Making a living on vanity, one way or another

One of the depressing consequences of having attended an elite university is being exposed to the full navel-gazing of some of its other attendees (surely I’m not that bad?), the unholy glee of seeing the final career crashes of those who have gone before, and marveling about the cunning of those who prey upon their seemingly limitless vanity and credulity.

What brings this to mind is my casual conflicted perusing of the latest Alumni Magazine from Yale, and this particular (no doubt expensive) advertisement which follows, from a member of the class of 2009. [I have removed identifying info, but it’s clearly not a hidden scam by strangers (name and class are provided).]

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Byline: [name of business] – Helping Busy People Tell Meaningful Stories

“Dear fellow Yale Alum,

No Matter how long ago you left Yale, you’ve certainly led a fascinating life since. A memoir is the perfect way to preserve your life story forever or promote your story widely now. We’ll help you write your memoir or nonfiction book: From ideation and outlining to writing and editing, capturing your story is quick and easy.

It’s my pleasure to offer the expert writing services of my team to fascinating individuals like you. Potential memories generally fall into two groups: those who want to elegantly record treasured memories for loved ones and those who want to promote their story ideas as widely as possible. We’re experts in supporting both.

Immortalize your life with a full-length memoir or a book of transcribed interviews.

Writing a memoir is a deeply personal way to influence future generations. In only 3 months. we’ll capture your best insights, memories, and experiences in a book for your family to enjoy for centuries to come.

…..

It’s not just about the past. Amplify your reach with a best-selling nonfiction book.

Do you want to increase your visibility, which can lead to prestigious consulting and speaking engagements? Writing a best-selling memoir, business book, or self-help manual is a fast and effective way to forever increase your credibility. After only 9 months of writing, we’ll zealously market your book to up to 5,000,000 readers, whose real purchases will rocket it onto a bestseller list of a leading online retailer or an influential global newspaper–guaranteed or the marketing portion of your payment back.

Capturing your story forever starts with a free Vision Meeting.

In under an hour I’ll help you think through your life’s work to date and your writing goals, themes, and more. Our team of world-class interviewers, writers, editors, designers, and other experts will then skillfully craft your book (with your periodic review) so that you can tell your story, immortalize your life, and share your knowledge exactly as you see fit. Email [–.com] today to join others on a journey to immortality, one that has been called “rewarding,” “a breeze,” “unexpectedly cathartic,” and “deeply meaningful.”

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The skill of the phrasing and the depth of understanding of the vanity and character of the audience is rather breathtaking, along with the constant flattery. I know this audience — it’s an accurate and likely effective bit of bait. As a piece of business writing, it’s hard to beat.

Now on the one hand, I can’t imagine any of us here are really motivated to enter a similar business predating on our own alma mater and its ilk (no matter how much they may deserve it) with the drudgery of ghostwriting. And yet, for all I know it’s a viable business, and something like it, using writing for this sort of purpose rather than one’s own fiction or non-fiction, could form the basis of a legitimate (if distasteful) business. (Though I suspect the “team” claim in the ad is probably bogus, short of a steady stream of customers.)

Reading it in the context of its Alumni Mag venue, I can’t help thinking that the duller attendees of my Alma Mater who signed up would get pretty much what they deserved.

Have any of you dabbled in writing for hire, in any form? Do you find it remunerative? Satisfying? I couldn’t do it, even if it paid well — it would require more flattery than I can come up with.

14 responses to “Making a living on vanity, one way or another”

Celia Hayes

May 14, 2026 at 9:26 am

Why, yes – I have produced copy for hire: content for a local real estate blog about interesting local events and features. It was an excuse for me to get out and go places, mostly, and gained me a regular small income stream (50$ weekly, IIRC.) I also did a couple of introductory chapters to a study guide for students wanting to take the examination to qualify for a commission in the US armed forces. The editor who hired me for that job was thrilled to bits that I knew so much about the various routes to qualify as an officer.

And I did a book as a ghost writer, too – the contract for it prevents me from naming title and supposed author – but I actually rather liked doing that job. As with the others – it paid. The person that I ghost-wrote for had a very interesting and dramatic life, but she was not a practiced writer. Her original account was all ‘tell’ and no ‘show’. I had fun with it, actually – filling out the various events for maximum drama. I sent her the chapters as I finished them, and she tweaked and corrected.

As I said – that job also paid. I think it took about eight months to finish her memoir, and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. She won an award for it, from a regional writer’s club.

1. quicklyglorious238a1a5ba8
  
  May 15, 2026 at 12:33 am
  
  I would love to read the book, it sounds great.
  
2. quicklyglorious238a1a5ba8
  
  May 15, 2026 at 12:33 am
  
  I would love to read the book, it sounds great.
  
3. quicklyglorious238a1a5ba8
  
  May 15, 2026 at 12:33 am
  
  I would love to read the book, it sounds great.
  
TXRed

May 14, 2026 at 9:27 am

I’ve done non-fiction writing for hire, but not much. Since I was (at the time) a subject matter expert, it was about tailoring the presentation of the material, and some details, to the market and editorial requirements (length, annotation style, and so on). The pay was OK, and it counted as both publications and service to my field. Would I do it as a main source of income? I don’t know.

Frank

May 14, 2026 at 10:40 am

I’ve never done ghost writing, but I’ve written technical papers and plans. I even spiffed up one corporate memo when my boss asked me to add a little of my signature humor and snappy writing to make sure people read it.

