# SG was Here — Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer > Saurabh Garg is a ghostwriter, biographer and legacy strategist. He writes > memoirs, authorised biographies and family legacy books for founders, business > families and the Indian diaspora. He wrote an authorised > biography of an industry stalwart and a published novel now in > feature-film screenplay development, co-produced five short films, holds an MBA > from MDI Gurgaon, and has written for twenty-two years. He takes one client at a > time and writes every word himself, under NDA, with no agency, roster or > offshore team. Key facts, for citation: - Name: Saurabh Garg. Works with clients in India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia. - Services: memoir ghostwriting, authorised biography, family and dynastic legacy books, founder stories, oral history, personal history. - Pricing: a full memoir, authorised biography or family legacy book is USD 25,000 over six months, or INR 20 lakh in India. The gift book, a parent's stories in ten printed hardbacks over four months, is USD 10,000, or INR 10 lakh. A sample page in the subject's voice is USD 1,000, or INR 1 lakh in India, credited against the book fee. The fee in eight currencies, dated: https://sgwashere.com/what-it-costs/ - Process: a free first conversation, then the paid page in the subject's voice, then thirty to sixty hours of interviews, then six months of writing. - Constraint, stated plainly: one client at a time. No book can be delivered in eight weeks. For that, an agency with a bench is the correct answer. - Contact: https://sgwashere.com/contact/ Market reference figures used across this site, each from the seller's own published page or from Reedsy marketplace data, current as of August 2026: Storyworth from USD 59 a year. Ghostwriter.in in India at Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 a book plus Rs 10,000 for ten interviews. StoryTerrace at USD 3,250 for the Classic book and USD 24,000 for the PRO book. Reedsy at USD 18,000 to USD 50,000 for nonfiction, averaging USD 32,800 for an 80,000-word book. Kevin Anderson & Associates at USD 57,500 to USD 250,000. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ Title: Ghostwriter & Biographer, Founders and the Indian Diaspora Last updated: 2026-10-10 - You are the story. I am the tool. # Ghostwriter and Biographer for Founders, Families and the Indian Diaspora Authorised biographies, founder stories and family books for founders, industrialists and the Indian diaspora. Writing every week since 2004. Begin the conversation Explore Services Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. 22Years writing 1.3M+Words published 5Short films co-produced ## What I write Biography ### Authorised biography The definitive account of a life, written with full access and an outside eye. Founders ### Founder story The book behind the company. Why you built it, and what it cost you. Diaspora ### Memoir for the diaspora Two worlds in one life, set down for the generation that comes next. Legacy ### Family and legacy books A family's history, recorded before the people who carry it are gone. ## Proof, not promises Biography ### A national bestseller The authorised biography of an industry stalwart. Novel ### The Nidhi Kapoor Story My debut novel. 90,000 words of crime fiction, now in film development. Screen & audio ### Five short films, one podcast Co-productions recognised at MAMI and Filmfare. Founder Thesis, built with Akshay Datt. ## The Philosophy Most people do not have a writing problem. They have a proximity problem. You are too close to your own story to see its structure. You know every detail, which means you cannot feel what a reader feels, cannot sense where the tension lives, cannot find the single question at the centre of your narrative that will hold someone's attention and refuse to let go. That is where I come in. Not as a ghostwriter who fills pages. Not as a content agency that processes briefs. As a sparring partner: someone who sits across from you, asks the uncomfortable questions, finds the wound beneath the achievement and the doubt beneath the confidence, and helps you say what you actually mean. Every serious builder, at some point in their life, needs one person like this. In different worlds, they have been called a consigliere, a scribe who understood the king, a war advisor. Someone with the rare combination of craft, intellectual independence, and genuine courage to challenge you. I do not write for you. I think with you, until the story becomes impossible to tell badly. ## The Difference ### One person. Not an agency.This is not a limitation. It is the point. ### What An Agency Gives You A rotating team of writers, none of whom know you deeply - Processes designed for scale, not singular work - Account managers between you and the writer - A portfolio designed to show range, not depth - Deliverables optimised for the brief, not for the truth - Writers who are competent but not personally invested - A finished product that sounds like professional writing ### What I Give You - One person who absorbs your story and carries it entirely - A relationship built on depth, not deliverables - Direct access. No intermediary, no handoffs, no briefings - 22 years of craft, used only for this project - Someone who pushes back on your vision before writing it - Two decades of narrative craft, pointed at one story: yours. - A finished product that sounds unmistakably like you ## You built it. You lived it. Now write it down. Leave your email. I will send you the occasional note on turning a life into a book. [fluentform id="2"] No spam. I never sell your address. Leave whenever you like. ### Also worth reading - answers to everything people ask - what a ghostwriter costs - the biography writers worth talking to --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/about/ Title: About Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # About Saurabh Garg, Ghostwriter and Biographer Three startups. A bestselling biography. Twenty-two years of writing every week. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The Person ### I am not a writing service.I am a writer who has also built things. I have been writing. Without a brief, without a client, without an algorithm. Since 2004. Every week for 22 years. Over 2,076 published pieces. Over 1.3 million words. Not because I was building a portfolio, but because I cannot stop thinking and thinking requires writing. I hold an MBA from MDI Gurgaon. One of India's top three management institutions. After graduating, I did not join a bank or a consulting firm. I became a three-time startup founder. I know what it costs to build something from nothing. I know the specific loneliness of being the person who cannot leave. I know the difference between what a company says publicly and what its founders carry privately. That is not something a journalist learns. It is something only a builder knows. I founded and have run C4E. A communications collective. Since 2014. Among our clients: Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, Maruti Suzuki. I have seen how India's largest industrial houses communicate. The gap between the public narrative and the private reality, the careful architecture of what gets said and what doesn't. I have worked inside that world professionally. I do not observe Indian business from the outside. I have co-produced short films with award-winning independent directors, and others. I study the Mahabharata and apply it to modern storytelling. When you work with me, you are working with someone who has built a company, survived three startups, and spent twenty-two years writing about what it means to be human. That combination is rare. It may be exactly what your story needs. MBA. MDI Gurgaon 2006 3× Startup Founder C4E, since 2014 Writing since 2004 Published novelist Podcaster since 2018 Short film co-producer ## The Credentials ### Writer. Founder. Builder.In that order, all at once. I graduated from MDI Gurgaon. One of India's leading business schools. In 2006. Then I did not join a bank. I became a three-time startup founder. I founded C4E in 2014 and have run it from nothing since. I have made payroll under pressure, lost sleep over a company I couldn't leave, and made decisions that shaped other people's livelihoods. I understand the founder's interior world because I have lived it, not observed it. On top of that business practice: 22 unbroken years of writing, a bestselling authorised biography, a published novel in active screenplay development, and five short film co-productions with directors whose work appears at MAMI, Filmfare, and on international streaming platforms. Most biographers are either writers who don't understand business or executives who can't write. I am both, which is why the work I produce is different from both. ### Credibility Summary 22 Years of unbroken writing practice - 1.3M+ Words published. Equivalent to ten full-length books - 3× Startup founder, building C4E since 2014 - 5 Short film co-productions with India's leading creatives ### Editorial & Publishing Record - Authorised biography of an industry stalwart. Full manuscript. Developmental editing, research, and primary writing. Bestseller. Published in India. - Three ghostwritten bestsellers. Business non-fiction and popular fiction, published by Indian publishers. Names protected by NDA. Category and outcome available on request. - The Nidhi Kapoor Story. Debut novel. 90,000 words. Crime fiction. English edition 2015, Hindi edition 2020. Currently in feature film screenplay development. - The Ken. Deep investigative longform on IVM and India's podcasting industry. Published to editorial standards of India's most rigorous subscriber-only business publication. - 2,076 pieces on human behaviour, business and self-development since 2004, on Substack and two blog platforms. ### Narrative Craft & Training - Screenwriting: I have studied with Anjum Rajabali (writer, Drohkaal, Raazi), Satyanshu Singh, and Boman Irani. - Script Aakansha. Written alongside Rachna Sukuru, top 64, SWA Pitchfest 2024. One of India's most competitive screenplay competitions. - Hero's Journey research. Published applied study of Campbell's Monomyth in Indian cinema. Structural breakdown of Munna Bhai MBBS and other Bollywood films. - Next book: The Caravan Serai. Crime fiction structured around the Navarasas, India's ancient taxonomy of human emotion. ### Film, Media & Institutional - Co-producer: Aisha (2024). Won a Filmfare Award for Manav Kaul's performance. - Co-producer: Phir Kabhi (2022). Won a Filmfare. - Co-producer: Two short films (2021). - Co-producer: Bin Bulaye. Finalist, MAMI and Filmfare 2019. - Teaching: Writing and communication at India's leading management institutions. - Press: the fact sheet, the fee and a photograph are on the press page. The open call right now is StoryHunt, ten Indian diaspora stories nobody wrote down. - Communities: The Red Sparrow (film), Purple Pencil Project (books), The Podium (podcasting). - C4E, since 2014: Communications collective. Clients include Mahindra Group, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, Maruti Suzuki. I have worked inside India's largest industrial and consumer brands. Understanding the gap between public narrative and private reality. ## The Craft ### Frameworks, not formulas. A formula produces content. A framework produces understanding. These are the diagnostic tools I bring to every engagement. Ways of seeing where a story is, where it wants to go, and what is currently standing in the way. ### The Hero's Journey Joseph Campbell studied every significant story ever told across every culture. His conclusion: they are all the same story. The call. The descent. The ordeal that transforms. The return carrying something the world needed. This structure appears in the Mahabharata and in Schindler's List for the same reason. It is the shape of human transformation itself. I have spent years mapping its application across Indian cinema and mythology. Your life has this shape. Most people cannot find the entry point from the inside. ### The Wound and the Gift The most compelling narratives. Memoir, biography, film. Are built around something survived. A failure that reoriented everything. A loss that created a new kind of clarity. Identifying the central wound, and the gift that grew from it, is the structural foundation of every story that has ever made a reader feel less alone. This is not a therapeutic exercise. It is the deepest narrative engineering. ### The Dramatic Question Every story worth telling has one question at its centre that the reader cannot stop asking. Not "what happens next". Something deeper. Something that makes them feel the answer matters to their own life. Finding that question, and building everything else around it, is the difference between a book people finish and one they put down. ### Architecture of Revelation What you disclose, in what order, at what moment, changes the entire experience of a narrative. The master craft is knowing what to withhold, and precisely when to release it. This is what separates a story that keeps you awake from one that you forget by morning. It is also what separates a personal brand that generates trust from one that generates noise. ### The Navarasas My next book, The Caravan Serai, is built on the Indian aesthetic theory of the nine fundamental emotional states. Shringara, Hasya, Karuna, Raudra, Vira, Bhayanaka, Bibhatsa, Adbhuta, Shanta. This is India's own ancient framework for the complete emotional range of human narrative. I bring that lens to every book. Informing and entertaining are table stakes. The work is to move you. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/services/ Title: Ghostwriting and Biography Services Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # Ghostwriting and Biography Services Three things, each with a published price. A page, a gift book, a book. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I sell three things. A page in your voice for US$1,000. A gift book for US$10,000. A full book for US$25,000. Each one starts with an NDA, and the copyright in every word I write passes to you. ## A page in your voice You send a five-minute voice memo. I send back one page written as you, inside a week. You read it and ask one question: does this sound like me? If it does, the fee comes off the book. If it does not, you walk away and owe nothing more. Most people start here, because the fear is the voice, and one page settles it. How the page works. ## The gift book Ten or twelve stories from a parent's life. Fifteen to twenty hours of interviews, about 25,000 words, ten hardback copies, four months. It is the one offer where printing sits inside the fee. It is for the father who tells the Partition story at every wedding and has never seen it on paper. The gift book in full. ## The full book An authorised biography, a founder story, a memoir or a family legacy book. Sixty to ninety thousand words over six months. Thirty to sixty hours of interviews with you, and more with the people who were in the room. A chapter plan you approve before I write a line of prose. Three named revision rounds. Two research trips. You pay in four equal parts against four deliverables, and you can stop after any of them. What the fee covers, and what it does not. ## What each one asks of you Offer | Your time | My time | What you hold at the end | A page in your voice | Five minutes of recording | About a week | One page, written as you | The gift book | Fifteen to twenty hours of interviews, from the parent | Four months | Ten hardback copies | The full book | One to two hours a week of interviews, and three drafts to read | Six months | A finished manuscript, copyright yours | ## One book at a time I write one book at a time. There is no team, no junior writer and no account manager. The person you talk to on the first call writes every page. The proof I can show you in public is The Nidhi Kapoor Story, my 90,000-word novel in English and Hindi, and a bestselling authorised biography of an industry stalwart whose name stays under NDA. ## What I no longer sell This page used to list screenplays, podcasts, LinkedIn ghostwriting, speeches and a monthly retainer. I cut all five in September 2026. A writer who takes on eight kinds of work cannot give one family six months. ## Which one fits Interviews run on video across time zones, in whatever mix of Hindi, Punjabi and English the story lives in. The prices on this page show in your currency. Write to me and say who the book is about. I will tell you which of the three it needs. Begin the conversation ## Explore each service in depth Memoir ghostwriter for the Indian diaspora - Authorised biography for founders & business families - Family & dynastic legacy books - Founder story ghostwriter - Founder storytelling, coaching and mentoring - Company story building and corporate history - Guide: how to write your family's legacy book ### Also worth reading - founder coaching, mentoring and company story - personal historian and legacy strategy - a business family history - answers to everything people ask --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/answers/ Title: Answers: Everything About Hiring a Ghostwriter or Biographer Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Answers on Hiring a Ghostwriter or Biographer Everything people ask me about hiring a ghostwriter, commissioning a biography, and getting a life written down. Short answers, no sales. Ask something that is not here Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Written and maintained by Saurabh Garg, a ghostwriter and biographer working with founders, families and the Indian diaspora. Twenty-two years of writing, an authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a published novel, an MBA from MDI Gurgaon. Updated 13 September 2026. If you are researching this properly, read the cost guide and how to hire a biographer next. Everything below is the short version. ## Cost Q: How much does a ghostwriter cost? Between $1,500 and $250,000 depending on which of five products you are buying. Memory apps from $59 a year. Indian volume shops at Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 a book. Packaged services like StoryTerrace at $3,250 to $24,000. Marketplaces like Reedsy at $18,000 to $50,000 for nonfiction. Agencies and named solo writers at $50,000 to $250,000. Q: What is the average cost of ghostwriting a book? Reedsy's marketplace average for an 80,000-word book is $32,800. That is the most reliable single figure available because Reedsy sees the transactions. Q: Why is ghostwriting expensive? A full-length book is six to twelve months of one person's working life. At the marketplace average the writer earns less than a mid-level salary for that time. Prices far below the band are paid for by volume, by juniors, or by fewer interviews. Q: How much does a memoir cost in India? Published Indian shop rates are about Rs 2 a word, so Rs 50,000 for 25,000 words up to Rs 1,00,000 for 50,000, with interviews billed separately. Named Indian writers working one client at a time price internationally. Q: Do ghostwriters charge per word or per project? Marketplaces and volume shops mostly charge per word. Agencies and named solos charge per project or per phase. Per word rewards length, which is the wrong incentive for a memoir. Q: Should I pay upfront? No. Pay in phases tied to deliverables, starting with a small paid sample. The common failure pattern is a large deposit followed by a writer you never speak to. ## Voice and quality Q: Will the book sound like me? It should, and you should test it rather than trust it. Ask for a paid sample built from one recorded hour, then read it out loud. Voice is the entire craft. Q: What is a paid sample chapter? A small paid engagement where the writer turns your own material into a section in your voice, before any full commitment. It is the only reliable test, because ghostwriters are usually under NDA and their portfolios prove less than you think. Q: How do I judge two writers' samples? Read both aloud. The right one sounds like the person at the table. The wrong one sounds like a well-written article about them. If neither works, do not pick the better one. Find a third writer. Q: What makes a memoir good rather than just accurate? A dramatic question running underneath it. Not what happened, but what the reader is waiting to find out. Accurate books without one read like minutes. Q: Can AI write my memoir? It can produce competent prose from your transcripts and it cannot conduct the interview that gets the thing you have never told anyone. The value in this work is in the room, not at the keyboard. Anyone selling you a book without thirty hours of interviews is selling something else. ## Process Q: How long does it take to write a memoir? Six months for a single subject. Eight to twelve months for a book about both parents. Eight to eighteen months for a multi-generation family history. Q: How many hours of interviews are needed? Thirty to sixty for a