Get Paid to Write Memoirs

Many memoirs are written for personal satisfaction and often appear as books of less than one hundred pages distributed to a small number of family and friends. Usually, no more that twenty-five books are printed. There is no intention the book will become an international best seller. You can get paid to write these kinds of memoirs.

Finding Clients

Let people know you’re available to write memoirs. Create a website and a blog; print and hand out business cards; print and hand out ballpoint pens with your name, telephone number, and Web addresses; create your professional profile on Google, Yahoo!, and LinkedIn; join a local or state writers’ club and become involved in their activities; be available to speak to organizations and professional groups.

Consider writing your first memoir for free for a family member or friend, then use the book as an example of your work.

What to Charge

This is often an important part of this matter. You should charge a fee that best represents your skills and expertise. Determine what hourly wage you’re prepared to work for. This could be 50, one hundred dollars or more. I’ve seen memoir writers charge three hundred dollars per hour. Turn your hourly rate into the total cost you’ll quote a client. It’s not uncommon for memoir writers to charge 5,000, 10,000, or 50,000 for a project.

Offer your client a written contract that spells out what you’ll do and what the client will do. See a sample contract at http://lifewriters.ca/

Interviewing and Writing

Set up a series of interviews with your client. These could be 60 to 90 minutes each, once a week for several weeks, in person or by telephone. Use a digital voice recorder. After you have transcribed each interview (I prefer to pay someone to transcribe so I can concentrate on writing) edit, rewrite, and arrange the manuscript so events appear in a logical sequence and the finished manuscript sounds like the author. You’re the writer. Your client is the author and copyright owner of the manuscript and finished product. The editing and writing will take approximately 10 times longer than the interviews.

Present the manuscript to your client for review as one or more chapters are finished. Present the final manuscript on a CD rather than printed pages. You may want to charge extra for printed pages. Your manuscript should have a contents page, page numbers, and chapter headings.

Producing a Book

You may include in the original agreement the cost of preparing the manuscript to become a book, or you may make a separate book-preparation agreement. I use 10 percent of the interviewing and writing fees as an initial guide for book preparation.

Producing a book involves finding a short-run printer, often called an on-demand printer; exchanging emails and telephone calls with the printer; determining the cover art and the appearance of the inside pages; proofreading; and printing and delivery of the finished books. Your client pays for each of these and pays you to facilitate their completion.

Here is wishing you the best of success with many happy clients.

Author and writing instructor Wayne Groner has more than twenty-five years of experience as a television news anchor, radio news reporter, freelance writer, workshop presenter, and public speaker. He may be reached at http://www.waynegroner.blogspot.com.