I don’t password protect, etc. with clients and so far I’ve not been ripped off.

Unless the client pays 100% up front, in the virtual world you are still at risk of not being paid. Would you agree to do the job for 50% of your quoted fee? You take that chance if you turn over the work after having only received 50% of the payment. Believe me, people will cheat you – happened to me again last week.

The solution I use does not prevent your loss of time and money, but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing the thief did not get you work.

If I don’t know the client well enough to trust them, instead of sending the completed document, I paste the text into MS Paint and black out enough of it to make it unusable, yet still reveal enough to show that I’ve done the work and that the quality meets their expectations.

I could then just send the image, but I prefer to paste the image on a Word page and then covert it to a PDF, which I lock and secure against printing and copying. No reason for this except that it presents better to the client, and if they are a thief, I want to piss them off by making them go to the effort to break into the PDF, only to discover then that it’s just an image anyway – they still can’t copy and paste. Because I black out part, they can’t just rekey.

FYI, simply locking the original word doc in a password protected PDF is not sufficient – there are many free shareware programs that will quickly crack PDF passwords.

I use a free program, PrimoPDF, to convert files, and another, PDF Password Cracker, to access other PDFs. You should be able to quickly Google up both of them.

AL: Anne’s advice is right on the mark. Ghostwriting rates are all over the map. I’ve been a ghostwriter for more than 16 years – writing nonfiction books and eBooks. I’ve known ghostwriters who charge an hourly fee and others who charge a flat project fee. Personally, I charge a per page fee (as do many of my associates). I’ve seen per page fees that range from as low as $3 per page to $150 per page (and more). I charge the same rate for books and eBooks – I’m doing the same work whether the book is published in print or online. Charging $2,000 is not unrealistic for an eBook, though it may be an unrealistic figure to some clients. The key is to know your customer demographic and attract the type of clients that value a good writer and understand the worth of your fee. Most likely, the eBook you ghostwrite will establish the client as an expert in his field, drive traffic to his website, increase his business, open up media opportunities and make him a boatload of money. What is that worth to him? You are providing a valuable service and should be compensated accordingly.
.-= Laura Cross´s last blog ..Framing the Narrative Nonfiction Story =-.