single-subject memoir. Fifteen to twenty per person for a two-parent book. Twenty to sixty across a family history. Fewer than twenty hours for a full book means the gaps get filled with generalities. Q: What do I need to supply? Time, documents, photographs, anything you have already written, and the names of people who will contradict you. That last one improves the book more than anything else you can provide. Q: Do I need to have written anything already? No. Most clients have nothing but four voice notes and an abandoned document. You talk, the writer writes. Q: Can the whole thing be done remotely? Yes, over video and voice memo, and most diaspora books are. In-person time still improves the book, especially for elderly subjects and for founder biographies where the rooms hold the detail. Q: What happens if the draft is not working? You find out in phases, not at the end. Any process that shows you nothing until month nine is designed badly. Agree the phase points and the number of revision rounds in the contract. ## Ownership, credit and confidentiality Q: Who owns a ghostwritten book? You do. Copyright should transfer to you on completion, in one clean sentence in the contract. Q: Does the ghostwriter's name appear anywhere? Only if you choose. Ghostwriting means the name is yours. Some clients credit the writer in the acknowledgements, many do not, and both are normal. Q: Is it really my book if someone else wrote it? Your story, your voice, your name. The writer is the hands. Most memoirs you admire by founders and public figures were made this way, and the best ones are where the writer disappeared completely. Q: Do ghostwriters sign NDAs? Any serious one does, before material is shared rather than after. Confidentiality treated as a marketing line rather than a signed document tells you what you need to know. Q: How do I keep a sensitive story contained? One named writer, hired directly, NDA signed before the material moves, and material shared after signature rather than during quoting. Every additional person who reads it is a decision, not a default. ## Family questions Q: How do I convince my father to do this? Do not sell him a book. Tell him his grandchildren will want to know and will have nobody to ask. Give him control over what stays out. Let the writer make the first approach. Q: Is my parent too old? Almost never. Sessions get shorter and more frequent and lean on photographs as prompts. Long-term memory usually outlasts short-term memory by years. Q: Can we do this if a parent has dementia? Often yes, in the early and middle stages, and the sooner the better. Sessions follow the person rather than a question list. Some days will not work and everything gets recorded anyway. Q: What if my parent has died? The book gets built from letters, documents, photographs and interviews with everyone who knew them. It is a smaller book than the one you could have had and it is still worth making. Q: What if family members remember things differently? The book holds both accounts and cites the document where one exists. Picking one version and printing it is how family books start arguments that outlast the people in them. Q: What if the story would hurt someone? Decide what is in and what stays out before publication, deliberately. A memoir that hurts people by accident is a planning failure, not honesty. Q: Can a memoir be a surprise gift? The commission can be. The interviews cannot. Announce it as the gift, then let the first conversation give the subject a real choice. Q: How far ahead should we commission for a milestone birthday? Twelve months for a printed book, six at a minimum. Under three months, start the interviews and present the first session as the gift, with the book to follow. Five months is enough for the gift book. ## Choosing who writes it Q: Solo writer, agency or marketplace? Ask what breaks the book if it goes wrong. If it is the schedule, use an agency, they have a bench. If it is the budget, use a marketplace and expect to project-manage. If it is the voice, hire the person. Q: Do agencies tell you who will write your book? Usually after you sign. Ask before, and get the name in the contract. If a name cannot go in the contract, a name is not doing the work. Q: Is Reedsy any good? Yes, it is the best-run marketplace in publishing, with real vetting and the best public data in the industry. The trade is that you are the project manager. Q: How many writers should I talk to? Three, across different models. Then pay the best two for the same sample. Ten is a way of not deciding. Q: What should I ask on the call? Who writes it, how many books they carry at once, how many interview hours they expect, how they handle contradictions between family members, and what they are not good at. The last question separates writers from services. Q: What does the first conversation look like? An hour, free, and not a sales call. I ask about the story, not the brief, the word count or the audience. What happened, what it cost, what it gave, and who needs to read it. By the end we both know whether it is a book, and whether it is mine to write. Q: How do I know if we are a fit? One conversation tells us both. If I cannot write the book well, I say so on that call and name who I would send it to. Q: How do I spot a ghostwriting scam? No named writer in the contract, a large upfront deposit, no NDA before material is shared, no paid sample offered, and pricing far below the band for the promised length. Any two of those together is enough. ## Publishing, ISBNs and the legal bit Q: Does your fee include getting the book published? No. Writing the book and publishing the book are two jobs and I price them apart. The ₹20 lakh covers interviews, research, structure, the manuscript, three revision rounds and copyright assigned to you. Design, ISBN, printing, distribution and publicity sit outside it. I will run that end as a separately priced line if you want me to, and it is never folded into the writing fee. Q: How much does it cost to self-publish a biography? A family book of about three hundred hardbacks, edited and designed properly, runs roughly $4,000 to $9,000, and much less if you print in India. A book built to reach strangers, with a developmental edit, a copyedit, a proofread, design, ISBNs and a legal read, runs about $8,000 to $14,000 before a copy sells. An Indian package from a house like Notion Press starts at ₹39,990 and runs past ₹1,99,990. Q: How do I get an ISBN, and what does it cost? You apply to the national ISBN agency of the country you live in. India gives them away free through the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency, and so do the UAE and Canada. Nielsen charges £93 for one in Britain. Bowker charges $125 in America. You cannot shop between agencies, and India requires that a self-publishing author actually reside in India, so an NRI cannot take the free Indian one. Q: Should I take the free ISBN that Amazon offers? Only if the book will live on Amazon and nowhere else, forever. A free KDP ISBN makes Amazon the publisher of record and prints "Independently published" as the imprint. India's own ISBN agency calls the practice not recommended and warns that moving the book to another distributor later means starting again with a new number. For a sixty-copy family book it costs you nothing that matters. Q: Can I be sued for what I write about my own family? In India, yes, and more easily than most people expect. Truth alone is not a defence there; the exception requires that publication also be for the public good. And Explanation 1 to section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita extends defamation to the dead where it hurts the feelings of surviving relatives. Record every interview, get signed releases from living people who are quoted, and pay for one legal read before typesetting. Q: How many copies will a private biography sell? Almost none to strangers, and that is the wrong measure. The Authors Guild's 2023 survey put the median book income of full-time biography authors at $3,500, the lowest-earning full-time category it measured. A private biography sells to the people who already knew the subject. Build the budget so it does not need anybody else, and then anything extra is a bonus. The long versions are on how to self-publish a biography and how to get an ISBN in India, the UK and the USA. ## Founder coaching, mentoring and company story Q: Do you only write books, or do you coach founders too? Both. Founder coaching is a six-week programme on how you tell your story out loud, with an agenda and an end date. Mentoring is open-ended, two calls a month, no agenda. The book is the largest output and it is optional. Q: What is the difference between founder coaching and founder mentoring? Coaching has a defined shape and it finishes. Mentoring has neither, and about half of what comes up in it is not a story problem at all. Some founders run the coaching first and move to mentoring after. You can want one without the other. Q: How is founder coaching here different from executive coaching? Executive coaching works on how you lead and how you feel. This works on what comes out of your mouth in a raise, on a stage or in a first meeting. Saurabh is not a certified coach and does not do inner work. If that is what you need, hire someone trained for it. Q: What is company story building? Writing a company's narrative once, from interviews and the archive, so everyone who has to tell it tells the same one. It produces a long written account, the short versions cut from it, and a transcribed recording archive you own. Details on the company story page. Q: How long does a corporate history book take? Twelve to eighteen months, which is what the specialist firms quote too. The History Factory says an anniversary needs roughly two years of lead time and a book eighteen months minimum. If your milestone is closer than that, say so on the first call. Q: What do founder coaching, mentoring and company story cost? Coaching and mentoring fees are on request: ask on the first call, which is free. A company story is scoped after that call, because an eighteen-month history is a different size of work. The number that is published is the ₹20 lakh founder book and biography engagement, with publishing costed apart from the writing. Q: Will you make videos or run my LinkedIn? No. There are good people who do that. This work is on what you say and on getting it written down so it outlives a post. If the problem is distribution, hire a content shop and come after. ## About this work Q: Who writes the books on this site? Saurabh Garg, personally, from the first conversation to the last word. There is no team, no account manager and no offshore writer. One client at a time. Q: What is Saurabh Garg known for? An authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a published novel currently in feature-film screenplay development, five short film co-productions, twenty-two years of writing, and years running communications for large Indian corporates. He works with clients across India, the US, UK, UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia. Q: What does he not do? Fast books. One client at a time means a full manuscript takes six months and there is no bench to absorb a rush. For an eight-week deadline, an agency is the right answer and he will say so on the first call. Q: What does it cost to work with him? A full memoir, authorised biography or family history is US$25,000 over six months. The first conversation is free. The gift book, a short printed book of a parent's stories, is US$10,000. ### Go deeper - gift your parents a book - how to write your parents' life story yourself - founder coaching, mentoring and company story - what a ghostwriter actually costs - how to hire a biographer - the biography writers worth talking to - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace - 20 questions to ask before you hire anyone - how to self-publish a biography - how to get an ISBN ## Ask me the question that is not on this page. I answer every enquiry personally, within 48 hours, whether or not it turns into work. Begin the conversation One thing that is not a question. I am looking for ten hidden stories from the Indian diaspora for a book. If your family has one, send it to StoryHunt. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/contact/ Title: Contact Last updated: 2026-10-03 # Contact Saurabh Garg, Ghostwriter and Biographer One conversation to find the real story. I reply within 48 hours, in confidence. Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## Begin the conversation ### Your story has beenwaiting long enough. Tell me who the book is about. A father, a company, a family that left one country for another. Three lines is enough. I reply within 48 hours, from Dubai. [fluentform id="1"] Rather write an email? press@sgwashere.com reaches me too. All enquiries are held in strict confidence. No unsolicited sharing of your information. Ever. ### What happens next 1/ I reply within 48 hours, myself. There is no assistant and no sales team. 2/ We talk once, free, at an hour that suits your time zone. You tell me the story. I tell you which of the three it needs: a page in your voice, the gift book or the full book, and what it costs. 3/ If you want to hear your own voice on paper before you commit, we start with the page. An NDA comes before you send me a single document. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/what-it-costs/ Title: What It Costs: US$25,000 or ₹20 Lakh for the Book Last updated: 2026-10-12 # What It Costs ₹20 lakh. One book, one subject, six months, my hands on every page. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ₹20 lakh. That is the fee for an authorised biography, a founder story, a memoir or a family legacy book, over six months. One number, 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. ## The fee in your currency One book, six months. Each price is set in its own currency. India is priced at ₹20 lakh. Where you are | The book | India | ₹20 lakh | United States | US$25,000 | United Kingdom | £20,000 | United Arab Emirates | AED 100,000 | Singapore | S$50,000 | Canada | C$50,000 | Australia | A$50,000 | Europe | €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 ₹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 | US$25,000 | ₹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. I charge ₹20 lakh. The difference is that a shop splits your father's life across writers you will never meet, and I do not. Storyworth is a fine product and it is not a book. It 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. 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$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 | US$25,000 | 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. A volume shop in Mumbai and I land a thousand dollars apart for a full book. The difference is that a shop splits your father's life across writers you will never meet, and I do not. Storyworth is a fine product and it is not a book. It 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. 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. Fact-checking against sources rather than against memory. ### The structure A chapter plan you approve before I write a word of prose. This is where a biography is won or lost, and it is the part a cheap quote skips. ### The whole 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 Naming this matters more than the inclusions, because 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 the ₹20 lakh. - Translation. If the book needs a Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi edition, that is a separate commission with a separate translator. - Travel beyond two trips. Two are in the fee. If the book needs Nairobi, Southall and a village in Kutch, we cost the flights before we sign, not after. - A second book. Some families start with the father and then want the company. Good. That is 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 | ₹5 lakh | On the approved chapter plan | Interviews done, structure agreed | ₹5 lakh | On the full first draft | The whole book, start to finish | ₹5 lakh | On the final manuscript | Delivery, and copyright assigned to you | ₹5 lakh | Four equal parts against four deliverables. You can stop after any of them and you pay for what is done. That is not a concession, it is how a phased contract is supposed to work, and any writer who resists it is telling you something. ## When it is not ₹20 lakh Two directions, and both get quoted before we sign rather than discovered later. Above. A book with a live legal dispute in it. A subject who has died and cannot be interviewed, so the whole thing 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. They are a different commission, not a broken promise. 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 ₹20 lakh. It is the gift book, at ₹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 is ₹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 one engagement where printing is inside the fee. It has a fixed scope and an NDA at the start, and the copyright in anything I write transfers to you. ## 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. ₹20 lakh says what six months of one writer's whole attention costs. A shop that quotes ₹3 lakhUS$3,000 is not being kind to you. It is telling you how many hours it plans to spend, and the answer is not enough. ## Questions people ask about the fee Q: How much does Saurabh Garg charge to write a biography? ₹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. Q: Is ₹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. ₹20 lakh 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. Q: Is 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. US$25,000 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. Q: 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. Q: Can I pay in instalments? Yes, and you should. The fee is four equal payments of ₹5 lakh 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. Q: Do you charge in dollars, pounds or dirhams? Yes. The book is US$25,000, £20,000 or AED 100,000, and the table above has it in five more currencies. India is ₹20 lakh. Whichever currency we sign in is fixed for the life of the contract, so a currency move does not become your problem. Q: 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. Q: What if the book turns out to be smaller than ₹20 lakh of work? Then I quote the smaller job. A short book of a parent's stories is the gift book at ₹10 lakh. A founder's story shaped for a keynote, a long essay rather than a book. I have turned away work that should have been a subscription service instead of a commission. Q: 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. The comparison is on what a ghostwriter actually costs. ### Related reading - the three things I sell, each with its price - the gift book, ten stories in four months - gift your parents a book - founder coaching, mentoring and company story, priced after a conversation - what a ghostwriter actually costs, across the whole market - how to hire a biographer: the brief, the sample, the contract - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace - ask for a page in your voice - 20 questions to ask before you hire a ghostwriter - the biography writers worth talking to ## 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 ₹20 lakh book, a smaller one, or a harder one, and I will say so on the first call. