How to Hire a Biographer
Three finalists. One brief. One paid sample. A contract in phases. This is the whole process, and it takes about three weeks.
Most people commission a biography the way they buy a sofa. They look at photographs, they compare prices, they pick the one that seems nice. Then the draft arrives eight months later and it does not sound like anyone.
Hiring a biographer is a hiring decision, not a purchase. Here is how to run it.
Step one: write the one-page brief
Before you contact anybody, write one page. Not a proposal. One page.
Whose life, and who reads it
Your father, for his grandchildren. A founder, for the industry. A family, for the family. The reader decides the book more than the subject does.
What you already have
Hours of recorded interviews. A shoebox of letters. Forty pages your mother typed in 2011. Nothing at all. Say which, and say how many words if you know.
Three sentences on what it is about
Not the life. The book. “A man who left Ludhiana at 24 with a suitcase and built a business he then had to hand to sons who did not want it.”
The date that matters
An 80th birthday. A wedding. A father whose memory is going. If there is a real date, name it. It changes who can take the job.
What must stay out
The estrangement, the first marriage, the case still in court. You do not have to explain. You do have to flag that there is a sensitive zone.
The band, not the number
You do not need a budget. You need to know which of the five price bands you are shopping in, or you will waste a month on quotes you were never going to accept.
Writers quote far more accurately against a real brief. Vague requests are a known problem in this industry and they attract vague pricing. This page is the highest-leverage hour in the whole process.
Step two: shortlist three, not ten
Three is enough and ten is a way of not deciding. Pick across the models rather than within one: a named solo writer, a marketplace freelancer, and either an agency or a packaged service. You learn more from three different models than from three versions of the same one.
A discovery call should be free and should last an hour. The signal is not how impressive they sound. It is what they ask you. A biographer who spends the call describing their process has told you about themselves. A biographer who spends it asking about your father has started the work.
Step three: pay two of them for the same sample
This is the step people skip and it is the one that decides the book.
Take a section you can supply material for, an hour of recording or a few pages you already wrote. Give the identical material to your best two finalists. Pay each for a short piece in the subject’s voice. Then read both.
Voice is the entire craft and it is the one thing a portfolio cannot show you. Ghostwriters are usually under NDA and cannot tell you which books are theirs, so their past work proves less than you think. A sample from your own material proves everything. It costs a few thousand dollars and it saves the year.
Read the two samples out loud. The right one sounds like the person at the table. The wrong one sounds like a well-written article about them.
Step four: the contract terms to insist on
| Term | What to insist on | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes it | The named individual, in the contract | The one term agencies leave vague. If a name cannot go in the contract, a name is not doing the work. |
| Payment | Phases tied to deliverables | The scam pattern is a large deposit and a writer you never speak to. Phasing makes it structurally impossible. |
| Copyright | Transfers to you on final payment | You commissioned it. You own it. This should be one clean sentence. |
| Credit | Your choice, stated either way | Whether the writer’s name appears anywhere is your decision, not a default. |
| Confidentiality | A signed NDA before material is shared | Before, not after. Confidentiality that starts at signature has already leaked the pitch. |
| Revisions | A named number of rounds per phase | Unlimited revisions is not generosity. It is an argument waiting for month nine. |
| Interviews | Hours specified, and who conducts them | Some services bill interviews separately. Some send a different person to do them. |
| What happens if it stops | Kill fee and what you keep | Illness, death, a family that changes its mind. Agree it while everyone is calm. |
The questions that separate a writer from a service
Ask these on the call and listen to the shape of the answer, not its length.
- Who exactly writes the manuscript, and will their name go in the contract?
- How many books are you writing at the same time as mine?
- How many hours of interview do you expect, and who conducts them?
- What do you do when the subject remembers something wrong and the documents disagree?
- What happens when my brother and my mother tell the same story differently?
- Which parts of this job are you not good at?
The last one is the test. Everyone who has actually written a book can answer it in one sentence. Everyone selling a service will tell you they handle everything.
What this looks like with me
A first conversation, free, usually an hour. If the book is mine to write I scope it and we start with a paid page in your voice before you commit to anything larger. If the book is not mine, I say so and name who I would send it to. I take one client at a time, so sometimes the honest answer is a date rather than a yes.
Start with a conversation Ask for a page in your voice
Questions people ask about hiring
How long does hiring a biographer take?
About three weeks if you run it properly. A week to write the brief and shortlist, a week of calls, a week for paid samples. The book itself then runs six to twelve months.
What should I ask a ghostwriter before hiring?
Who writes it, how many projects they carry at once, how many interview hours they expect, how they handle contradictions between family members, and what they are not good at. Then ask for a paid sample from your own material.
Should I hire a biographer or write it myself?
Write it yourself if you have the year and the distance. Most people have neither. The problem is rarely writing ability. It is proximity: you are too close to your own life to see its shape.
How do I check a biographer is not a scam?
A named individual in the contract, phased payments, a signed NDA before material is shared, and a paid sample before the full commitment. Any operation that resists all four is telling you something.
What if my family disagrees about the story?
They will. Every family does. Ask the writer how they handle it before you hire, because the answer is a craft answer, not a diplomacy answer. The book needs one point of view and a process for the parts where memory splits.
Bring me the one-page brief.
Even a rough one. I will tell you what the book needs, what it costs, and whether I am the right writer for it. I respond within 48 hours.