Your name goes on it. Mine doesn't go anywhere.

The good work is invisible on purpose — Every book I would most like to show you is one I have agreed never to mention. That isn't a dodge — the silence is the thing you are buying
What you can have instead — A sample, written for you, on your subject, from one recorded hour of you talking. Paid, short, and yours to keep whether or not anything follows
Two clients who will speak — Both of whom chose to be nameable. They will take a call and they will tell you the annoying parts as well as the good ones
What a testimonial is worth here — Less than the sample. Anybody can write a warm paragraph. Nobody can fake sounding like you for two thousand words
If somebody does show you their ghostwriting — Ask whether that client agreed to it. It is a completely fair question, and the answer tells you what they would eventually do with yours

Full ghost — Your name alone. The most common arrangement and the most expensive one, because there is nowhere for a weak chapter to hide
"With" on the cover — Your name, then mine, smaller. Cheaper, and it signals to the trade that a professional was involved — which some publishers quietly prefer
"As told to" — Journalism's version of the same thing. Usually right for a story told in a short window rather than a whole life
Acknowledged, not credited — One line in the back. Common, costs nothing to agree, and much better decided now than at proof stage
Editor rather than ghost — You write it and I make it work. Half the price and several times the effort for you, and genuinely the right answer for more people than choose it
Nothing here is a default — Whichever you pick goes in the agreement in a single sentence. Every row about credit I have ever heard of started with nobody writing it down

You talk, I record — Twelve to twenty hours of conversation in two-hour sessions. That is the raw material and it is a great deal more of it than people expect
You'll repeat yourself — Which is useful rather than a problem. The story you tell three times is the one that matters, and the words you reach for on the third telling are usually the right ones
Transcripts come back to you — All of them. Read them and mark anything that must never appear anywhere. That list is honoured absolutely and it is never queried
A structure before a single word — Chapter by chapter, agreed by you. Rewriting a structure costs weeks; rewriting a sentence costs minutes. Doing it in that order is most of the craft
You read it as it goes — A chapter at a time rather than a finished manuscript at the end. Nobody should meet their own book for the first time at eighty thousand words
Six to twelve months — For a full book. Anybody promising you a manuscript in eight weeks is selling you a transcript with paragraph breaks in it

Anything under a name that isn't real — A review, a testimonial, a case study from a customer who doesn't exist. That is fraud with better grammar and it is still fraud
Academic work for submission — Essays, dissertations, theses. No, and there is no way of phrasing the question that gets a different answer
Advice in a voice I'm not qualified to use — Medical, legal or financial, written as though a professional wrote it, where the reader has no way to tell. The risk of that lands on them, not on either of us
Somebody else's testimony — A survivor's account, a witness statement, anything where the whole value to the reader rests on it being first-hand
A memoir about a living person who hasn't been asked — That isn't a legal opinion and it isn't a substitute for one — it is a practical warning. Those books get stopped late and expensively
What the list costs me — Work, occasionally. It is still the cheapest possible way of being able to say that the rest of this page is true

You do, from the first word — Copyright assigned in the agreement rather than on delivery. Nothing is ever held hostage at any point in the process
Including the recordings — Copies go to you. Mine are destroyed at the end unless you ask me to keep them, and a surprising number of people do
If you stop halfway — You keep everything written and paid for, and the assignment already covers it. No clawback and nothing to argue about
If I stop — Anything unearned is refunded within a fortnight, with the notes and the structure, so whoever picks it up isn't starting cold
If you die before it's finished — Say now who decides what happens. Half-finished memoirs cause real distress to families, and one sentence in the agreement prevents all of it
The NDA runs both ways — You may say I wrote it whenever you like. I can't, ever — including after you've said so publicly — unless you put that in writing separately

How it's paid — In thirds — on signing, on structure, on delivery. Never all up front and never all at the end, because both of those put the risk entirely on one person
The paid sample — Comes out of the first third if you go ahead. It is the only reliable way to find out whether the voice is right, and it is deliberately cheap
Why the range is wide — A life with documents and a life without are different jobs. The number narrows to a fixed fee after the first conversation and then does not move
Expenses — Travel and transcription at cost, agreed in advance, itemised. Never a percentage of anything