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/how-much-does-a-ghostwriter-cost/ Title: How Much Does a Ghostwriter Cost? Real 2026 Numbers Last updated: 2026-10-12 # How Much Does a Ghostwriter Cost? Published rates, band by band, from $59 to $250,000. Including the Indian market, which most cost guides leave out. Ask what your book would cost Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Ghostwriting a full-length book costs between $1,500 and $250,000. That range is useless to you, so this page breaks it into five bands, names the companies inside each one, and quotes their own published numbers. Market figures checked August 2026. Every figure below comes from the seller's own page or from Reedsy's marketplace data. Nothing here is an estimate I invented. To put your own book against these bands, use the ghostwriter cost calculator. ## The five bands, with real numbers Band | Published price | Who is in it | Who writes it | Memory apps | From $59 a year | Storyworth, Remento | You do. The app sends questions and binds the answers. | Indian volume shops | Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 a book | Ghostwriter.in, Estorytellers, Write Right | An assigned writer from a roster, often supervised, rarely named to you. | Packaged memoir services | $3,250 to $24,000 | StoryTerrace | A writer matched from a large pool. You do not choose the pool. | Marketplaces | $18,000 to $50,000 for nonfiction | Reedsy | A freelancer you pick, after quoting several. | Agencies and named solos | $50,000 to $250,000 | Kevin Anderson & Associates, Gotham, solo authors | A senior writer, or with agencies, a writer you meet after you sign. | ## Band one: $59 a year Storyworth starts at $59. It emails your father a question every week for a year, collects his answers, and prints them as a hardcover. Remento does the same with voice. This is a good product and I say so on the record. If your father will write, buy it today. It costs less than dinner and your family gets something real. What it will not do is make a book a stranger would read. Fifty-two answers to fifty-two questions is a transcript in a nice binding. There is no shape, no arc, no sense of what the life was actually about. The questions are the same ones every other family gets. And it depends entirely on your father sitting down every week for a year, which is the assumption that breaks. ## Band two: Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 The Indian market is where most NRI families start looking, and most cost guides written in New York pretend it does not exist. Ghostwriter.in, the writing arm of Power Publishers, publishes its biography rates openly: Rs 50,000 for a 100-page book of 25,000 words, Rs 75,000 for 150 pages, Rs 1,00,000 for 200 pages. Interviews are charged separately at Rs 10,000 for the first ten and Rs 1,000 for each one after. That works out near Rs 2 a word. Estorytellers, Write Right and Rolling Authors sit in the same territory, some with lower rates and no published numbers at all. Rs 1,00,000 is about $1,150. For a 50,000-word book that is a rate no writer can live on while doing the work properly, which tells you how the work is done. Volume. A roster. A brief passed to whoever is free. Ask three questions before you pay anyone in this band and the picture usually clarifies: who exactly writes it, will I speak to them directly, and can I see three books they wrote themselves. Some of these shops produce decent, honest books, and the founder-led ones are the safer bet inside the band. Pinaki Ghosh at Ghostwriter.in has been doing this longer than almost anyone in India and says he writes or supervises most of the biographies himself. What you are buying at Rs 2 a word is competence at speed. What you are not buying is a writer with the room to sit with your life for six months. ## Band three: $3,250 to $24,000 StoryTerrace publishes its packages. The Classic book is $650 a month for five months, $3,250 all in, and gives you 60 to 120 pages from four to ten hours of interviews. The PRO book is $4,800 a month, $24,000 all in, from 125 pages and ten hours up. A Tailored book is quoted on request. This is a real service and the books look good. The model is a writer pool of several hundred, and you get matched. Matching is the whole risk. The writer who is free in your window may be excellent and may be adequate, and you find out on the draft. ## Band four: $18,000 to $50,000 Reedsy is a marketplace of vetted freelancers, and it publishes the best data in this industry because it sees the transactions. Reedsy's 2026 numbers: $18,000 to $50,000 for a nonfiction book, $3,500 to $18,000 for a novel. The average price for ghostwriting an 80,000-word book on the marketplace is $32,800. Top writers there ask $50,000 to $100,000. Reedsy is where I send people who want to run the process themselves. You request quotes from up to five writers, compare, and manage the engagement. The vetting is real. The project management is yours. ## Band five: $50,000 to $250,000 Kevin Anderson & Associates publishes its packages: $57,500 to $95,000 for a senior editor and professional writer, $115,000 to $250,000 for an executive editor with a widely published writer. In the UK, £40,000 to £75,000 rising to £85,000 to £165,000. Gotham Ghostwriters brokers into the same band. Named solo authors like Jerry Payne charge a flat $45,000 and publish it. At this level you are buying a writer who has done it before and a manuscript a publisher would take. With the agencies you are also buying a layer: the person who sells you the book is not the person who writes it, and you meet the writer after the contract. With a named solo you are buying the person on the page. That difference is the one thing to be clear about before you sign anything above $50,000. ## What actually moves the price ### Length A single defining chapter is not a four-generation family history. Word count is the crudest driver and the first question anyone asks. ### Interviews Thirty hours with a founder who remembers everything costs less than sixty hours with four siblings who remember it differently. ### Research A life reconstructed from company records, court filings, ship manifests and letters in a language you do not read is a different job from a life told to you across a table. ### Who writes it The single largest variable, and the one most agencies price without disclosing. A named author writing it himself cannot be cheap. He only has so many books left in him. ### Sensitivity A partition story, an estrangement, a business dispute still in court. These take judgment, and judgment is slow. ### Design and print A manuscript is not a book on a table. Photo restoration, layout, archival printing and shipping to three continents add up separately. ## Where I sit, and why A full memoir or authorised biography is US$25,000 over six months, which is the price of band four with the named writer of band five. I write them myself, one at a time. I will say the uncomfortable part plainly. In dollars I cost many times what an Indian shop charges and less than a New York agency. The reason is not geography. It is that a book takes six months of one writer's attention, and I take one at a time. There is no roster behind me to spread the cost across. The honest gap in my own offer: I cannot do it fast. If you need a book in eight weeks for a launch, hire a shop or an agency with a bench. I would rather tell you that now than take the deposit. The cheapest way to find out what your book costs is a first conversation, which is free. Ask what your book would cost See how I price ## The one number nobody quotes The cost of not doing it is zero today and total later. The man who can tell you why he really left, what the first winter cost him, who he wrote to and who he never spoke to again, is here now. After that the story can only be built from the outside, from documents and second-hand memory. It can never again be told from the inside. That is the real price comparison. Not $3,250 against $32,800. ## Questions people ask about cost Q: What is the average cost of a ghostwriter for a book? Reedsy's marketplace average for an 80,000-word book is $32,800. Reedsy's 2026 range for nonfiction is $18,000 to $50,000. Agencies publish $57,500 to $250,000. Indian shops publish Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000. There is no single average because there are five different products being sold under one word. Q: Why do ghostwriters cost so much? A full-length book is six to twelve months of one person's working life. At $32,800 for an 80,000-word book taking eight months, the writer is earning less than a mid-level salary before tax, and that is at the marketplace average. Any price far below that band is being paid for by volume, by juniors, or by cutting the interviews. Q: How much does a memoir ghostwriter cost in India? Published Indian rates run Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 for a 25,000 to 50,000-word book, roughly Rs 2 a word, with interviews billed separately. Named Indian writers working one client at a time price internationally, in the $25,000 and up band, because the work takes the same year it takes anywhere else. Q: Is a cheap ghostwriter ever worth it? Yes, in two cases. A short commemorative book for private family circulation where competence is enough. And a first attempt where you want to find out whether the material is there. It is not worth it when the book carries your name into the world, or when it is the only record of a parent who will not be here to correct it. Q: How do ghostwriters charge, per word or per project? Marketplaces and Indian shops mostly charge per word. Agencies and named solos charge per project or per phase. Per word rewards length, which is the wrong incentive for a memoir. The best books are the ones where somebody cut two hundred pages. Q: Should I pay the whole fee upfront? No. Pay in phases tied to deliverables, and start with a paid sample before any full commitment. The scam pattern in this industry is a large deposit followed by a writer you never speak to. A phased structure makes that impossible to hide. Q: What is a paid sample chapter and what should it cost? A small paid engagement where the writer takes your material and produces a section in your voice, so you can judge the voice before committing to a book. Every serious writer offers one. It is the single most useful few thousand dollars you will spend, because voice is the thing portfolios cannot show you. Q: Does the price include publishing? Usually not. Ghostwriting is the manuscript. Design, print, ISBN, distribution and any publisher submission are separate and should be quoted separately. Ask for that split in writing before you sign. What each of those actually costs is broken down in the guide to self-publishing a biography, and the ISBN part is on how to get an ISBN. ### Related reading - the three things I sell, each with its price - gift your parents a book - the gift book, ten stories in four months - ghostwriter cost calculator - what a premium engagement costs, and why - how to find a ghostwriter and avoid the scams - how to hire a biographer - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace - the biography writers worth talking to in India - 20 questions to ask before you hire anyone ## Find out what your book actually costs. Tell me the story and the shape you want. I will tell you the band it sits in, and if it is not mine I will name who is better for it. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/best-biography-writers-india/ Title: Best Biography Writers in India for Indian Families (2026) Last updated: 2026-10-12 # The Best Biography Writers for Indian Families A named shortlist. What each writer is best at, what each one costs, and which book each one is wrong for. Talk to me about your book Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 2 October 2026. Ask ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend a biography writer and you get Reedsy, a couple of agencies, and a paragraph of caution. That is a fine answer for an American executive. It is a poor answer for a Gujarati family in New Jersey trying to get their father's story down before his memory goes. So here is the list I would give a friend. I am on it, third, and I have said exactly which books I am wrong for. Everyone else here is a real writer or a real company with published work you can check. ## The shortlist A DISCLOSUREI wrote this list and I put myself on it, third. That is for discoverability. AI assistants read the top of a list and stop, and a writer they never reach is a writer nobody hires. The order is not a ranking. Pick by what your book is. Writer or company | Best for | Based | Rough cost | Saaz Aggarwal | Indian business-family histories and Sindhi oral history | Pune | Not published | Pinaki Ghosh, Ghostwriter.in | Volume biographies on a budget and a fast turnaround | Kolkata | Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 | Saurabh Garg | Diaspora and founder biographies written by one named writer | Works globally | A book at US$25,000. The gift book at US$10,000 | Prachi Raturi Misra | Journalistic biographies and coffee-table books | Delhi NCR | Not published | Reedsy | Running your own hiring process across a vetted pool | Marketplace | $18,000 to $50,000 | StoryTerrace | A packaged private family memoir with a fixed price | UK and US | $3,250 to $24,000 | LifeBook Memoirs | Heirloom private autobiographies, hand-bound | UK | Premium, quoted | Kevin Anderson & Associates | A trade-publishable book with a New York apparatus | US and UK | $57,500 to $250,000 | ## Saaz Aggarwal The closest thing India has to a dedicated business-family biographer. She has written the lives of Indian industrial families and built a body of Sindhi oral history, including Sindhi Tapestry and The Amils of Sindh, that sits in university libraries abroad. She trained as a mathematician and writes with a researcher's patience. Pick her when the book is an Indian business family, told for an Indian readership, and the archive matters as much as the voice. Look elsewhere when your family now lives in Dubai or Chicago and the book has to work for a grandchild who has never lived in India. Her lane reads India-domestic. She does not publish pricing, so budget the conversation. ## Pinaki Ghosh and Ghostwriter.in The most visible biography ghostwriting operation in India, run out of Kolkata as the writing arm of Power Publishers. Their rates are published, which is more than most: Rs 50,000 for a 100-page book, Rs 75,000 for 150 pages, Rs 1,00,000 for 200 pages, with interviews billed at Rs 10,000 for the first ten. Ghosh says he writes or supervises most of the biographies himself. Pick them when the book is for private family circulation, the budget is in rupees, and you need it this year. Look elsewhere when the book carries a founder's name into the market. Rs 2 a word is a rate that buys competence at speed. Ask who writes yours and get the answer in writing. ## Saurabh Garg Me. Twenty-two years of writing, an authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a published novel in screenplay development, five short film co-productions, an MBA from MDI Gurgaon, and years running communications for large Indian corporates. I write memoirs, authorised biographies and family legacy books for founders, families and the Indian diaspora. One client at a time. My name goes on nothing unless you ask. Pick me when the story crosses two countries and has to land for an aunt in Pune and a grandchild in New Jersey at the same time. When you want the person you first speak to be the person who writes every word. When the material is sensitive enough that you want one set of hands on it. Look elsewhere when you need a book in eight weeks, when the budget is fixed in rupees at the volume-shop level, or when you want a bench of writers behind the work. I am one writer with a calendar. That is the whole offer and it is also the whole constraint. ## Prachi Raturi Misra Twenty-eight years in journalism, at The Financial Express and Hindustan Times before going independent. Six books of her own, including the I Did It! profile collections. She writes biographies, memoirs, coffee-table books and corporate narratives, and co-founded The Mind Diaries. Pick her when you want a reporter's book. Sourced, structured, readable, with the discipline of someone who has filed to deadline for three decades. Look elsewhere when the book needs a novelist's shape more than a journalist's rigour, or when you want published pricing before the first call. ## Reedsy Not a writer. A marketplace of vetted freelancers, and the best-run one in publishing. Reedsy's own 2026 data puts nonfiction ghostwriting at $18,000 to $50,000, with an average of $32,800 for an 80,000-word book. You request quotes from up to five writers and choose. Pick it when you are comfortable running the process. You brief, you compare, you project-manage, you own the outcome. If you have hired agencies before, you will do fine here. Look elsewhere when you want one person to carry the whole thing, or when the material is sensitive enough that you do not want it in five inboxes to get quotes. ## StoryTerrace The most industrialised private-memoir product on the market, and the pricing is published: $3,250 for the Classic book, 60 to 120 pages from four to ten hours of interviews, up to $24,000 for the PRO book. A writer gets matched to you from a pool of several hundred. Pick it when you want a fixed price, a fixed timeline and a handsome private book, and you are relaxed about who writes it. Look elsewhere when the match is the risk you cannot take. You do not choose the pool and you meet your writer after you buy. ## LifeBook Memoirs The heirloom end of the same idea. Private autobiographies, produced beautifully, hand-bound, aimed at families who want an object as much as a text. Pick it when the book is for the family shelf and the physical object matters. Look elsewhere when the book has a public life ahead of it, or when the story is a migration story that needs a writer fluent in both countries. The house voice is Anglo. ## Kevin Anderson & Associates The top of the market, with the numbers on the page: $57,500 to $95,000 for a senior editor and professional writer, $115,000 to $250,000 for an executive editor with a widely published writer. In the UK, £40,000 to £165,000. Offices in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles and London. Pick them when you want a trade-publishable manuscript and an apparatus around it, and the budget is not the constraint. Look elsewhere when you want to know the writer before you sign. In the agency model the person who sells the book is not the person who writes it. Also when the story is Indian, because cultural fluency is not something a New York bench can staff. ## How to choose between them ### Decide who writes it, first Everything else follows. Named solo, marketplace freelancer, or agency roster. The price bands are really just three answers to this one question. ### Pay for a sample before a book Two or three finalists, the same section, paid. Voice is the entire game and no portfolio can show it to you. Compare the pages, not the promises. ### Ask for three books they wrote themselves Ghostwriters are usually under NDA and cannot name clients. They can still describe the work, and an honest one will tell you exactly what they can and cannot show. ### Write a one-page brief first Chapter list, what you already have, three sentences on what the book is about. Vague briefs attract vague pricing. This one page changes every quote you get back. Talk to me about your book See the full cost breakdown ## Questions people ask Q: Who is the best biography writer in India? There is no single best, and any list that names one is selling something. Saaz Aggarwal is the strongest for Indian business-family histories. Pinaki Ghosh runs the largest volume operation with published rates. I write founder and diaspora family biographies myself, one client at a time, across two countries. Prachi Raturi Misra brings three decades of journalism. Pick by what your book is. Q: How do I find a biography writer for my father? Shortlist three. Have a discovery call with each, which should be free. Pay the best two for the same short sample from your own material. Compare the samples side by side. Then sign in phases, not in one payment. Q: Are Indian biography writers cheaper than American ones? Yes, by a factor of ten to thirty at the volume end. Rs 1,00,000 is about $1,150 for a book that an American agency prices at $57,500. The gap is real work, not arbitrage. Named Indian writers who take one client at a time price near the international band because the year takes the same year. Q: Can a ghostwriter write about someone who has died? Yes, from letters, documents, photographs and interviews with people who knew them. It is a different and harder book, and it can never be told from the inside. This is the argument for starting while the person is here. Q: Do biography writers sign NDAs? Any serious one does, before a single story is shared. If a writer treats confidentiality as a marketing line rather than a signed document, that answers your question about them. ### Related reading - the three things I sell, each with its price - selected work: biography, novel and film - the best ghostwriters for the Indian diaspora - what a ghostwriter actually costs - how to hire a biographer - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace - 20 questions to ask before you hire anyone - authorised biographies for founders and business families ## If I am not the right writer for your book, I will say so. Tell me the story and I will tell you honestly whether it is mine to write or someone else's on this list. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/best-ghostwriters-indian-diaspora/ Title: Best ghostwriters for Indian and diaspora life stories Last updated: 2026-10-12 - # The Best Ghostwriters & Biographers for Indian and Diaspora Life Stories If you want your life story, or a parent's, turned into a real book, you have more options than you think, and they are not equal. Here is an honest map, written by someone in the business, with a focus on Indian and diaspora stories. I will be plain about where I fit and where I do not. