Ghostwriting Clearing Houses and Brokers

When I started ghostwriting full time fourteen years ago, I had a dozen competitors online.  Then the ghostwriting companies came, acting as brokers since the companies themselves (with a very few exceptions) rarely have any staff or office other than a mail drop or a modest room with a secretary.  They exist to broker deals and collect most of the revenue (which is why the ghostwriters, making very little on a book, are usually "newbies" willing to work for pocket change).

In the past three years, online ghostwriting clearing houses have multiplied like loaves and fishes.  Ghostwriters, editors, and proofreaders post profiles and offers of service, along with resumes.  While I have seen a handful of resumes that seemed to list legitimate experience and describe people who can indeed write or edit, over 95% of all listings contain grammatical errors and sentences with bizarre, awkward constructions.  This is disturbing, especially in light of the fact that the writers are college graduates who have worked for many companies (and even publishing companies, though these are usually very small outfits).  Why can't they write a clear, concise sentence?

Here is a brief example of the kind of prose one finds:  "Hi.  I'm Brandy, and Im a passionate writer who loves to write books, add copy, blog content, and am professional across the many things that I write, if you contract with me, be assured that I will do a great and terrific job for you!"

Whoa there!  Let's break down the problems in three short lines of sophomoric prose.

1) Brandy is a writer who likes to write and is professional when she writes.  Hmmm.  Brandy is a bit repetitious and redundant.  Most passionate writers like to write.

2) Im should be "I'm."  There is an omitted apostrophe.

3) "If you contract me ... " begins a new sentence.  Brandy wrote a comma splice and needed a semicolon or period, not a comma after "write."

4) The phrase "and am professional across the many things that I write" is very awkward.  What does that mean--"across the things I write"?  This is a sentence that I would have deducted points for when I was a high school teacher.

5) A great and terrific job?  What kind of prose is that?  I see such prose from sixth graders, not "professional editors and writers."

Most writers on clearing house sites post these kinds of errors, although the example above (not literally taken from any site) is a bit more egregious than most.  If one cannot write an error-free resume or paragraph, then how can one write a book?  If one can't edit a few lines of his or her own work correctly, how can one be trusted to edit someone else's book?

Do you really want to give your money to such people?  There's that Catch-22 again.  If you can't recognize grammatical errors and awkward writing, you may end up hiring these "professionals."

I'm not saying that these people are intentionally dishonest, but they don't know enough to know what they don't know.

~William Hammett

Contact wmhammett@aol.com

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