CRASH BOOK
Say a publisher wraps up a deal for book by, I dunno, the wife of a Senator who had sex with his male intern in a bus station bathroom. It'll most likely need to be released within a few months of the incident, because if the publisher waits too long, the book-buying public will forget who the hell Senator, the wife, and the intern are. All of which means the book will need to be put into production immediately, sometimes even before the proverbial ink on the contract is dry.
What this means for us ghostwriter types is an insane deadline, sometimes as little as seven days. So we're talking a week to solidify the book's direction with your editor, interview the client, and turn in a first draft that's, at minimum, 50,000 words, and sometimes twice that. It's doable -- I've managed it a handful of times, and pretty darn well (she says modestly) -- but it takes about ten months off of your life.
There's a whole lot of trust involved, because for the most part, because of the glacial speed with which publishing contracts are executed, the writer doesn't get paid until after the book has been turned in. I've had nightmares about getting stiffed. It hasn't happened...but that doesn't stop the dreams.
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