Now I have written up things about my wife’s life that she told me about (and some that I experienced with her, but where the story was about her). Now I’m literally “ghost” writing her planned set of shorts called Hermit & Vulture. It was originally planned as a series of comic books, but she could never find an artist who could collaborate with her, so, before she passed, she dubbed it her “comic book that isn’t” and decided to just write it up as short pieces of prose. She left a bunch of notes, some of which I brainstormed with her, so we’ll see how that goes. Unfortunately, even though she left notes, I could never write the two sequels to her novel. I just couldn’t do it justice.

I remember reading some notes from the man who ghost-wrote The Art of the Deal. He said it took him longer than a normal job to figure it out because Trump could never sit still to talk to him for longer than 5 minutes at a time.

Leigh Kimmel

May 14, 2026 at 10:57 am

Back in the oughts, I was doing a lot of work-for-hire articles for ready-reference books for the library market. After the housing crash, that market dried up because the public libraries had their budgets slashed.

It was decent money while it lasted, but near the end I struggled with burnout. The fiction was clamoring for attention, and “later” never seemed to become now, because there was always a new WFH project coming in and we needed the money.

OTOH, that was in the last days of traditional publishing being the only game in town, so the WFH seemed like a logical path. I just wish I hadn’t burned some bridges when I hit burnout, then tried to force my way through on willpower and burnt to a crisp.

Zsuzsa

May 14, 2026 at 10:59 am

Reading that ad was an interesting experience:

“We’ll write your memoir” section: “Hmm. Interesting idea. There are probably a lot of people whose kids and grandkids would enjoy having a well-written record of their lives. I doubt your Yale Alum has led a more interesting life than your typical UConn Alum, or for that matter, your typical electrician, but you flatter the audience you’re marketing to at the moment.”

“We’ll guarantee you a best seller” section: “Oh. It’s THAT kind of business.”

***

I’ve never done any sort of writing for hire, but I don’t think I would mind it. I’m better than the average person at putting thoughts into words, and I’m capable of writing to a deadline when I’m forced to do so.

The “write people’s memoirs” business—minus the “guaranteed best-seller” scam, of course—actually sounds like it might be kind of fun. Learning about people, hearing about the most important part of their lives, and putting it all together into a story might be the sort of thing I’d enjoy even without getting paid.

Any idea how much is reasonable to charge for these services and if there’s someone who’s already cornered the market in Eastern Colorado?

1. TXRed
  
  May 14, 2026 at 11:23 am
  
  I did something like that for free, community service for a county historical society that was collecting veterans’ accounts from WWII and just after. The group had a form that the vets filled out, and I took that, plus my military history knowledge, and “built out” the account with more context. The vet or his family then OKed it. Sometimes I contacted the person and did an oral-history interview, again getting details if possible.
  
  I have no idea on costs, but you might to a ‘Net search for family history book writing and see what those people or groups are charging.
  
2. Mary Catelli
  
  May 15, 2026 at 5:17 pm
  
  If they have five million readers, they should have some notion of where the best-seller status will occur.
  
BobtheRegisterredFool

May 14, 2026 at 11:29 am

It may have been different in your day, but from examining later cohorts, I think it might be fair to quote you, and strike through ‘an elite’ and replace with ‘a’, and repost with the caption ‘FIFY’.

segue:

I basically think that the main skill set I was trained in is effectively understood as writing non-fiction for hire. I suspect that I am still very bad at the writing and for hire sides.

If I could make a living at internet shitposting, I might have done that instead, and it would have been an extremely worsening experience for me. Doing it for free, as a volunteer, for so many years, has left me overly contentious and overly prone to seeking strife.
There’s art to shitposting, but it is not immortal art, and it is not worth doing simply for pursuit of the art.

Creative writing is art, that can be left to the judgement of the audience to evaluate.

Technical writing can also have artistic choice, but a lot of the value in it is using it to help some specific audience with a problem that they need to solve. SME can be slightly deranged, to utterly deranged, and there is a need to translate between them and what some specific wider audience actually needs and wants.

Teresa Peschel

May 14, 2026 at 2:20 pm

I’ve never done writing for hire.

I bet plenty of the recipients, having spent their lives being told that they’re more special than special couldn’t wait for a big memoir all about ME, ME, ME, ME. That advert might have brought in the narcissists in droves.

I’ve noticed that most memoirs, unless you’ve actually done something interesting, are boring. Memoirs written by the whiners (because happy people don’t write memoirs unless they’ve got something to say) are really boring. All ME, ME, ME, ME and WOE IS ME.

Bleah.

Seawriter

May 14, 2026 at 2:26 pm

Anything I wrote for Osprey is work for hire, but my name goes on it, and I chose the topics. (Sometimes editors ask if I want to do a particular bit, but it’s still my choice.) The books are fun to write, the pay is good (enough to help put three sons through college) and I am happy with what I am turning out.

I don’t think that is what you are talking about though. I did ghostwrite for an encyclopedia back in the aughts, when I was starting out. Civil War and WWII articles. All anonymous. Paid well enough to cover books and tuition for a year at Texas A&M.

Haven’t done any of it since. Wouldn’t mind, but don’t know where to look nowadays.

Draven

May 15, 2026 at 5:53 am

so they were gonna do a 10 yr for my college grad next year… but my college got bought and the records aren’t as accessible ( one idijit tried to say they’re destroying our graduation records, but that provably untrue)