching a horror film, because we feel a sense of relief, as suggested by John Edward Campbell, a Temple University professor of media studies. This feeling of relief and pleasure results from the release of dopamine as one calms down and feels relief after seeing a horror film, because the body reacts as it would in a real-life fear inducing situation — one’s heart rate increases, the pupils dilate, and one’s blood pressure goes up. As a result, one feels excited and then relaxes, as the body floods with dopamine due to the fear triggered by seeing the movie.

– Then, too, researchers have found that the euphoria which many viewers of horror films experience can help them cope with other stressors they subsequently feel, which could explain why horror films have continued to do well despite the horrors of the pandemic. The film takes us away from real fears and anxieties about the virus and from the feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression some feel due to the restrictions on activities and seeing others. Instead, we experience a sense of controlled fear in the film, and afterwards feel that sense of relief that can carry over in the everyday world.

– Another source of pleasure in horror films is that it is a genre full of suspense, jump scares, and other sources of tension which keeps viewers involved, as Sanna Rangwala points out in an October 29, 2021 Daily Telegram article: “Love Horror Movies? This Is What Psychology Has to Say About It.” As she points out, a horror film triggers our fight-or-flight response due to fear, but since we know there’s no real threat, “we can feel the rush without worrying about our own safety because we know nothing is going to hurt us in the end.”

– Still another explanation from psychologists is “excitation transfer theory,” in which the residual excitement from one stimulus can increase the excitation one feels in response to another stimulus. An example of this might a viewer feeling even more aroused and excited in making love with a partner after seeing a horror film.

– Perhaps another factor contributing to the popularity of horror films is the same kind of draw that attracts individuals to “slumming” or engaging in “taboo” behaviors, since they are more exciting. The reason this might be a factor is that the horror film has a “less than stellar reputation” and has been frequently regarded…as the runt of the cinema family and held in lower esteem than other film categories.” Yet despite this “relative lack of formal industry recognition and professional respect, horror thrives,” as psychiatrist G. Neil Martin points out in an article in an October 18, 2019 Frontiers of Psychology article, “Why Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films.”

– Martin further suggests that seeing a horror film might be a safe way to express one’s feelings of aggression and attraction to violence, which may be a reason that psychologists have found that men are more likely to “align themselves with violence” and are more likely to view and like horror films than women.

– People may also find even more enjoyment in horror films when they know what type of events they will view, as a result of “priming” due to receiving this advance information. For instance, they may be drawn to particular types of threats, such as zombies, huge insects, vengeful ghosts, dangerous diseases, and more.

– Perhaps, another reason for the attraction of horror films is that horror generally includes an element of evil, channeled via a human, creature, or supernatural force which can change events and cause disruption and instability, which the protagonists have to challenge and seek to defeat, as Martin notes. The result can be a feeling of excitement triggered by facing one’s most powerful fears, hough in the film, there is often a teaser that the evil being is still around and may come back with more challenges and threats to evoke fear.

– Still another reason for the appeal of horror movies is that viewers are drawn to sensation seeking, which involves seeking “varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences,” as Martin describes it. They like thrills and adventure seeking, and they get that from the horror film

– Additionally, people gain pleasure from negative emotions, and, according to psychologist Mathias Clasen in an October 13, 2021 Psychology Today article “On the Psychology of Horror Movies,” horror “provides an imaginative context in which people can play with fear.” Moreover, viewers feel for the characters when they face terrify danger, and we are especially responsive to seeing the scary monsters, ghosts, and other horrors from the grave, since those horrors “stimulate the fear system with which evolution equipped us…and the threats depicted in horror movies tend to reflect dangers that have haunted our species for thousands or even millions of years.” An example is the huge spiders, slithering snakes, and reptilian monsters that are not modern dangers, but the threats our long-ago ancestors worried about.

– Finally, as Clasen suggests, not only do horror movies “immerse us in fictional worlds that are full of ancestrally resonant dangers,” but they are very relevant to modern conditions, for when we “play with fear, we may learn important lessons about the dangers of the world as well as our own responses to danger. We learn what it feels like to be afraid, and we get to practice and hone fear-regulation strategies. We may even become more resilient in the process.” In fact, researchers found that people who watch many horror movies experienced less psychological distress in facing the COVID-19 lockdowns, perhaps because these films provide a way for people to practice emotional regulation, so they get better at “managing their own fear and anxiety through engaging in recreational fear.”

Aside from the reasons horror films are appealing, certain tropes contribute to the fear evoking qualities of these films. Among them are the special auditory effects, such as the loud sounds after a long silence that produces a jump scare and the sounds of creaking doors, screams, the hiss of a snake or cat, a head cracking under a hammer, the bang of a falling object, and a branch snapping in a quiet forest at night. Additionally, the use of music and the soundtrack with an ominous sound can contribute to the sense of horror.

