What It Costs
Starts at ₹10 lakh, typically goes up to ₹20 lakh. One book, one subject, six months, my hands on every page.
A book starts at ₹10 lakh and typically goes up to ₹20 lakh. That is the fee for an authorised biography, a founder story, a memoir or a family legacy book, over six months. Both numbers, published, before you ask.
Almost nobody in this business will tell you that. Teena Lyons in Kent has a heading on her site that asks “How much does it cost?” and answers it without a number. She then asks you to share your budget first. India is worse. Pinaki Ghosh advertises 6,000 completed projects and no price. Ghostwriting India advertises 500 manuscripts and no price. Every Indian biography service I checked in August 2026 says the same three words: book a consultation.
I would rather go first.
For the Indian market in rupees, from a free WhatsApp app to ₹20 lakh, writer type by writer type, read what a biography costs in India.
The fee in your currency
One book, six months. Each price is set in its own currency. In India a book starts at ₹10 lakh and typically goes up to ₹20 lakh.
| Where you are | The book starts at | Typically up to |
|---|---|---|
| India | ₹10 lakh | ₹20 lakh |
| United States | US$12,500 | US$25,000 |
| United Kingdom | £10,000 | £20,000 |
| United Arab Emirates | AED 50,000 | AED 100,000 |
| Singapore | S$25,000 | S$50,000 |
| Canada | C$25,000 | C$50,000 |
| Australia | A$25,000 | A$50,000 |
| Europe | €10,000 | €20,000 |
Each figure is set, not converted, so it does not move with the exchange rate. Whichever currency we sign in stays fixed for the life of the contract.
Where ₹10 to ₹20 lakh sits
Figures below come from each seller’s own live page, checked 17 August 2026. Rupee conversions at 95.6 to the dollar and 129.7 to the pound.
| Who | Their published fee | In rupees |
|---|---|---|
| Kevin Anderson & Associates, New York. Executive tier | $115,000 to $250,000 | ₹1.1 crore to ₹2.4 crore |
| Kevin Anderson & Associates. Premier tier, their floor | $57,500 to $95,000 | ₹55 lakh to ₹91 lakh |
| Corinna Cunningham, UK. Her published range | £20,000 to £100,000+ | ₹26 lakh to ₹1.3 crore |
| Me | Starts at US$12,500, typically up to US$25,000 | Starts at ₹10 lakh, typically up to ₹20 lakh, my fee in India |
| An Indiamart listing in Mumbai, per page | ₹10,000 a page | ₹25 lakh for 250 pages |
| Storyworth, a subscription that emails questions | $59 | ₹5,600 |
Read the bottom two rows together, because they are the trap. The Indiamart shop charges ₹20 lakh for a full book. My fee starts at ₹10 lakh and typically goes up to ₹20 lakh, so at the top of my range we land on the same number. The difference: a shop splits your father’s life across writers you will never meet. I write all of it. Storyworth is a fine product, and what arrives is a printed transcript of whatever your father felt like typing that Tuesday.
Read the top three rows together and you get the other half. At the top of my range, my fee is under the floor of the band that serious biographers work in. It is ₹35 lakh under the cheapest tier Kevin Anderson sells. It is ₹6 lakh under the lowest number Corinna Cunningham will quote. If you are in New Jersey or Dubai and you have been getting quotes, you already know this is not the expensive end.
Where US$12,500 to US$25,000 sits
Figures below come from each seller’s own live page, checked 17 August 2026. Pounds and rupees converted at 1.36 dollars to the pound and 95.6 rupees to the dollar. The comparison uses my US fee. Your own currency’s fee is in the table above.
| Who | Their published fee | In US dollars |
|---|---|---|
| Kevin Anderson & Associates, New York. Executive tier | $115,000 to $250,000 | US$115,000 to US$250,000 |
| Kevin Anderson & Associates. Premier tier, their floor | $57,500 to $95,000 | US$57,500 to US$95,000 |
| Corinna Cunningham, UK. Her published range | £20,000 to £100,000+ | US$27,000 to US$136,000+ |
| Me | Starts at US$12,500, typically up to US$25,000 | Starts at US$12,500, typically up to US$25,000, my fee in the US |
| An Indiamart listing in Mumbai, per page | ₹10,000 a page | US$26,000 for 250 pages |
| Storyworth, a subscription that emails questions | $59 | US$59 |
Read the bottom two rows together, because they are the trap. At the top of my range, a volume shop in Mumbai and I land a thousand dollars apart for a full book. The difference: a shop splits your father’s life across writers you will never meet. I write all of it. Storyworth is a fine product, and what arrives is a printed transcript of whatever your father felt like typing that Tuesday.
