WAHM Forums

<h3>Freelance Writer/Ghostwriter for Multiple Book Projects</h3>
We’re a book ghostwriting company that works with CEOs of medium size
companies to promote themselves, their company, and their products through
books. We work with our clients to write books on their behalf to educate
their prospects on the kinds of problems that our client’s products and
services solve.

We’re looking to add one or more freelancer ghostwriters to our team on a
work-for-hire (1099 contractor) basis.

We have a very specific methodology and system for producing books in this
“book as a brochure replacement” genre – a genre that we pioneered.

To learn more about us, visit the following URL: http://tinyurl.com/5fl6fd

We’re looking for writers that exhibit the following characteristics and
traits:

1) Incredibly reliable at meeting deadlines

2) Able to learn and digest new information quickly (our clients come from
all walks of life and have widely ranging areas of expertise)

3) Write in a conversational style (think: newspaper columnist, opinion
piece, letter to the editor, or blog). Our books don’t read like textbooks
or technical white papers, they read like it’s a conversation with a real
(and interesting) person.

4) Convey a clear sense of logic in their writing

Our books are designed to persuade readers to a particular point of view
that ultimately leads them to buy products and services from our clients.
We’re not looking for copywriters per say (We find that most self proclaimed
copy writers write copy like a used car salesperson talks…. E.g., YELLING
LOUDER doesn’t make one more persuasive, nor do making unsubstantiated
claims that ‘We’re The Best.’).

How we structure and organize the content of our books takes care of the
macro level persuasion.
We are however looking for writers who can persuade on a micro level (e.g.,
meet the persuasion objectives of an individual chapter). Each chapter has a
specific persuasion goal, mandatory topics that must be covered, and a
suggested sequence (e.g., the logic of the argument that we think will
work).

Your job is to following the plan to reach the goal. If the plan we’ve
outlined just doesn’t quite get the job done, we’re looking for a writer who
is going to raise his or her hand and say, “Hey this isn’t convincing enough
because of X, Y or Z.” The problem could be a flaw in the logic, an
inconsistency between the available facts vs. the conclusion or point we’re
trying to make, or the sequence of how ideas are presented is confusing and
makes the argument less persuasive.

If the chapter isn’t going to work as planned or outlined, you need to
either flag the issue and discuss it with a team leader or make revisions to
the plan to get the job done. A good chapter is NOT one that meets a
specific word count and is grammatically correct. A good chapter is one that
meets the persuasion objectives of the chapter.

We’re typically very clear on what we think the reader believes to be true
about his/her situation (whether they’re right or wrong is another matter
entirely) and we’ve also very clear on what “baby-step” argument we want to
make in a particular chapter. Your job is to make the baby step argument in
a way that is 1) logical, 2) passes the “common sense” test”, and 3) is easy
and interesting to read.

In short, we need clear, logical, conversational writing for our books.

This is also why we have a strong bias for writers who blog, write opinion
pieces, columns or otherwise try to persuade a skeptical and vocal public...
especially one that is able to write back and give you a piece of their
minds.

We’ve found the writing style of many popular blogs is conducive to the
kind of writing we’d like to see in our books. After all if you write
something moronic on your blog, either nobody is going to read or they’re
going to publicly ridicule the flaws in your thinking. We feel this is a
pretty good “real world” test to the kind of writing skills we like to see.

Now, here’s a little about our company.

We invented the genre of “books as a brochure” replacement and have gotten
quite a bit of press as a result. You can reach more via this link:
http://tinyurl.com/6qa67x

We offer our clients a fairly unique service, are pretty good at it, and
get more than our share of business because of it. In fact, we’re too busy,
which is why we’re looking to add one or more ghostwriters to our team.

In addition to the general writing skills we seek, we also prefer to assign
projects to writers who have at least some background in the topic. Since we
don’t know what topics we’ll be writing about more than a month or two in
advance, it’s sometimes difficult to forecast what kind of topical expertise
we’ll need.

Assuming your topical expertise matches our topical needs in a given month,
we would be in a position to offer you one book project every 4 – 6 weeks on
an on-going basis.

In short, if you like the freedom of freelancing and working for yourself
but sometimes get a little frazzled by the feast or famine roller coaster
ride of getting work, this could be a good long-term opportunity for you: a
steady flow of substantive work that you don’t have to do any work to get –
a nice situation to be in during a recession to be sure.

You’ll found our pay rate is competitive with freelance rates elsewhere.
However, what makes us unique s the unusually large bonus opportunities we
provide.

In short, if you can meet ALL of our criteria and do so with little to no
coaching on our part, we will gladly pay a 100% bonus (e.g., we’ll double
the pay if we don’t have to fix your writing to meet our standards).

To be perfectly upfront about this, meeting our standards does not seem to
be easy to do for many writers. It’s not that our standards are so high (our
standards are more specific than they are high or unrealistic), it’s that a
lot of writers aren’t that good.

Here are two examples:

1) A former speech writer for one of the US Presidential candidates for the
2008 election primaries (one of the ones that lost) worked on one of our
projects. The writing was colorful, but not at all logical. It was
incredibly difficult to follow the line of reasoning. . . which
unfortunately gave the reader the perception that there was no line of
reasoning (not good by our standards). While this writer had the
credentials, the delivery just was not there.

The writer received full payment for their work. . . which we promptly
threw out in its entirety.

2) Another writer wrote a factually correct book but it was quite boring.
It read like a text book, not a conversation. The information was also
presented almost like a reference book, a bunch of facts --Fact, Fact, Fact
-- instead of a clear line of reasoning showing the LOGIC between key
CONCEPTS that leads to a natural, thoughtful conclusion.

The writer was also paid in full at our competitive base rates and the work
was also promptly thrown out in its entirety.

THE FIRST STEP

We’re looking for multiple writers to write a chapter of one of our book
projects. The writer that produces the best chapter that ALSO meets our
standards will get the assignment for the entire book project. Assuming that
project goes well, the writer would be offered projects on an on-going basis
whenever the books’ topic matches his/her topical expertise (and in many
cases even when no direct match exists but we feel the writer has sufficient
background and skills to learn the material quickly).

To be considered for this opportunity, please follow these steps exactly:

1) Write us a note making the case for why you’d be a good fit for this
role. Include your name, phone number and email address.

2) Submit 5 writing samples of your work that most closely resembles the
criteria shown above (opinion pieces, persuasive blog posts, or any kind of
writing where you’re making a logical argument in a conversation,
interesting way). Feel free to submit word documents, pdf documents or
website URLs.

3) Submit these items to the email address associated with this post.

<h4>wordspix@comcast.net</h4>