Though both resolved and unresolved horror films appear to be equally enjoyed, a positive outcome for the protagonist and a poor one for the antagonist commonly increases the viewer’s satisfaction. Yet, regardless of these differences, just watching a horror film provides a thrill which leads to a pleasurable experience of arousal.

Thus, for all these reasons, go out and enjoy a good horror film. The experience is literally good for your mental health and soul.

The Popularity and Potential of Horror Films

Given all these reasons for enjoying the fear experience in a safe environment, it’s no wonder that horror films are so popular, as indicated by the long history of successful horror films, including those with miniscule budgets.

The returns on investment show that dollar for dollar, horror films of all budgets make a much better return than any other films. It’s a result that has occurred for over a decade.

For example, in a report on the top 100 movies with the best return on investment between 2010 and 2015, 13 out of the top 30 films with the best ROI were horror films, based on data from Studio System, a company that collects entertainment industry data. according to an NPR article: “Horror Is the Best Deal in Hollywood” by Quoctrung Bui. The top five horror films had an ROI of around 2000%, meaning that for every $10, the investor would get back $200. By contrast, the top comedy films only had an ROI of around 1200%. For example, the popular film Paranormal Activity 2 made $236 million but cost $9.4 million to produce and market — an ROI of 2510%.

More recently, one company, Blumhouse Productions, has become a major force in Hollywood because of its successful horror films, according to a January 1, 2020 ScreenRant article, “Horror Movies Make More Profit — Here’s Why” by Michael Kennedy. Blumhouse has released a series of horror films with budgets of $10 million or less and has reported earnings of hundreds of millions for each film. For example, the company’s four Purge films grossed nearly $450 million, with a total budget of $35 million, nearly 13 times earnings. In turn, these budgets have been lower than most major films today because “fear is cheap.” That’s because, as Kennedy writes, “it’s entirely possible to scare the hell out of an audience with little more than strange sounds, unexplained quick movements, and the mere suggestion of a terrifying monster or ghost.”

In another study of Box Office Returns from 2013 to 2018, reported in an OppLoans.com March 18, 2021 article, “Horror Films Cost Very Little to Make and They Make a LOT of Money” by Alex Huntsberger, the earning power of horror films couldn’t be clearer. As an example, he cites the “money-printing movie empire” of Jason Blum, who makes a lot of movies at a very low-cost, such as the wildly successful Halloween, which had a budget of $325,000, but made $47 million at the box office — a 150 times return on investment.

As the six-year study showed, the average ROI for the top-five grossing movies of the past six years, such as Avengers: Infinity War, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and The Fate of the Furious, was between 365% to 760%, with an average return of five times one’s budget.

By contrast, the ROI for a Blumhouse film in those years was 1285% for The Conjuring Series, 1265% for The Purge series, 1985% for the Insidious series, and even more for the Paranormal Activity series — a 4405% return.

Especially notable is the fact that the first Paranormal Activity film shot in 2007 had a budget of only $15,000 and earned $193 million at the box office, an ROI of 1,289,039%.

Still other horror films with small budgets have similarly made huge scores at the box office. Though none of these budgets have been as low as $15,000, Host, released in March 2020 by Shadowbox Films with a $50,000 budget made $248 million — a 496 times return, and The Wretched, released in May 2020 by IFC, with a budget of $66,000 brought in $4.59 million — a nearly 70 times return, as reported Sarah Whitten in an August 30, 2021 CNBC Article “Even During the Pandemic, Horror Movies Remain One of the Most Profitable Genres at the Box Office”. Most notably, Host and The Wretched were released when most movie theaters were shuttered and most of their revenue came from drive-ins.

Perhaps a key reason that these films can do so well with minimal budgets is they don’t rely on big stars which drive up the costs into the multi-millions of dollars. They also don’t have large casts and multiple locations which result in massive budget increases, due to costs for travel, housing, set-ups, additional days for shooting, and more. Instead, the winning formula typically involves a few friends in a small number of locations, plus some characters for the ghosts or monsters they encounter. Thus, a low-budget horror film can be shot in a week or two and go on to reap massive rewards.

* ** * ** * * * * *

The author is internationally published author and film producer, Gini Graham Scott, PhD, who has published over 200 books, 50 for traditional publishers and 150 for her own company Changemakers Publishing, specializing in books on self-help, popular business, and social issues. She is the author of The Big Con: Scams Targeting Writers, the Victims, and How to Avoid Becoming a Victim and I Was Scammed about all types of scams and how to avoid them. She has written and executive produced 18 feature films and documentaries, featured on the www.changemakersproductionsfilms.com website. An inspiration for this article is that Changemakers Productions is now raising money for its first horror film Dark Cabin, which features 6 friends on a vacation up against Viking ghosts. It’s filming in the New York area in February 2022, and other horror films are planned. She also writes books and scripts for clients. Her website for writing is at www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com.