Read the top three rows together and you get the other half. At the top of my range, my fee is the floor of the band that serious biographers work in. It is US$32,500 under the cheapest tier Kevin Anderson sells. It is two thousand dollars under the lowest number Corinna Cunningham will quote. If you are in New Jersey or Toronto and you have been getting quotes, you already know this is not the expensive end.
What the fee covers
All the interviews
Thirty to sixty hours with the subject, and as many more as the book needs with family, partners, colleagues and the people who were in the room. Recorded, transcribed, mine to organise.
The research
Archives, letters, company records, court papers, old newspapers, the town nobody has visited since 1974. Every fact checked against a source, because memory drifts.
The structure
A chapter plan you approve before I write a word of prose. A biography is won or lost here. A cheap quote skips it.
The full manuscript
Sixty to ninety thousand words. Written by me. Not outlined by me and farmed out, not assembled by a junior, not drafted by a model and cleaned up.
Three revision rounds
On the outline, on the first full draft, on the final. Named rounds with dates, so neither of us is guessing when the book is finished.
Copyright, all of it
Assigned to you on final payment. Your name on the cover, your decisions about publishing, your royalties. I hold nothing back.
An NDA before anything
Signed before you send me a single document. Confidentiality that begins at contract has already read the pitch.
Me, for six months
I take one book at a time. You are not in a queue behind four other families, because there is no queue.
What the fee does not cover
This list matters more than the last one. Unnamed exclusions are how a quote doubles in month nine.
- Publishing. Design, typesetting, ISBN, printing, distribution, a publicist. I will tell you what each costs and introduce you to people who do it well. It is not in my fee, and I have written down what all of it costs in how to self-publish a biography. If you would rather I ran that end of it, it is quoted as a separate line and never folded into my fee.
- Translation. If the book needs a Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi edition, that is a separate commission with a separate translator.
- Travel. All of it is yours to pay: flights, hotels, trains, at cost. None is in the fee. If the book needs Nairobi, Southall and a village in Kutch, we cost the trips before we sign, not after.
- A second book. Some families start with the father and then want the company. Good. A second commission.
- Rewriting to a new brief in month ten. Three revision rounds are generous and they are not infinite. A change of mind about what the book is gets priced when it happens.
How it is paid
| When | What | How much |
|---|---|---|
| Before you commit | A page in your voice, from your own material | ₹1 lakh, credited against the fee if we go ahead |
| On signature | NDA, contract, interview schedule | First of four parts |
| On the approved chapter plan | Interviews done, structure agreed | Second of four parts |
| On the full first draft | The book, start to finish | Third of four parts |
| On the final manuscript | Delivery, and copyright assigned to you | Fourth of four parts |
Four parts against four deliverables. You can stop after any of them and you pay for what is done. No concession here. A phased contract is supposed to work this way, and any writer who resists it is telling you something. The agreement I use is free to download.
When it is not a full book
Two directions, and both get quoted before we sign. Nobody finds out later.
Above. A book with a live legal dispute in it. A subject who has died and cannot be interviewed, so the book runs on archives and other people’s memory. A family where four siblings each want a different book. Four generations across three countries. Those are harder books and they are quoted as harder books.
Below. Not every story needs a full biography. A short book of a parent’s stories for the grandchildren is a real thing and it does not cost what a full book does. It is the gift book, which starts at ₹5 lakh and typically goes up to ₹10 lakh, printed. If your story fits the gift book, I will say so on the first call. I have turned away work that should have been a Storyworth subscription.
The gift book
The gift book starts at ₹5 lakh and typically goes up to ₹10 lakh: fifteen to twenty hours of interviews, about 25,000 words, ten or twelve stories from a parent’s life, designed and printed in ten hardback copies, in four months. It is the only thing I sell with printing inside the fee.
It has a fixed scope and an NDA at the start, and the copyright in anything I write transfers to you.