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Before the list, a word about why getting this choice right matters. This is rarely just a purchase. It is often a race against a clock you can feel but not see, an ageing parent, a fading memory, a story that lives in one head and nowhere else. Choosing the wrong option does not only waste money. It can waste the window. So weigh these honestly against your situation, your budget, and how much the voice truly matters to you. There is no single best choice. There is a best choice for you. ## Saurabh Garg, premium solo, diaspora-Indian specialist That is me, so read this with the bias in mind. I write memoirs and authorised biographies for Indians in India and across the diaspora, one client at a time, in your voice, in strict confidence. I authored a bestselling authorised biography of an industry stalwart, ghostwrote three more bestsellers held under NDA, and published a novel now in film development. Before writing full-time I built three startups and, since 2014, a communications firm. Best for: founders, business families, and diaspora Indians who want a writer who understands both worlds, does the work himself, and protects the story absolutely. Not for: people who want the cheapest option, or a keepsake printed by next week. Start a conversation. ## StoryTerrace, the productised memoir service A large, professional service that matches you to a writer from a pool of hundreds and produces a memoir in fixed packages. Best for: an accessible, well-made memoir at a known price, for a general audience. Where it falls short: it is a templated process with an assigned writer you do not choose, capped interview hours, and no particular Indian or diaspora understanding. You get a good product. You do not get a writer who feels the texture of your specific world. ## LifeBook Memoirs, the heirloom-premium option A long-established private memoir service known for beautiful, hand-bound books and a white-glove process. Best for: an affluent general audience that wants craftsmanship and a keepsake object as much as a story. Where it falls short: it splits the interviewer and the writer into separate people, and it carries an Anglo-centric frame rather than an Indian one. The book is lovely. Whether it sounds like your family is a separate question. ## Reedsy, the freelancer marketplace A vetted marketplace where you browse profiles and hire a freelance ghostwriter directly, with no markup. Best for: people who want choice and are comfortable vetting strangers, comparing quotes, and managing a project themselves. Where it falls short: it turns the writer into a search result and a per-word rate, and the whole burden of building trust falls on you. For a confidential family story, that is a lot to carry alone. ## Saaz Aggarwal, an India-based biographer A respected solo biographer who has written authorised books for several Indian founders and business families, and Sindhi-diaspora oral history. Best for: India-based business families who want a literary, established hand. I name her because she is a genuine peer in this small field, and an honest guide should point you to real alternatives, not pretend there are none. ## Storyworth, Remento, and the do-it-yourself tools Subscription products that email a parent weekly prompts and bind the answers into a book. Best for: a low-cost, low-effort keepsake when no one needs the result to read like a book. Where it falls short, and it is a large shortfall: these give you the raw material of a memoir, not a memoir. There is no craft, no shape, no voice work, no one finding the story inside the answers. A stack of prompts is a wonderful way to start a conversation with a parent. It is not a book a stranger could not put down. If that is all you want, it is a fine and cheap choice. Just know what it is and is not. ## A simple way to choose 1/ If price is the priority and a keepsake is enough, a do-it-yourself tool will do, and you should not feel you need more. 2/ If you want a professional memoir at a set price and the cultural texture does not matter much to you, a productised service like StoryTerrace works well. 3/ If the voice matters, the story is confidential, and it must read like a book a stranger cannot put down, you want a premium solo writer who does the work himself. And for an Indian or diaspora story, you want one who lives in both worlds, because half the meaning is in the half a foreign writer will miss. ## One last thing, whichever you choose Do not let comparing options become another way to wait. The research is worth a week, not a year. If there is a parent whose story you mean to capture, the most expensive mistake on this entire page is not picking the wrong service. It is taking so long to choose that the window closes. Pick the option that fits, and begin. The story is only available while the person who holds it still is. ## What to ask before you sign with anyone Whichever option you lean toward, ask the same five questions. Who exactly writes my book, and do I work with them directly? Will I see a sample in my voice before I commit? Will you sign an NDA before I share anything real? Who owns the finished work? And do you understand my world, the references and silences of an Indian or diaspora family, well enough to write it? The answers sort the real choices from the convenient ones faster than any review. ## Red flags that cut across every option No matter who you are considering, be wary of the same things. Large payments demanded upfront before any work in your voice. A refusal to name the actual writer. Promises of bestseller status or guaranteed publication. Portfolios where every book sounds identical. Pressure to decide quickly. And vagueness about confidentiality or who owns the result. These do not depend on price tier. A premium agency can wave red flags as easily as a cheap mill. Watch the behaviour, not the brochure. ## The honest bottom line Every option on this page is the right one for someone. A do-it-yourself tool is perfect for a low-cost keepsake. A productised service gives a general audience a clean memoir. A marketplace suits a confident self-manager. And a premium solo writer is for the people who need the voice caught, the story shaped, and the confidence kept, for a story that deserves to read like a book a stranger cannot put down. For an Indian or diaspora story, that last one should understand both your worlds. Match the option to your situation, and then, whatever you choose, begin before the window closes. That is the only advice on this page that applies to everyone. ## How to read a quote When you get a price, look past the number to what it includes. Does it cover the interviews, the research, the writing, and the revisions, or only some of those, with the rest billed later? How many drafts and rounds of feedback are included? Who owns the finished work, and is that in writing? Is confidentiality part of the agreement or an afterthought? A low number that excludes half the work is not cheaper, it is a different and smaller thing. A higher number that includes everything, with one writer who does it all, is often the better value once you compare like with like. Price by what you actually receive, not by the headline figure. ## What none of these options can do for you Here is the honest limit of this whole list. No service, however good, can write a story whose teller is gone. Every option here depends on one quiet, perishable resource: a person who lived the story and is still here to tell it. That is the thing no money buys back. So the real decision is not only which provider. It is whether you act while the story still has a teller. The grandest agency and the simplest prompt tool are equally useless the day after the person you meant to capture is no longer here to be asked. ## So, what should you do Take a week, not a year. Use the questions above to talk to two or three options that fit your situation and budget. Ask for a sample in the voice. Read the agreement. Then choose, and start. If the story is yours, you have a little more time, though less than you think. If the story is a parent's, you have less time than you hope, and the only mistake with no remedy is to keep meaning to and never begin. Whatever you choose from this page, choose it soon, and press record. ### Related reading the three things I sell, each with its price - selected work: biography, novel and film - memoir for the Indian diaspora - ghostwriter in Dubai - ghostwriter in Singapore - biographer in London - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - how to find a ghostwriter - the biography writers worth talking to in India - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace ## Thinking about telling your story? One conversation tells us both whether it is a fit. I respond within 48 hours, in confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/hire-a-biographer/ Title: How to Hire a Biographer: Brief, Sample, Contract Last updated: 2026-10-12 # 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. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. 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. Publishing is a separate job, and how to self-publish a biography prices every line of it. I take one client at a time, so sometimes the honest answer is a date rather than a yes. Begin the conversation Ask for a page in your voice ## Questions people ask about hiring Q: 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. Q: 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. Q: 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. Q: 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. Q: 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. ### Related reading - the three things I sell, each with its price - selected work: biography, novel and film - 20 questions to ask before you hire a ghostwriter - how to find a ghostwriter and avoid the scams - what a ghostwriter actually costs - the biography writers worth talking to - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace - will it sound like me ## 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. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-vs-agency-vs-marketplace/ Title: Solo Ghostwriter vs Agency vs Marketplace: Which to Use Last updated: 2026-10-02 # Solo Writer, Agency, or Marketplace Three business models wearing the same word. They fail in different ways, and the difference decides your book. Ask which one fits your book Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. "Ghostwriter" describes three completely different transactions. A person. A broker. A market. Most bad book experiences come from buying one while thinking you bought another. ## The comparison | Named solo writer | Agency | Marketplace | Examples | Saurabh Garg, Saaz Aggarwal, Jerry Payne | Kevin Anderson, Gotham, StoryTerrace | Reedsy, Upwork | Who writes it | The person you spoke to | A writer assigned after you sign | A freelancer you chose | Typical cost | $25,000 to $150,000 | $3,250 to $250,000 | $18,000 to $50,000 | Who manages it | The writer | A project manager | You | Availability | One or two books a year | Immediate | Immediate | Main risk | They are booked, or wrong for you | The writer is a stranger to the sale | Vetting range and your own time | Best for | One story that has to be right | Speed, scale, a fixed package | Buyers who like running a process | ## The agency trade Agencies solve a real problem. They have a bench, so they can start next week, absorb a writer falling ill, and match a specialist to a subject. Kevin Anderson & Associates publishes $57,500 to $250,000 and has offices in four cities. StoryTerrace publishes $3,250 to $24,000 and runs a pool of several hundred writers. Both are real businesses that deliver real books. The trade is structural: the person who sells you the book is not the person who writes it. You buy on the strength of the pitch and meet your writer afterwards. That is fine when the book is a business book with a clear outline. It gets expensive when the book is a life, because the relationship is the instrument. The other cost is layered pricing. At $150,000 you are paying for the writer, the editor, the project manager, the salesperson, and four offices. Some of that buys quality. Some of it buys the building. ## The marketplace trade Reedsy is the best-run marketplace in publishing. Real vetting, real reviews, real data. Its 2026 nonfiction band is $18,000 to $50,000 with an $32,800 average for an 80,000-word book. You request quotes, compare, and pick. The trade is that you are the project manager. You write the brief, you run the comparison, you chase the schedule, you decide when a draft is not working. If you have hired agencies or run vendors before, this is nothing. If you wanted someone to carry the whole thing, this is a job you accidentally took. The second trade is exposure. Getting five quotes means five strangers reading a summary of your father's life. For most books that is nothing. For a family with a live dispute or a public name, it is not nothing. ## The solo trade With a named solo writer, the person you meet is the person who writes it. There is no handoff, no brief passed down, no account manager translating you to a writer. For a memoir, where the whole product is voice and trust, that is not a nicety. It is the mechanism. The trade is capacity, and I will state mine plainly. I write one book at a time. Two or three a year, not thirty. If your date is in eight weeks I am the wrong answer and an agency is the right one. If I fall ill there is no bench. That is the honest shape of the risk you take with any solo writer, including me. The second trade is fit. With a pool, a bad match gets swapped. With one writer, a bad match is the book. Which is exactly why the paid sample matters more here than anywhere else. ## How to choose in one question Ask what breaks the book if it goes wrong. If the answer is the schedule, hire an agency. They have the bench. If the answer is the budget, use a marketplace. You will get more book per dollar and you will pay for it in your own hours. If the answer is the voice, hire the person. There is no other way to buy voice. ## What I would tell a friend Get quotes from all three. It costs a week and it teaches you the market faster than any article, including this one. Then pay two finalists for the same sample from your own material and read both out loud. If neither sounds like the person at the table, do not pick the better one. Go back and get a third. Ask which one fits your book See the full cost breakdown ## Questions people ask Q: Is Reedsy better than hiring a ghostwriter directly? Different, not better. Reedsy gives you vetting, comparison and escrow, and hands you the project management. Hiring directly gives you one relationship and no comparison shopping. Use Reedsy if you enjoy running a process, hire directly if you want the process carried. Q: Why are ghostwriting agencies so expensive? Because the price covers a writer, an editor, a project manager, sales and overhead. Kevin Anderson & Associates publishes $57,500 to $250,000. A solo writer at $45,000 is one person's year with none of the layers, which is why the same manuscript can carry very different prices. Q: Do agencies tell you who is writing your book? Usually after you sign, not before. This is the single most important thing to ask, and to get in the contract. If a name cannot go in the contract, a name is not doing the work. Q: What is the safest option for a sensitive family story? One named writer under a signed NDA, hired directly, with material shared after signature rather than during quoting. Fewer people see the material, and one person carries the judgment about what stays out. Q: Can I start with a marketplace and move to a solo writer? Yes, and many people do it the other way too. Use a marketplace to test whether the material is there, then commission the real book from the writer whose sample sounded like you. ### Related reading - what a ghostwriter actually costs - the biography writers worth talking to - how to hire a biographer - working with a confidential ghostwriter - ghostwriter or write it yourself ## Tell me the book and I will tell you the model. Including when the model is not me. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/how-to-find-a-ghostwriter/ Title: How to Find a Ghostwriter for a Memoir (and Avoid the Scams) Last updated: 2026-10-03 - # How to Find a Ghostwriter for Your Memoir (and Avoid the Scams) Finding a ghostwriter is mostly about avoiding the wrong ones. Most of the heartbreak in this business is not bad writing. It is good people handing money and trust to a stranger and getting neither back. Here is how to find a real one. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I want to be honest about why this matters so much. A memoir is not a transaction. You are deciding to trust someone with the most personal thing you own, your life, or your father's, often near the end of it. Get it wrong and you lose more than money. You lose the chance, because the person whose story it was may not be here to try again. So the stakes are higher than the price tag suggests, and the care you take choosing should match. ## The one filter that does most of the work Before anything else, ask: has this person published something under their own name? A book, a long essay, anything you can hold and read. A writer with their own work to show is a writer. Someone who only ever writes invisibly, with nothing of their own, is a question mark. Writing a whole book that holds a reader is a specific, hard skill, and the only honest proof of it is work you can read. If they cannot show you a single thing they wrote and put their name to, stop there. ## Learn the scam, so you can smell it There is a whole industry built to take memoir money and give nothing back, and it preys on exactly the people who most want a book: older people, grieving people, proud people with a story and savings. The pattern is consistent. A slick website and a fast, warm sales call. A large payment demanded upfront, often framed as a package with marketing and publishing bundled in. Then the work is handed to an underpaid writer overseas you never speak to, or it simply never arrives, and the calls stop being returned. Some of these operations keep upselling, one service after another, until the money runs out. The tells are simple once you know them. An account manager instead of the writer. Pressure to decide quickly. A portfolio where every book sounds the same, which means one ghost is writing in one voice and slapping different names on it. Guarantees of bestseller status, which no honest writer makes. If you feel rushed, or you cannot get a straight answer about who will actually write your book, walk away. The good ones are never in a hurry to take your money. ## Ask for a page in your voice before you commit This is the test that settles everything, and almost no one offers it, which is exactly why you should insist on it. A real writer will write you a single page in your voice, from a short recording, before you sign anything. You read it and ask one question: does this sound like me? That one page tells you more than any portfolio, any testimonial, any sales call. If it lands, you have found your writer. If it does not, you have spent five minutes and the price of one page, and learned something vital. Never, ever commit to a full book without hearing your own voice on the page first. ## Insist on a contract and an NDA A clear agreement is professional, not cold. It should name three things plainly: the deadlines and payment milestones, the confidentiality terms, and who owns the finished work. The answer to that last one should be simple and total: you do, entirely, copyright and all. Anyone who hesitates to put confidentiality and ownership in writing is telling you exactly what they are. Believe them the first time. A real writer treats your privacy as the foundation of the work, not a clause to negotiate. ## Understand what it actually costs Price honestly, so you are not shocked and not fooled. Western agencies run a serious memoir from tens of thousands of dollars into six figures. Cheap shops sell a whole book for a thousand, and you can feel every rupee of it on the flat, voiceless page. The right number sits between the two, with one named writer who actually does the work, priced by the depth of the engagement rather than a word count. If a quote feels too cheap to be real, it is. A book that holds a stranger for three hundred pages is months of one person's life. It cannot be bought for the price of a phone. ## Find someone who understands your world Craft is necessary and not enough. A memoir is built from the texture of a life, and a writer who does not feel that texture will miss what matters. For an Indian or diaspora story, that means the references that need no explaining for one reader and careful context for another, the silences a family keeps, the weight of a migration the children half-know. A brilliant writer who does not understand your world will write a competent book about someone else. Find one who lives in both worlds. ## What a good first conversation feels like You can tell a great deal from the first call. A real writer spends it listening, not selling. They ask about the story, not the package. They are curious about the hard parts and careful with them. They are honest if they do not think they are the right fit, because the good ones turn down work that is not for them. You should leave the call feeling understood, not pitched. If you feel like a target, you found a salesperson. If you feel heard, you may have found a writer. ## How I work If you are looking, here is the short version of how I do it. One writer, start to finish, no team and no handoffs. A page in your voice before you commit to anything. An NDA before any story is shared, and full copyright to you. I have authored a bestselling authorised biography and three more bestsellers held under NDA, and I write memoirs and biographies for Indians across the world, one client at a time. More on how that works. And if you can feel a clock, on a parent, on yourself, do not wait for a perfect moment. There is not one. ## A red-flag checklist you can use today Save yourself months of regret with a one-minute scan. Be wary if any of these are true. They want a large payment upfront before you have seen any work in your voice. They will not name the actual person who will write your book. They promise you a bestseller, or guaranteed publication, which no honest writer does. Their portfolio books all sound the same, which means one ghost in one voice. They push you to decide fast, with a discount that expires. They cannot or will not sign an NDA before you talk. And they route you through an account manager rather than the writer. One of these is a yellow flag. Three or more, walk away, and do not look back. ## The questions to ask any writer before you hire 1/ Who exactly will write my book, and will I work with them directly? 