I am currently thinking of offering a (ghostwriting) service to people who want a book written about them for friends, family or colleagues. This will appeal to people with egos, money and the notion that they have something to say. Would you feel that your service would be a good fit for this idea?

ANGELA RESPONDS:

The largest percentage of BookLocker’s revenues come from public book sales. Those sales help us keep setup fees low. Publishing books for anybody and everybody, regardless of quality, just because they have money and an ego, would mean lower-quality products and, thus, a lower percentage of public book sales. Doing this would also harm our reputation. When a reader comes to Booklocker.com, we want them to come to our bookstores again, and again, and again. Publishing anything and everything puts a company’s entire inventory in question and, naturally, discourages customers.

We’re really not interested in working with people who want to publish a book just to impress family members or a few colleagues…or simply because they have large egos or lots of money. That’s not the type of author we want to work with. I’m sorry.

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UPDATE:

I have received two mails from people I offended with this missive, one from a ghostwriter who says she runs a similar business and another from a writer whose grandfather wrote his memoirs.

This ghostwriter whose letter appears above was interested in approaching people with large egos and deep pockets (not waiting for business to find her), and suggesting they pay her to ghostwrite books about themselves to impress friends and colleagues. I did not publish her entire letter because I did not think it would be fair to give away her entire business model (even though I disagree with it).

There is nothing wrong with writing an autobiography to document history and to teach future generations about your life. But, paying someone to write a book about you just to give out copies to friends and colleagues to feed your ego? Per my missive, that’s not the type of author we want to work with. There’s a huge difference between a rich egomaniac and a memoirist.