The ₹5 lakh book, written by my team
One book on this site is not written by me. The ₹5 lakh book is a biography of a parent, written by a biographer I train, under my direction. Same method, same questions and same chapter plan as my own books, and the same designers and printers. The biographer writes every sentence, under the same AI policy. It is priced in rupees, at ₹5 lakh, and you know who is writing it before you pay anything.
Why I publish the number
Three reasons, and none of them is generosity.
A published fee sorts the calls. I take one book at a time. An hour spent explaining my process to somebody shopping at ₹80,000a thousand dollars is an hour stolen from the family who is ready. You should be able to rule me out from the page.
A withheld fee is a negotiating position, and it is a negotiating position against you. Asking for your budget before naming a price is how a quote gets shaped to your wallet instead of to the work. When Teena Lyons’s own site tells you to share your budget upfront, that is what it is doing.
And the number is the argument. A fee that starts at ₹10 lakh and typically goes up to ₹20 lakh says what six months of one writer’s attention costs. A shop that quotes ₹3 lakhUS$3,000 is telling you how many hours it plans to spend, and the answer is not enough.
Questions people ask about the fee
How much does Saurabh Garg charge to write a biography?
A book starts at ₹10 lakh in India and US$12,500 everywhere else, and typically goes up to ₹20 lakh in India and US$25,000 everywhere else, for one book over six months. That covers all interviews, all research, the chapter plan, the full manuscript of sixty to ninety thousand words, three revision rounds, and copyright assigned to you. It does not cover publishing, printing or translation.
Is ₹10 to ₹20 lakh expensive for a ghostwritten biography?
Not by the published numbers. Kevin Anderson & Associates in New York starts at $57,500, which is ₹55 lakh. Corinna Cunningham in the UK publishes £20,000 to £100,000 and up, and £20,000 is ₹26 lakh. At ₹20 lakh, the top of my range, my fee is under the floor of the band that professional biographers work in. It is expensive next to an Indian volume shop, and those shops are not selling the same thing.
Is US$12,500 to US$25,000 expensive for a ghostwritten biography?
Not by the published numbers. Kevin Anderson & Associates in New York starts at $57,500. Corinna Cunningham in the UK publishes £20,000 to £100,000 and up, and £20,000 is US$27,000. At US$25,000, the top of my range, my fee is the floor of the band that professional biographers work in. It is expensive next to a volume shop in Mumbai, and those shops are not selling the same thing.
Why do most ghostwriters not publish their price?
Because a withheld price can be shaped to the buyer’s budget. Several will ask what you can spend before they quote. Of the nine biography writers and services I checked in August 2026, two published a figure and seven did not, and none of the Indian ones did.
Can I pay in instalments?
Yes, and you should. The fee is paid in four parts against four deliverables: signature, approved chapter plan, full first draft, final manuscript. Stop after any of them and you pay only for what is done.
Do you charge in dollars, pounds or dirhams?
Yes. The book starts at US$12,500, £10,000 or AED 50,000 and typically goes up to US$25,000, £20,000 or AED 100,000, and the table above has it in five more currencies. India starts at ₹10 lakh and typically goes up to ₹20 lakh. Whichever currency we sign in is fixed for the life of the contract, so a currency move does not become your problem.
Does the fee include getting the book published?
No. Design, ISBN, printing, distribution and publicity are separate and I do not mark them up. I will tell you what each costs in India, the UK and the US, and introduce you to the people I would use. Most family books are printed privately, which is cheaper and faster than most people expect. The full breakdown is in how to self-publish a biography. I will run the publishing mechanics for you as a separately priced line if you want that, and it is never bundled into the fee.
What if the book turns out to be smaller than a full book?
Then I quote the smaller job. A short book of a parent’s stories is the gift book, which starts at ₹5 lakh and typically goes up to ₹10 lakh. A founder’s story shaped for a keynote, a long essay. I have turned away work that should have been a subscription service instead of a commission.
Is there a cheaper way to get my father’s life story written?
Several, and they are worth knowing. Storyworth at $59 a year emails him a question a week and prints the answers. An Indian volume shop will quote ₹2 to ₹5 lakh. A marketplace freelancer will do it for less again. Each is a real option and each buys you something different. My team writes a ₹5 lakh book: a biographer I train writes it, under my direction. The comparison is on what a ghostwriter costs.
You know the number. Bring me the book.
Tell me whose life it is and who reads it. I will tell you whether it is a full book, a smaller one, or a harder one, and I will say so on the first call. I respond within 48 hours.