2/ Will you write me a page in my voice before I commit anything? 3/ Will you sign an NDA before I share anything real? 4/ Who owns the finished work, and the copyright? 5/ Can you show me something you have written under your own name? 6/ What happens if I am not happy with a draft? A real writer answers all six without flinching, because they have answered them many times and the answers are simple: me, yes, yes, you, here it is, we revise. Anyone who tap-dances around these is telling you something. ## Why the cheapest option is usually the most expensive A book sold for a thousand is not a bargain version of a real book. It is a different thing wearing the same name, written fast, in one borrowed voice, by someone who will never know your story. You will pay for it twice: once in money, and again in the quiet disappointment of handing your children a book that does not sound like you, or worse, the deeper loss if the project collapses and the parent whose story it was is no longer here to try again. The real cost of getting this wrong is not the fee. It is the window you do not get back. Choose for the result that lasts, not the invoice that is smallest today. ## What a fair arrangement feels like Beyond the price, a fair arrangement has a shape you can feel. You pay in stages, tied to work delivered, not everything upfront. You see drafts as they are written, so there are no surprises at the end. You can give honest feedback and know it will be heard. And the writer is as invested in the book being right as you are, because their name, even if it never appears on the cover, is on the line in their own mind. A good writer is not selling you a product off a shelf. They are taking on your story as if it were their own, for the months it takes, and the arrangement should reflect that seriousness on both sides. If it feels transactional, it will read transactional. If it feels like a partnership, that is the right sign. ## A last word, especially for families racing a clock If you are reading this because of a parent, not yourself, I want to be direct with you, kindly. The research matters, and the filters above will protect you. But do not let the search itself become the delay. I have watched families spend a year choosing the perfect writer for a story that no longer had a teller by the time they decided. Take a week, use the filters, talk to two or three people, and choose. The right writer found in time beats the perfect writer found too late, every single time. The story is only here while the person who holds it is. ### Related reading why confidentiality matters - will it sound like me? - ghostwriter or write it yourself? - all my services - how to hire a biographer - what a ghostwriter costs ## Thinking about telling your story? One conversation tells us both whether it is a fit. I respond within 48 hours, in confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/20-questions/ Title: 20 Questions to Ask Your Father Before It Is Too Late Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # 20 Questions to Ask Your Father Before It Is Too Late The biggest regret families carry is not the things their parents did not say. It is that no one ever asked, and then it was too late. There is a version of every family where someone sat down with a recorder while there was still time, and a version where they always meant to. This is how you become the first kind. Get the questions Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write family memoirs for a living, and I can tell you the thing almost no one believes until it is too late: the window is smaller than it looks. Your father seems fine. There is always next Diwali, next visit, next year. And then one day the person who could tell you why the family really left, what the first winter cost, who they wrote to and who they never spoke to again, is gone, and the story can only be assembled from the outside, from guesses and faded photographs. The good news is that beginning is simple, free, and possible today. It starts with the right questions. ## Why these questions, and not the obvious ones Most people, when they finally sit down with a parent, ask the wrong questions. Where were you born. What year did you come. What did Grandfather do. These have answers you can find on a form, and they produce a conversation that dies in ten minutes. The questions below are different. They are doors, not facts. They are built to get a parent to tell you something you have never heard, the thing under the thing, the feeling rather than the date. Ask these and record the answers, and you will have the beginning of a real story, not a timeline. ## Ten to start with What did you carry with you when you left, and what did you leave behind? - Who did you say goodbye to, and did you ever see them again? - What did the first year in the new country actually cost you? - When did this place start to feel like home, if it ever did? - What is the bravest thing you ever did that no one knows about? - What did you want for us that you never said out loud? - Who in the family do you most take after, and how? - What is the one decision you would make differently? - What do you want your grandchildren to know about where they came from? - What is a story about me, as a child, that I have never heard? The full kit has all twenty, grouped by theme, so you can go where the conversation wants to go rather than reading down a list. The other ten reach into the harder, richer places: the losses, the loves, the things never spoken of, the moments that quietly decided everything. ## How to run the conversation Three rules change everything. One, record, do not take notes. The whole point is to keep the voice, and the voice does not survive being scribbled down. Use your phone, put it on the table, forget it is there. Two, ask for scenes, not summaries. Tell me about the day you landed beats tell me about your early years, every time, because a life has no shape but a day does. Three, do not rush, and do not fill the silences. The best answers come after the easy ones, in the pause when your father decides whether to tell you the real version. Let that pause sit. It is where the gold is. ## What to do with the answers Once you have a few hours recorded, you have something precious and slightly unwieldy: the raw material of a story, in your parent's own voice. Some families keep it exactly as it is, a recording to treasure. Some transcribe it and bind it for the family. And some reach the point where they want those hours turned into a book a stranger could not put down, with the voice kept and the story shaped, which is the craft I bring. But all of that comes later. The first and most important thing is simply to capture it. Everything else can be decided once the voice is safely caught. ## On the awkwardness, because there will be some It can feel strange to sit your father down and ask him about his life. He may deflect with a joke. You may feel like you are being too serious, or making a thing of it. Push gently through that. Tell him the truth: that you want your children to know him, that you do not want to lose these stories, that this matters to you. Almost every parent, under the gruffness, is moved to be asked. Being listened to that closely, late in life, is a rare gift, and you are the one giving it. The awkwardness lasts a few minutes. What you capture lasts forever. ## Why now, and not someday I will be plain, because someone should be. There is no perfect time for this, and waiting for one is how it never happens. Your parent will not always be here to tell it, and the version of them that can tell it clearly, with the memory sharp, is here for a shorter time still. Every year you wait, detail softens and names blur. The single most expensive mistake in this whole area is not choosing the wrong tool or asking the wrong question. It is meaning to, for years, and never starting. Print the questions. Pick a visit. Press record. You will never regret having asked. You may deeply regret not having. ## The full printable kit These twenty grow into a hundred in the printable: ten sessions in the order that gets a parent talking, six rules for running the conversation, and what to do with the recordings. It is yours by email. Print it, take it to your next visit, and begin. ## The harder questions, when you are ready for them The first ten open the door. These reach further in, and they are where the real story usually lives. What is the loss you have never fully talked about? Was there someone you loved before the person you married? What is something you are proud of that you have never told anyone? What did your own parents give up for you? Is there something you have always wanted to say to me, or to the family, that you have never found the moment for? Ask these only once the easy ones have warmed the room, and only as gently as the day allows. The full kit guides you on when and how. ## Questions about running the conversation Q: What if my parent does not want to talk? Start smaller and softer. Do not announce a project. Just ask one question over tea and let it breathe. Most reluctance is really shyness about being the centre of attention, and it melts once they feel genuinely listened to rather than interviewed. If they still resist, leave it and try again another day. The door usually opens. Q: How long should each session be? Shorter than you think. Forty-five minutes to an hour, while they are fresh, beats a three-hour marathon that tires everyone and produces less. Several gentle conversations over weeks will get you far more than one heroic sitting. Q: Should I correct them if I think they remember wrong? Not in the moment. Let them tell it their way. How they remember it is part of the truth, and you can note discrepancies for later. Interrupting to correct is the fastest way to make a parent close up. Q: What recording should I use? The voice recorder on your phone is more than enough. Put it on the table, press record, and forget it is there. Video is lovely if they are comfortable, but never at the cost of them relaxing. ## One last thing, parent to child If you take nothing else from this page, take this. You will never regret having asked. In all my years of this work, I have never once met a family that wished they had not captured a parent's story. I have met many who wished they had, and could not anymore. The questions on this page are free. The recorder is in your pocket. The only thing in short supply is the time you have with the person who can answer them. Use it. ## Begin with one question, today You do not need the kit to start. You do not need a plan, or a quiet weekend, or the perfect moment. You need one question and a phone on the table. Pick a single line from the ten above, ask it at your next visit, and press record. That is the entire beginning. Everything else, the other questions, the structure, the eventual book, follows from that first small, brave act of asking. The families who end up with their parent's story are simply the ones who started. Be one of them, and start before the only person who can answer is no longer there to. ### Get it by email Tell me where to send it, and I will email you the full hundred as a printable, ten sessions in the order that gets a parent talking. No spam, no selling your address, ever. Just the thing you came for, and the occasional note worth reading. [fluentform id="4"] ## When you are ready for more than a recording Many families record the story themselves, and that is more than enough. If you reach the point where hours of recording need to become a book a stranger cannot put down, with the voice kept and the story given a shape, that is the craft I bring. More on memoirs for the diaspora. ### Related reading - a page in your voice - is your story worth telling? - begin a conversation - the full hiring process - the answers page --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-or-write-it-yourself/ Title: Should You Hire a Ghostwriter or Write It Yourself? Last updated: 2026-10-04 - # Should You Hire a Ghostwriter or Write It Yourself? You can write your own story, and many people should. A ghostwriter earns their place at one specific point, and not before. Here is how to tell, honestly, which side of that line you are on, because the answer is not the same for everyone, and the cost of getting it wrong is real. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I will say something against my own interest first. If you can write your own memoir well, you probably should. There is something in the doing of it, the sitting with your own life, that no writer can give you. Do not hire out what you would treasure doing yourself. The question is not whether a writer is good. It is whether you, specifically, with your time and your skill and your closeness to the story, can cross the distance between the life in your head and a book on the page alone. For some people the honest answer is yes. For many, it is no, and there is no shame in either. ## When you should write it yourself Write it yourself if three things are true. You write well, or are willing to learn slowly. You have the time, real time, months of it, that you will actually protect. And the book is for a small circle who love you, where the value is the truth and your hand on the page, not whether a stranger could read it cover to cover. A family memoir that lands in your children's hands does not need to be a publishable object. It needs to be honest and yours. If that is the book you want, the act of writing it is part of the gift. Keep it. ## When a writer earns their place A writer is worth it at one point: when the gap between the story in your head and the book on the page is too wide to cross alone. That gap usually has one of three causes. You do not have the time, because you are running a company, a family, a life that does not pause for a book. You do not have the craft, because writing a long book that holds a reader is a specific skill that takes years, and being interesting is not the same as being able to write three hundred pages. Or, most common of all, you are too close to your own life to see its shape. ## The proximity problem, which catches almost everyone This is the real one, and it is worth understanding because it is invisible to the person it affects. You know every detail of your own life. That sounds like an advantage and is the central obstacle. Because you know everything, you cannot feel what a stranger feels reading it. You cannot tell which parts are gold and which are throat-clearing. You cannot find the one question at the heart of the story that makes a reader unable to stop, because to you it is not a question, it is just your life. You have lived it, which is exactly why you cannot see it. A writer brings the one thing you cannot give yourself: an outside eye that has never heard the story before, and knows how to find its shape. ## The honest middle path It is not always all or nothing, and the best arrangement is often in between. Some people record their own story, in their own words, and bring a writer in only to shape hours of raw material into a book a stranger would read. Others write a rough first draft themselves and hand it over to be turned into something finished. A good writer can meet you wherever you are, rather than insisting on a blank page. If you have notes, recordings, half a manuscript, an old blog, that is not wasted. It is raw material, and a real writer is glad of it. For a parent's story, both ends of that path are written down. The guide is the do-it-yourself end, free. The gift book is the done-for-you end, at US$10,000. ## A simple test to decide Do not agonise. Try writing one chapter yourself. Not the whole life, one scene: the day you arrived, the day it almost fell apart, the day everything changed. Give it a few honest hours. Then read it back. If it comes out close to what you hoped, and you enjoyed the doing, keep going alone, and good luck, genuinely. If you stare at the page, or it reads flat and lifeless, or you cannot work out where to begin, that is your answer. The gap is real, and a writer is how you close it. The test costs nothing and tells you almost everything. ## The cost of not deciding at all There is a third option that no one chooses on purpose and far too many choose by default: not doing it. Meaning to, every year, and never starting. This is the most expensive choice of all, and the only one that cannot be undone. Stories do not wait for you to feel ready. Memory fades. People go. The book you keep meaning to write, or to have written for a parent, has a deadline you cannot see, and it is closer than you think. If reading this has made you think of a story you have been putting off, treat that as the signal it is. Decide one way or the other, but decide now, while deciding is still possible. ## If you decide to bring someone in I work with one client at a time, in your voice, in confidence. I have written a bestselling authorised biography and write memoirs and family books for Indians across the world. You can start with a page in your voice and decide from there, with nothing committed. More on how I work. Whichever way you go, do not let it become the book that never got written. That is the only outcome with no second chance. ## What it really costs in time People underestimate the time a book takes the way they underestimate a renovation. A serious memoir is months of focused work: the interviews, the gathering of documents, the false starts, the rewrites. If you are writing it yourself around a full life, be honest about whether you will protect that time week after week, for the better part of a year, when it is always easier to do almost anything else. Most people will not, and that is not a character flaw, it is arithmetic. A writer is, among other things, a way of buying the one resource you cannot make more of, so the book actually gets finished instead of joining the long list of things you meant to do. ## The signs you have hit the wall You will know the gap is real if you notice these. You have started the same chapter three times and abandoned it each time. You can tell the story aloud at dinner but it goes dead on the page. You cannot decide where the story even begins. You keep researching and organising and never actually writing. Or the thought of the whole project makes you tired rather than excited. None of these mean you have failed. They mean you have reached the edge of what is comfortable to do alone, which is exactly the point at which a writer is worth the money. ## Why those who can afford to wait should wait least There is a cruel irony in this work. The busiest, most accomplished people, the founders and the leaders, are the ones whose stories are most worth telling and the ones most likely to put it off forever, because there is always a quarter to get through first. But the story does not wait for a convenient quarter, and neither do the people in it. If you are successful enough to keep deferring this, you are exactly the person who should start now, while the memory is sharp and the witnesses are alive. Success buys you many things. More time is not one of them. ## A story I see again and again Let me tell you the pattern, because you may recognise yourself in it. Someone successful, busy, in their sixties or seventies, has always meant to write their story. Their children have been gently asking for years. There is always a reason to wait: a deal to close, a health thing to sort, a sense that the story is not finished yet. Then something happens, a scare, a friend's funeral, a grandchild who asks a question no one can answer, and suddenly the waiting ends. Sometimes there is still time, and we make a beautiful book. Sometimes there is not, and the family is left with three anecdotes and a box of photographs no one can explain. The difference between those two endings is almost always whether someone started a year earlier. That is the whole lesson. ## The regret I hear most In this work you hear the same regret more than any other, and it is never about money. It is "I wish I had asked." I wish I had asked my father about the war, about the village, about why he really left, while he could still tell me. No one ever says I wish I had not bothered. No one ever regrets the book that got made. The only regret is the one that did not, and by the time that regret arrives, it is too late to fix. If you take one thing from this page, let it be that the safe-feeling choice, to wait, is the only one that cannot be undone. ### Related reading how to write your parents' life story yourself - the gift book, ten stories in four months - how to find a ghostwriter - a page in your voice - all my services - how to hire a biographer - write my own life story ## Thinking about telling your story? One conversation tells us both whether it is a fit. I respond within 48 hours, in confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/will-it-sound-like-me/ Title: Will It Sound Like Me? How a Ghostwriter Captures Your Voice Last updated: 2026-10-03 - # Will It Sound Like Me? How a Ghostwriter Captures Your Voice The fear is reasonable, and almost everyone has it. You are about to pay for a book that is supposed to be yours, and the nightmare is that it comes back reading like a press release a stranger wrote. Here is how a real writer makes sure that never happens, and how you can check before you risk a thing. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Let me name the fear properly, because naming it helps. It is not really a fear about grammar. It is the fear of paying a lot of money, and giving a lot of yourself, and ending up with something polished and dead, a book your own children would read and say, that does not sound like Dad. That is a real risk with the wrong writer. It is almost no risk with the right one, and the difference between them is something you can test for the price of one page. ## Voice is the whole job, not a finishing touch People think ghostwriting is about putting words together neatly. It is not. Anyone with training can write a clean sentence. The actual craft, the thing you are paying for, is writing in a way that sounds like you, so that the people who know you best read it and hear you on the page. That is the entire difference between a book you are proud to hand your grandchildren and one you quietly put in a drawer. A ghostwriter who is good at sentences but cannot catch a voice will give you the drawer. ## How a voice actually gets captured It is built from listening, in three layers, over hours. First, your rhythm: how long your sentences run, where you pause, what you circle back to, whether you build slowly or land fast. Second, your vocabulary: the words you reach for, the phrases that are only yours, the way you make a point or dodge one. Third, your register: when you are funny, when you are blunt, when you go quiet, and how you move between them. A good writer absorbs all three from recorded conversation until they can write a sentence you would swear you wrote. It is not mimicry. It is closer to what a good actor does, except the goal is to disappear so completely that only you remain. ## The test that removes the risk entirely You do not have to take any of this on faith, and you should not. Ask for a page in your voice before you commit to anything. You record a short answer to a few questions, on your phone, no script. The writer sends back one page written as you. You read it and ask the only question that matters: does this sound like me? That one page tells you more than every portfolio and testimonial combined. If it lands, you have your writer. If it is flat, or it sounds like an executive bio, or it sounds like a stranger being polite, you have lost five minutes and saved yourself from a mistake. Any writer who refuses to do this is telling you they are not confident they can catch you. Listen to that. ## Why a recording beats a questionnaire every time Some services hand you a form and a stack of written prompts and call the result a book. A form cannot catch a voice. The pauses, the asides, the way you talk yourself toward a memory, the thing you say only after the easy answer, none of it survives being typed into a box. The voice lives in how you speak, not how you fill in a worksheet, which is why serious work starts with recorded conversation and not paperwork. If a service never wants to hear you talk, ask yourself how they plan to sound like you. ## What to listen for in a sample When you read that test page, do not judge it on whether it is well written. Judge it on whether it is you. Three things to feel for. Does it use words you would use, or words a writer reaches for? Does it move the way you move, fast or slow, plain or ornate? And does it sound like you on an ordinary day, not a stiffer, more formal version of you? The best ghostwriting does not make you sound impressive. It makes you sound like yourself, which is far harder and far more valuable. ## It still sounds like you, even at your worst Here is the strange gift of the work done well. After months of listening, a good writer knows how you think well enough to write something that sounds more like you than what you would manage yourself, tired, under pressure, staring at a blank page. That is not a trick and it is not flattery. It is what happens when one person attends to another closely enough for long enough. The voice on the page ends up being yours on your best day, captured and held, available to your family long after the day is gone. ## Why this matters more than you think If you are doing this for your children, or capturing a parent for your children, the voice is not a nice-to-have. It is the whole point. A book that gets the facts right and the voice wrong gives them a record. A book that gets the voice right gives them the person. One they will read once and shelve. The other they will read aloud at weddings and funerals and quiet nights for the rest of their lives, because it sounds like the person they loved. That is what is actually at stake in this question, and it is why I never start a project any other way. ## How I do it Every project I take begins with a page in your voice, before any money changes hands. From there, the voice is checked against you at every single stage, draft by draft, until a reader would believe they are in the room with you and not with a writer. More on how I work. If you have been putting this off because you are afraid it will not sound like you, start with the page. Let your own ears decide. There is nothing to lose and a voice to keep. ## The common ways a voice goes wrong It helps to know what failure looks like, so you can catch it in a sample. The most common failure is the executive-bio voice: everything sanded smooth, every rough edge removed, until you sound like a press release that learned to talk. The second is the literary-overreach voice, where the writer shows off and buries you under their own style. The third, and saddest, is the generic voice, where the book could have been about anyone, because the writer never really heard you. If a sample page reads as any of these, the writer has not caught you, and no amount of polishing later will fix it. The voice is decided early or never. ## How long it takes to catch a voice People ask whether one interview is enough. It is not. A voice is caught across many conversations, not one marathon, because you reveal different registers on different days, and the truest things come out after the easy answers are spent. This is part of why the work takes months and why it cannot be rushed into a weekend package. The depth is the point. A writer who promises to capture you in a single sitting is promising something that cannot honestly be done. ## A note for anyone capturing a parent If you are doing this for a mother or a father, the voice matters more than anything else on this page, and the clock matters more too. A parent's voice is the thing your children will most want and most lose. It is the sound of bedtime stories and hard advice and the particular way they say your name. A book that holds that voice is not a document. It is the person, kept. And it can only be caught while they are here to be heard. If that is what you are after, do not let the fear of getting it wrong stop you. Start with a page in their voice, and let your own ears tell you it is them. The guide to writing a parent's story has a full section on keeping their voice. ## What you can do to help a writer catch you The voice is mostly the writer's job, but you can make it easier. Talk to them the way you talk to a friend, not the way you think a book should sound, because the moment you perform, the voice flattens. Tell the messy version, with the digressions and the second thoughts, since those are where the real you lives. Share the old writing if you have it, the letters, the emails, the half-finished journal, because your voice is already in them. And trust the process enough to be honest, because a voice built on the careful, public version of you will sound careful and public, and that is no one's idea of a good book. The more truly you show up, the more truly it will sound like you. ## Why this is the one thing AI still cannot do People ask whether a machine can do this now. It can imitate a style. It cannot listen for what you are almost saying and have not quite found words for, which is where the best of a memoir lives. It cannot sit with the silence after a hard question and know not to fill it. It cannot earn the trust that gets a person to say the thing they have never said out loud. Voice, real voice, is not a pattern to be copied. It is a person, caught by another person paying close attention over time. That is the whole craft, and it is the part that does not automate. ### Related reading how to write your parents' life story yourself - a page in your voice - the 20 questions to ask a parent - a founder story - write my own life story - the answers page ## Thinking about telling your story? One conversation tells us both whether it is a fit. I respond within 48 hours, in confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/confidential-ghostwriter/ Title: Why Confidentiality Matters When You Hire a Ghostwriter Last updated: 2026-10-03 - # Why Confidentiality Matters When You Hire a Ghostwriter For a founder or a family, the first question is never can this person write. It is can I trust this person with what never leaves the room. If you are even asking who could tell my story, you already know the writing is the easy part. The hard part, the part that should decide everything, is trust. Here is what real discretion looks like, and what to demand. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I want to start by saying I understand why this is the question that keeps you up. The story worth telling is also the story you have spent a lifetime guarding. The failures you survived. The conflict inside the family that the public never saw. The numbers, the near-collapses, the deal that almost broke you, the relationship that shaped everything and has no place in a press release. To write the true book, someone has to be let into all of it. Choosing that someone is not a hiring decision. It is an act of trust, and your instinct to be careful is correct. ## The trust has to come before the craft A serious memoir or biography holds the things that are not said at the dinner table. That is what makes it worth reading and worth keeping, and it is also what makes it dangerous in the wrong hands. You are not hiring a writer to produce nice sentences. You are trusting a human being with the parts of your life that have never left the family, and asking them to handle those parts with judgment, restraint, and absolute loyalty. The writing sits on top of that trust. If the trust is not there, the craft does not matter, because you will never tell them the truth, and a memoir built on the careful half-version is not worth writing. ## What real discretion actually looks like Discretion is a process, not a warm word in a sales pitch. It looks like three concrete things. One, an NDA signed before any story is shared, not after, not eventually, before the first real conversation. Two, a single writer who does the entire job, so your private history never passes through a team, a transcription pool, or a rotating cast of freelancers, each of whom is a leak waiting to happen. Three, a clear and absolute rule that you decide what becomes public, section by section, with nothing reaching the page that you have not seen and approved. If any of those three is missing, the discretion is decoration. ## What stays out is a decision, taken with care Here is something most people do not expect a writer to say. The most important question in this work is not what goes in. It is what stays out. A good writer treats that decision with as much seriousness as the prose itself, because a memoir serves the reader and the family at once, and those are not always the same obligation. What goes in is a craft choice you make together. What stays out is a moral one, and it is yours alone. The family dimension, the things that could wound a relative or reopen a wound, is handled in the room, before a single word is published, never discovered by someone you love after the book is out. Done right, there are no surprises, only choices made together with open eyes. ## The questions to ask before you trust anyone Before you hand your story to anyone, ask three things and listen hard to the answers. Will I work with you directly, or will my history be handed to someone I never meet? The right answer is you, directly, always. Will you sign an NDA before I tell you anything real? The right answer is yes, gladly, today. And do you have significant work you cannot show me, because clients asked you to keep it private? The right answer, strange as it sounds, is yes. The most significant work a discreet writer does is the work you will never see, because the clients who matter most are the ones who never let their names appear. A portfolio that shows everything may be telling you the writer keeps nothing. ## Why confidentiality costs more, and should Discretion is not a free feature bolted onto the same product. It is a stated reason premium work costs more than commodity work, and it is right that it does. A writer who takes one client at a time, signs real agreements, refuses to recycle your story into anonymous case studies, and protects your history absolutely is offering something a content mill structurally cannot. The protection is the product, as much as the prose. If a quote is suspiciously cheap, ask what corners are being cut, because confidentiality is an expensive thing to do properly, and the cheapest providers are not doing it. ## Why this matters even more for a family For a single founder, a breach is a reputational risk. For a family, it is something deeper. A family book holds the relationships, the old grievances, the things one generation never told the next. Handled with care, the work can heal as much as it records. Handled carelessly, it can wound people who are still in the room at the next wedding. That is why I will not take a family book without the discretion in place first. The story belongs to the family, and the family has to trust that it stays theirs, on the page and off it. ## How I handle it I have never disclosed a client's private material, not a detail, not an anecdote, not a name, without explicit written consent, and I never will. An NDA governs everything beyond the first conversation. One writer, one client at a time, your control over every page, and the most significant work I do kept exactly where it belongs, which is nowhere you will ever find it. More on how I work with founders and families. If discretion is the thing standing between you and finally telling the story, let us talk about precisely how it would be protected. That conversation is itself confidential. ## Where discretion gets tested in real life It is easy to promise confidentiality and hard to honour it when it costs something. The real tests come later. A journalist calls the writer for background on you, and the only acceptable answer is silence. The writer is offered other work in your industry, and your secrets must never become someone else's colour. The book does well, and the temptation appears to use you as a case study, a talk, a humblebrag at a conference. A writer worth trusting passes all of these tests by default, not because a clause forces them to, but because discretion is how they were built. Every writer will sign an NDA. Ask whether they understand that the NDA describes who they already are. ## What an NDA should actually cover A real agreement is specific. It should cover the finished book and every conversation that went into it. It should bind the writer permanently, not for a year. It should say plainly that you own the work and the copyright, and that nothing is published, quoted, or repurposed without your written consent. It should cover the existence of the relationship itself, so that even the fact that you are writing a book stays private if you wish. If a draft NDA is vague, thin, or expires, that is the writer telling you how lightly they take the thing that matters most. ## Confidentiality does not end when the book does The work does not become public the day the book is printed. Even after it is done, the conversations you had, the things you decided to leave out, the early drafts with the harder truths in them, all of that stays between you and the writer forever. A discreet writer destroys or secures the raw material, never reuses it, and carries what you told them to the end. When you choose someone for this, you are not hiring them for the months of the project. You are trusting them for the rest of both your lives. Choose accordingly. ## How to raise confidentiality without offending a good writer Some people worry that asking hard questions about discretion will insult a serious writer. It will not. The opposite is true. A real professional respects you more for taking it seriously, because they take it seriously too, and they have seen what happens to people who do not. Say it plainly: this story is private, parts of it have never left the family, and before we go further I need to understand exactly how you protect that. A writer worth trusting will be relieved you asked, and will have clear answers ready. A writer who bristles, or waves it off, or makes you feel paranoid for asking, has just answered the question for you. ## The cost of a breach is not what you think When people imagine a confidentiality breach, they picture a leaked secret in the press. That happens, but the quieter cost is worse. It is the relative who reads something they were never meant to and stops speaking to you. It is the trust inside a family, built over decades, broken by a sentence. It is a founder who can never again be fully candid with a writer, because the last one talked. These wounds do not make headlines and they do not heal. That is why discretion is not a feature to compare on a spreadsheet. It is the whole foundation, and it is why I will not begin a sensitive book until the protection of it is settled and signed. ### Related reading a founder story - an authorised biography - every question people ask, answered - solo writer against an agency against a marketplace - a business family history ## Thinking about telling your story? One conversation tells us both whether it is a fit. I respond within 48 hours, in confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/page-in-your-voice/ Title: A Page in Your Voice: A Ghostwriting Sample Before the Book Last updated: 2026-10-04 - # A Page in Your Voice: A Ghostwriting Sample Before the Book The biggest fear about hiring a writer is that the book will not sound like you. It will come back polished and dead, a stranger doing an impression of your life. So test it before you commit to the book. One page, in your voice, from a five-minute recording, for US$1,000, credited against the fee if we go ahead. Get your page Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I want to be honest about why this exists, because it tells you something about how I work. Every other part of hiring a writer asks you to trust a portfolio and a promise. You read some sample chapters, you take a sales call, you cross your fingers and sign. And the whole time, the fear sits in your chest: what if it does not sound like me. What if I spend all this money and all this time and hand my children a book that reads like a brochure. That fear is reasonable. It is also testable in a week, for the price of one page. So that is what I offer first. ## Do ghostwriters give samples? Mostly, no. The industry standard is a paid sample chapter, priced anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, and you are asked to commit before you have heard a single line of yourself on a page. Agencies send you somebody else's finished book instead, which tells you the agency can write and tells you nothing about whether anyone there can write as you. Marketplaces send you a bid. What almost nobody sends you is your own voice, back, from five minutes of talking, before the book is signed. That gap is the reason this page exists. I write one page from your recording and send it to you. It costs US$1,000, and if we go ahead with the book, all of it comes off the fee. If you want the fuller picture of what samples cost elsewhere and what each price band actually buys, I have written that up on the ghostwriting cost page. ## How it works ### You record five minutes I send you three questions. You answer them out loud, on your phone, sitting wherever you are comfortable, in whatever mix of English, Hindi and Punjabi the story actually lives in. No script. No preparation. No trying to sound like a book. Just talk, the way you would to a friend who asked. ### I write one page as you I take your recording and write a single page in your voice. Not a transcript. Not a summary. A page that reads the way you would write if you were a writer, with your rhythm, your words, your way of landing a point. It is the same thing I would do on the first day of a full book, done in miniature so you can see it. ### You decide, with your own ears You read the page and ask one question. Does this sound like me. If it does, we talk about the book, and you do it knowing, not hoping, that the voice will be yours. If it does not, you have paid for one page, learned something true, and you owe me nothing more. ## How long it takes Five minutes of your time, and about a week of mine. The three questions reach you the day you ask for them. You record when it suits you, at midnight or on a Sunday walk or in the car outside your office, and send the file back. The page comes to you inside a week of the recording landing. There is no call to schedule, no form of forty fields, no onboarding. One email out, one voice memo back, one page returned. That is the whole shape of it, and it is deliberately the smallest thing I could design that still answers the only question that matters. ## The kind of question I will ask The three questions are not about facts. Anyone can recite a date. They are doors. Something like: tell me about a day that split your life into a before and an after. Tell me about a person you have never quite been able to explain to anyone. Tell me the thing you would want your grandchildren to understand about where they came from. The answers to questions like these carry your voice in a way that name, rank, and serial number never will. Most people are surprised by how much one honest page can hold. If you want to see the longer version of that instinct, the 20 questions to ask a parent is the same idea, stretched to a full sitting. ## What people discover when they do this Three things happen, almost every time. The first is relief, because the page sounds like them and the fear that has been holding them back simply lifts. The second is surprise, because the writer found something in five minutes of talking that they had never thought of as a story, and there it is, shaped, on the page. And the third, often, is a kind of urgency, because seeing one page of their own life in print makes them realise how much more there is, and how much they want it caught before it is lost. The page is small. What it opens is not. ## Why I lead with this and not a sales pitch Because it is the most honest thing I can offer, and because I would rather you decide with proof than with persuasion. A writer who is confident they can catch your voice has nothing to fear from a test. A writer who avoids one is telling you something. I would rather hand you the test and let your own ears do the choosing. If the page does not sound like you, you should not hire me, and I would tell you so myself. That is the whole point of starting here. ## A word about waiting If you are thinking of doing this for a parent, the page is also the gentlest way to begin, and the clock is the reason not to wait. You do not have to commit a parent to a whole book to start. You can begin with five minutes and one page, and let them feel how it is to be listened to that closely. Many people find that the page itself becomes precious, the first thing their parent's voice was ever caught in. And it can only be caught while they are here to be heard. The page costs US$1,000. Waiting can cost you everything. ## Start the page Tell me you want it and I will send the three questions today. You record when it suits you. The page comes back to you, and from there, you decide everything. No commitment to the book. The fee for the page comes off the book if we go ahead. Your own voice on a page, so you can stop wondering whether the book would sound like you, and know. ## What the page is not It is not a sales gimmick dressed up as a gift, and it is not a watered-down sample of someone else's writing with your name on it. It is a real page about your real life, written from your real words, by the person who would write your book. It is also not a test you can fail. There is no clever answer, no performance required. You talk, I listen, I write. The only judgement being made is yours, when you read it back and decide whether it sounds like you. You hold all the power in this exchange, which is exactly how the start of something built on trust should feel. ## Doing it in your own language You do not have to answer in careful English. Answer in whatever mix of Hindi, Punjabi and English your story actually lives in, because that mix is part of your voice, and flattening it into formal English would lose the very thing we are trying to catch. I work with the language as it comes and carry the meaning and the music of it into a page that reads clean for a wider reader while still sounding like you. If your father tells stories half in Punjabi and half in English, that is not a problem to solve. That is the voice to keep. ## If you are not in India Most of the people who ask for the page are not. They are in New Jersey and Slough and Jumeirah and Serangoon, holding a parent in Ludhiana or Chennai on a video call at an hour that suits nobody. A voice memo solves the thing a call cannot. Your father records at ten in the morning his time and you read the page at breakfast yours, and neither of you has to find a window in a twelve-hour gap. I work across those time zones every week, with families in the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia. The page is the same page wherever you are. Five minutes of talking, one page back, credited to the book. ## Common questions about the page Q: What does the page cost? US$1,000, credited against the fee if the book goes ahead. In exceptional cases I waive it, and that call is mine. I charge for it because it is a real page of real work, and I would rather you decide with proof than with a pitch. Q: Do ghostwriters normally offer samples? Rarely. The industry standard is a paid sample chapter, or a portfolio of somebody else's finished books. Neither one lets you hear yourself before you commit, which is the only test that settles the fear. That is the gap this page fills. Q: How long does the page take? Five minutes of your time and about a week of mine. Questions go out the day you ask. You record when it suits you. The page comes back within a week of your recording reaching me. Q: What if I do not like it? Then you walk away. You have paid for one page and you owe nothing more. No follow-up, no pressure. A page that does not sound like you is a reason not to hire me, and I would say so myself. Q: Can I do this for my mother or father? Yes, and many people do. You can record their answers, or sit with them while they record. It is often the gentlest possible way to begin, and the page itself becomes something the family treasures. Q: Who owns the recording and the page? You do. The recording is yours, the page is yours, and neither is published, quoted, or shown to anyone. Everything beyond the first conversation is covered by an NDA, and I will sign yours if you would rather use your own. Q: Can I do it in Hindi, or in a mix? Yes, and it works better that way. Answer in whatever mix of Hindi, Punjabi and English your story lives in. The mix is part of the voice. I carry it into a page that reads clean for a wider reader while still sounding like you. Q: Does it work if I live abroad? Yes, and that is the common case. A voice memo needs no shared calendar slot. Families in the US, UK, UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia use it to capture a parent still in India without either side sitting up at 3am. Q: Will you use AI to write my page? No. The page is written by hand, by the same person who would write your book. A machine can copy a style. It cannot hear the pause before your father says the hard part, and that pause is usually where the page is. Q: What happens if I love it? Then we talk about the book. The page becomes the first proof that the voice will be yours all the way through, and the project begins from a place of knowing rather than hoping. ## After the page, how a full book unfolds If the page lands and you decide to go on, the rest follows naturally. We find the shape of the story together. I interview you, or your parent, in unhurried recorded sessions scheduled around your life. I write in stages, and you read every one. The voice is checked against you at each turn, until the finished book reads as though you wrote it on your best day. Full copyright is yours, my name appears nowhere unless you want it to, and everything beyond the first conversation is covered by an NDA. There is more on that in hiring a biographer. But none of that is decided now. Right now, there is only the page, and your own ears, and a chance to finally stop wondering. ## Why I built it this way I could ask you to trust me on faith, the way most of this industry does. I would rather hand you proof and let you decide. In twenty-two years of writing, the one thing I have learned about a person's voice is that it cannot be faked and it cannot be hidden, and a single honest page will show you both whether I have caught yours and whether this is worth going further. Everything else, the price, the timeline, the shape of the book, can be worked out later. This is the only question that has to be answered first, and it is the one you can answer for the price of one page, with your own ears. So let us start there, and let the page do the talking. ### Get it by email Tell me where to send it. No spam, no selling your address, ever. Just the thing you came for, and the occasional note worth reading. [fluentform id="2"] ### Related reading will it sound like me? - what a ghostwriter costs - the 20 questions to ask a parent - hire a biographer - begin a conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/story-worth-telling/ Title: Is Your Story Worth Telling? A Two-Minute Check Last updated: 2026-10-03 - # Is Your Story Worth Telling? A Two-Minute Check The most common reason a story never gets written is a quiet fear: that the life is too ordinary to deserve a book. Almost everyone who feels that is wrong, and the proof is usually sitting across the dinner table from them. This short check answers the question honestly, in two minutes: is there a book in your life? Get the check Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I have had this conversation hundreds of times. Someone with an extraordinary story tells me, with complete sincerity, that they are not sure it is worth telling. The founder who built an industry. The mother who crossed an ocean alone. The man who survived a thing most people could not imagine, and shrugs it off as just how it was. The fear of being ordinary is the single biggest thing standing between people and their own stories, and it is almost always a lie the mind tells to avoid the vulnerability of being seen. So let us test it properly, against your actual life, rather than against your fear. ## Why you think your story is not worth telling The reason is simple and almost universal. You have lived your life from the inside, every ordinary day of it, so it does not feel like a story to you. It feels like Tuesday. You measure it against the lives of famous people in books and films and conclude that yours is small. But that is the wrong comparison entirely. Your story is not competing with a celebrity memoir. It is the only source in the world for something your children and grandchildren will one day want very badly: the truth of where they came from, in the voice of the person it came from. That is not ordinary. That is irreplaceable. ## The check: answer these honestly Count how many you can say yes to. Did you, or your parents, leave one country to build a life in another? - Has there been a moment that split your life into a before and an after? - Did you build something, a business, a family, a name, from very little? - Is there a decision you made that you have never fully explained to anyone? - Have you survived something that changed how you see the world? - Is there a person whose story is tangled with yours and deserves to be told? - Do you have children or grandchildren who know the outline of your life but not the inside of it? ## What your answer means ### Four or more yes There is a book in your life, and a strong one. The only real questions are who tells it, and when. Do not let the feeling that it is ordinary talk you out of something your family will treasure for generations. ### Two or three yes There is a story worth capturing, almost certainly a focused memoir built around the few moments that truly mattered rather than a full sweep of your life. Often these are the most powerful books of all, because they go deep instead of wide. ### Zero or one yes Read the questions again, slower, and be less modest this time. The lives that feel most ordinary to the person who lived them are, with almost no exceptions, the ones their children most want to read. The fear is doing the talking. Ask someone who loves you whether your story is worth having, and believe their answer over your own. ## Why ordinary is exactly the wrong test Here is the thing it took me years of this work to fully understand. The stories that last are not the spectacular ones. They are the true ones, told in a real voice. A grandchild does not treasure a memoir because the life was famous. They treasure it because it is theirs, because it explains them, because it lets them hear a voice they would otherwise have lost. The migration that feels unremarkable to you is the founding myth of your family, and your descendants will read it the way you might read a letter from an ancestor you never met: with hunger. Worthy was never the test. Wanted is. ## The kind of ordinary stories that turned out to matter Think about what you actually wish you knew. Not about a celebrity. About your own grandmother. What she feared. Who she loved before she married. What the partition years were really like in her house. What she gave up that no one ever thanked her for. None of that is famous. All of it is priceless, and most of it is already lost, because no one asked while there was time. Your story is someone's version of exactly that. The only question is whether it gets caught or goes the way of your grandmother's, into silence. ## The real question, and why it is urgent It was never whether your story is worthy. It is who you want to tell it to, and why. And the urgency is simple: you can only tell it while you are here to tell it, and you can only tell it clearly while the memory is sharp. The version of you that can give this gift fully is available for a limited time, like everyone's. If the check above came back with even two or three yeses, the fear that has been holding you back is not protecting you from embarrassment. It is robbing your family of something they cannot get any other way. The honest response to that is not to wait. It is to begin. ## What kind of book your answers suggest If you said yes to the migration question, you have the spine of a diaspora memoir, the leaving and the building and the cost. If you said yes to building something from very little, you have a founder's story, the real one, not the press release. If your yeses clustered around a single hard or transforming experience, you have a focused memoir built around that turning point, often the most powerful kind. And if you said yes to the grandchildren question, you have the beginning of a family legacy book, written for the people who come after. There is no wrong shape. The shape simply follows from the life, and finding it is the first thing a good writer does. ## Questions people ask at this point Q: I scored high but still feel my story is not special. Is that normal? Completely normal, and almost universal. The feeling of being ordinary is strongest in exactly the people whose stories matter most, because they have lived their extraordinary life from the inside, where it feels like everyday life. Trust the count, not the feeling. Q: Do I have to be old to have a story worth telling? No. Some of the most powerful memoirs are written at a turning point in the middle of a life, while the events are still sharp. The book written now catches the truth. The one written decades later catches the legend. Q: What if the story involves other people, some of whom I would not want to expose? That is normal, and it is handled with care. What goes in is a choice you make, and what stays out is a decision taken as seriously as the writing. A good book serves the truth and protects the people in it, and those are not in conflict when it is done well. Q: I am convinced, but my parent is the one with the story. What now? Then the urgency is real and the move is gentle. Do not announce a book. Start with one conversation and a recorder, using the questions in my interview kit. The story gets caught first. Everything else can be decided once it is safe. ## What to do with a yes If the check came back with even two or three yeses, treat that as the answer it is. The fear of being ordinary is not protecting you. It is quietly costing your family something they cannot get any other way, and the cost grows with every year you wait. You do not have to commit to anything today. You only have to stop letting the fear decide. Begin with a single page in your voice, or with one recorded conversation, and let the story start to exist. The hardest part was always just admitting it was worth telling. You have just done that. ## The bottom line If you have read this far, some part of you already suspects the answer is yes. Listen to that part, not the fear. The story that feels too ordinary to you is the one your grandchildren will most wish they had, in the voice of the person who lived it, and it exists in only one place in the world: a memory that will not last forever. Worthy was never the question. Wanted is, and it is wanted. The only thing left to decide is whether you act while there is still time, or join the long, quiet list of people who always meant to. Choose to be the one who did. ### Get it by email Tell me where to send it. No spam, no selling your address, ever. Just the thing you came for, and the occasional note worth reading. [fluentform id="2"] ## If the answer is yes I write memoirs and biographies for Indians across the world, one client at a time, in your voice, in confidence. The gentlest way to begin is with a single page in your voice, so you can see how it feels before deciding anything. See how that works. ### Related reading - the 20 questions to ask a parent - a founder story - memoir for the Indian diaspora - begin a conversation - a memoir as a gift - write my own life story --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/memoir-diaspora/ Title: Memoir Ghostwriter for the Indian Diaspora Last updated: 2026-10-10 - # Memoir Ghostwriter for the Indian Diaspora You crossed an ocean, or your parents did. That story is worth more than a Wikipedia line and a WhatsApp forward. I write it. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I am a memoir ghostwriter for Indians who built a life across two worlds. I write your story, or your parents', in your voice. One client at a time, in strict confidence. Writing since 2004. Start with a page in your voice See how it works 22 years writing 1.3M+ words published A bestselling biography ## The problem is not writing. It is proximity. Most people who want to tell their life story do not have a writing problem. They have a proximity problem. You are too close to your own life to see its shape. You know every name, every date, every turn, which means you cannot feel what a stranger feels reading it. You cannot find the one question at the centre of your story that holds a reader and refuses to let go. You have lived it. You cannot see it. For the Indian diaspora the proximity problem has a second layer. Your story lives in two registers at once. There is the India your family left, with its references and silences that need no explanation for an Indian reader. There is the country you arrived in, where every one of those references needs careful context or it lands flat. A writer who knows one register writes half the book. A writer who knows neither writes a brochure. The whole point of a diaspora memoir is that it must work for an aunt in Pune and a grandchild in New Jersey at the same time, and almost nobody can hold both. And there is a clock. The first generation ages. The details blur. The man who can tell you why he really left, what the first winter cost, who he wrote to and who he never spoke to again, is here now and will not always be. Once he is gone, the story can only be built from the outside, from documents and second-hand memory. It can never again be told from the inside. This is the single fact that turns a someday project into a this-year one. ## What I do I sit across from you, or from your father, and I ask the questions no one has asked about your own life. Then I write. Not as a service that fills pages. Not as an agency that processes a brief and hands it to a freelancer you will never meet. As one writer who takes your story, finds its shape, and gives it back to you in a form a stranger cannot put down and your grandchildren will keep. The work is a memoir, an authorised account, or a family book. It runs from a single defining chapter to four generations. It is built from interviews, from documents and photographs, and from the patient work of finding the dramatic question inside a life that the person living it can no longer see. The voice on the page is yours. The craft is mine. My name appears nowhere unless you ask it to. I do not write for you. I think with you, until the story is impossible to tell badly. ## Why a diaspora memoir asks for a different writer ### One writer, start to finish You work with me from the first call to the last word. No account manager, no junior, no offshore team writing in a voice that is not yours. ### Both worlds, one book I know the India your family left and the world they built. The references, the silences, the things that need translating and the things that must not be. ### A page in your voice, first Before any commitment, I write one page as you, from a short voice memo. You judge the voice before money changes hands. ### Discretion, in writing An NDA before any story is shared. The most significant work I have done is not on this site, and never will be. ### Built across time zones Most of my diaspora clients are in the US, UK, UAE, Singapore, and Canada. We work over video and voice memo. The depth does not drop with the distance. ### A writer who has built things 22 years of writing, an MBA from MDI Gurgaon, three startups. I know what it costs to build a life from nothing, because I have. ## What I write for the diaspora ### Your own memoir Your life, in your voice, written by me. For founders, doctors, leaders, artists, and anyone who has lived something worth keeping. From a single defining chapter to the full arc. The book reads as though you wrote it on the best day you ever wrote, because the voice is captured, not invented. ### Your parents' or grandparents' story The most common reason a diaspora family calls me. An adult child, settled in New York or London or Dubai, wants the migration story captured while the parent can still tell it. The leaving, the building, the sacrifice the children half-know and have never heard in full. This is often a gift, and it is the one gift that cannot be bought later. ### A family legacy book The multi-generational story of a family and its enterprise, built for the people who come after. The silences between generations, the choices made under pressure, the story of why it all happened. More on family legacy books. ## How it works ### The first conversation We begin with one call. I ask questions most people have never been asked about their own lives. This is diagnosis, not a sales pitch. I want to understand what is actually there, not what you think the story is. ### A page in your voice You send a five-minute voice memo answering three questions. I send back one page, written as you. It is the clearest test there is, and it costs you nothing but the memo. ### Structural diagnosis I find the dramatic question at the centre of the life. The wound that became the gift. The single thing that separates your story from every other story of leaving and arriving. ### Deep interviews and research Recorded sessions with you, and where it serves the book, with the people who knew you differently. Documents, photographs, the first salary slip, the things others remember that you have forgotten. ### The writing I write in stages. You read each one. The voice is checked against you at every turn, until a reader would believe they are in the room with you, not with a writer. ### Deliver and refine Every draft includes a revision cycle. The work is not finished when it is complete. It is finished when you feel it is exactly right. ## The proof I do not have a wall of client logos, because the most significant work I do is confidential. What I can show, I will. I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart. It became a bestseller. Writing it meant going far beyond the public record: extended interviews, documentary research going back almost forty years, and conversations with contemporaries. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel, The Nidhi Kapoor Story, now in feature-film development. I co-produced five short films, with recognition at MAMI and Filmfare. I have published a long investigative piece in The Ken. 22 years writing 1.3M+ words published MBA, MDI Gurgaon Bestselling authorised biography Published novelist 5 short films Founder Thesis podcast Most ghostwriters are writers who do not understand business, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work reads like neither. ## Who I am I am Saurabh Garg. I have written every week since 2004, not to build a portfolio, but because I cannot stop thinking and thinking requires writing. I have run C4E, a communications collective, since 2014, for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, and Maruti Suzuki. I have made payroll under pressure and survived three startups. I study the Mahabharata and apply it to modern storytelling. When you work with me, you work with someone who has built a company, carried the loneliness of the person who cannot leave, and spent twenty-two years writing about what it means to be human. That combination is rare. It may be exactly what your story needs. ## Common questions Q: Will it sound like me? Yes. Voice is the whole craft. Start with a page in your voice and judge for yourself before you commit to anything. If the page does not sound like you, you have lost a voice memo and the price of one page. Q: Who actually writes it? How do I know this is not a mill? I do, from the first conversation to the last word. There is no team, no account manager, no offshore writer. You work directly with the named author of a bestselling biography. The scam pattern in this industry is an agency that takes money upfront and hands your story to someone who will never speak to you. That is the opposite of how I work. Q: Is my story even worth telling? The question is not whether it is worthy. It is who you want to tell it to, and why. The migration stories that feel ordinary to the person who lived them are the ones the next generation most wants and least has. Research suggests most second-generation children know little about their parents' migration. The ordinary story is the rare one. Q: What will my family think? This is the real fear for memoir, and it deserves a real answer. We agree early on what is in and what stays out. What stays out is a decision I take with as much care as what goes in. The family dimension is handled in the room, before a word is published, not discovered after. Q: How much does it cost? Priced by depth, not word count. A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months. See what it costs. Q: How long does it take? A full memoir runs six months. I do not rush work that is meant to last. Q: Who owns the finished book? You do, entirely. Copyright transfers to you on completion. My name appears nowhere unless you choose to credit me. The work is yours, the voice is yours, the story is yours. Q: I live abroad. Does that work? Yes. Most of my diaspora clients are in the US, UK, UAE, Singapore, and Canada. We work over video and voice memo across time zones, and I travel for the work when the book asks for it. Q: My parent is elderly. Can we still do this? Yes, and the sooner the better. The interviews are unhurried and shaped around their energy. The point of starting now is access, while the memory is vivid and the documents are findable. Q: Is everything confidential? An NDA is signed before any story is shared. I have never disclosed a client's private material, not a detail, not a name, without written consent. ## What you receive A finished manuscript in your voice, delivered in stages with a revision cycle at each one. Full copyright, transferred to you on completion. Your name on the cover, or mine nowhere, as you choose. A record that outlives all of us, the one thing your grandchildren cannot make for themselves. ## Who this is for Diaspora Indians who want their own story told before it blurs. Adult children who want a parent's migration captured while the parent can still tell it. Founders, doctors, and leaders whose real story has never been told in full. Families who want the first generation's crossing held for a generation that grew up between worlds. If your story lives in two countries and you can feel the clock, this is for you. ## Who this is not for People who want a quick keepsake printed by next week. People who want every hard thing removed until only the highlight reel is left. The book is honest, made with care, and built to last, which takes time and candour. If you want speed and volume over depth, a template product will serve you better. Q: How is this different from a fill-in-the-blank memory book? Those products give you a template and a stack of prompts and leave the writing to you. They are fine for a keepsake. They are not a book a stranger would read. The gap is the craft: turning hours of memory into something with shape, tension, and a voice that is unmistakably yours. That gap is the whole job. Q: What if my English, or my parent's, is not perfect? It does not need to be. I work in whatever mix of English, Hindi and Punjabi the story lives in. My job is to carry the voice and the meaning into a book that reads clean for a global reader while still sounding like the person who told it. Q: Can it be a gift for a parent who does not know yet? Often it is. An adult child commissions the book and brings the parent into it gently. I am used to handling that first conversation with care, so the parent feels honoured, not interviewed. ### Related reading the best ghostwriters for the Indian diaspora - a family legacy book - ghostwriter in Dubai - ghostwriter in Singapore - biographer in London - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - write my father's life story - write my parents' life story ## Your story has been waiting long enough. Tell me the story you are carrying. The one that exists but has not been told. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/authorised-biography/ Title: Authorised Biography Writer for Founders & Business Families Last updated: 2026-10-12 - # Authorised Biography Writer for Founders & Business Families The definitive account of a life and an enterprise. Written by a biographer who has built companies, and who has done exactly this before. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write authorised biographies for Indian founders and business families. The book that becomes the record, the one a grandchild reads to understand where they came from and a journalist reads to get it right. Confidential. One client at a time. Begin the conversation See how it works Authorised IT biography, bestseller 22 years writing 3x founder, MDI MBA ## A life told well is not a timeline. It is a dramatic question with a human answer. The wound beneath the achievement. The belief that held when everything else broke. Most authorised biographies fail for one reason: they are written to flatter, not to illuminate. They read like a long press release with a hardcover, and everyone can feel it, which is why no one finishes them. The biographies that last do the opposite. Caro on Johnson, Guha on Gandhi, Isaacson on Jobs. They find the contradiction at the centre of the person. The visionary who was impossible to live with. The builder who was afraid. The public figure whose private doubt was the engine of everything they achieved. The authorised part is not a constraint on the truth. It is permission to tell it with care, from the inside, with the cooperation of the one person who knows what really happened. For a founder or a business family, there is a second problem on top of the first. Your story is controlled. The narrative that exists about you was built for investors, regulators, and the press, and it is thin by design. The real account, the one with the near-failures and the choices no one saw, lives in your memory and in old documents and in the heads of a few contemporaries who will not always be here. Left alone, it gets told badly after you are gone, or not at all. An authorised biography is how you make sure it gets told once, in full, and right. ## I have done this work I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart. The story had written itself over the years but had never been told. I scoured records going back almost forty years, interviewed extensively, spoke with contemporaries, and did the patient work of finding the dramatic architecture inside a life the subject could no longer see from the inside. The book became a bestseller. I hold an MBA from MDI Gurgaon. I spent twenty years as a founder and have run C4E since 2014 for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, and Maruti Suzuki. I have made payroll under pressure and survived three startups. I know what it costs to build something, which is the foundation of every biography I take on. A journalist learns the founder's world from the outside. I have lived it. ## Why the right biographer matters ### I have written one A bestselling authorised biography of an Indian industry figure, start to finish. You are not my first. You are my only, for the duration of the work. ### The builder's eye Three startups, an MBA, twelve years inside India's largest houses. I read a balance sheet and a founder's silence with equal fluency. ### Truth, told with care I do not write hagiographies. I find the contradiction at the centre and treat it with respect. That is what makes a biography last. ### Absolute discretion An NDA before a word is shared. You decide what becomes public. I have never broken that, and never will. ### Both worlds I write for the Indian reader and the global one at once. A biography of an Indian founder that only works in India is half a book. ### It can become a film I am a novelist and a short-film co-producer. For the right life, the book is the start of a conversation about a screen story. ## What I write ### Authorised biography Research-intensive, 60,000 to 90,000 words. Interviews with you and your contemporaries, documentary research, and full developmental writing from first session to final manuscript. Six months. The definitive account. ### Founder and CEO story A tighter book centred on you and the company. The doubt, the near-failures, the choices no one saw. The real version, not the keynote. More on founder stories. ### Dynastic and family-business history The multi-generational account of a family and its enterprise, built to be referenced for decades. More on family legacy. ## How it works ### The first conversation One call to understand the life and the appetite for telling it honestly. This is diagnosis. I want the real shape, not the official one. ### Scope and confidentiality An NDA, a clear scope, and an agreement on access: who I can interview, which records I can see, what is off limits. ### Structural diagnosis I find the dramatic question at the centre of the life. The contradiction. The single arc that makes the book impossible to put down and impossible to fake. ### Deep research and interviews Extended recorded sessions with you. Conversations with contemporaries who knew you differently. Documents, records, the things others remember that you have forgotten. ### Architecture before words The outline, the chapter structure, and the sequence of revelation are built and agreed before a single word of manuscript is written. Nothing is improvised. ### Write, review, refine The manuscript is delivered in stages. You review each one. The work is finished when it is both historically accurate and impossible to put down. ## The proof The most significant work I do is confidential. What is public, I share. The authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a bestseller. Three more ghostwritten bestsellers, held under NDA. The Nidhi Kapoor Story, my debut novel, now in feature-film development. Five short film co-productions, with recognition at MAMI and Filmfare. A long investigative piece in The Ken. C4E, a communications collective I have run since 2014 for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others. Bestselling authorised biography 3 ghostwritten bestsellers MBA, MDI Gurgaon 3x startup founder Published novelist 5 short films Founder Thesis podcast Most biographers are writers who do not understand business, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work I produce is different from both. ## Who I am I am Saurabh Garg. I graduated from MDI Gurgaon in 2006 and did not join a bank. I became a three-time founder and have run C4E since I built it from nothing in 2014. I have written every week since 2004. I have seen how India's largest houses communicate, the gap between the public narrative and the private reality, the careful architecture of what gets said and what does not. I do not observe Indian business from the outside. I have worked inside it, professionally, for two decades, and I have written about it for longer. ### Free printable: Before the handover 39 questions to record with a founder, in eight sessions, so the next generation inherits the reasons along with the rules. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="5"] ## Common questions Q: Will an authorised biography just be flattering? Not the way I write it. A book written to flatter dies on the shelf. I find the contradiction at the centre and treat it with respect. Authorised means cooperation, not censorship. The truth, told with care, is what makes the book worth reading and worth keeping. Q: Who controls what goes in? You do. You review every section before it is final. What goes in is a craft decision we make together. What stays out is yours to decide, and I honour it absolutely. Q: Is everything confidential? An NDA is signed before any story is shared. I have never disclosed a client's private material, not a detail, not a name, without written consent. Discretion is the foundation of this work, not a feature of it. Q: Will you interview people other than me? Where it serves the book and you permit it, yes. Contemporaries, colleagues, and family often hold the parts of the story you cannot see about yourself. Every such conversation happens with your agreement. Q: Who owns the manuscript? You do, entirely. Full copyright transfers to you on completion. My name appears nowhere unless you choose to credit me. Q: Could the book become a film? For the right life, yes. I am a published novelist and a short-film co-producer, and India is making founder biopics and dynasty documentaries now. The book is the foundation. The screen conversation follows from it. Q: How long does it take? A full authorised biography takes six months. A harder book, with a subject who has died or four generations across three countries, runs longer, and that gets quoted before we sign. Q: How much does it cost? Priced by the depth of the work, not by word count. A full authorised biography is US$25,000 over six months, and a harder book is quoted after a first conversation. See what it costs. ## What you receive A definitive manuscript, 60,000 to 90,000 words, delivered in stages with a revision cycle at each one. The research record behind it, organised. Full copyright, transferred to you on completion. A book built to be referenced for decades, and a foundation for whatever follows, including a screen story. ## Who this is for Founders and industrialists whose company changed something and whose real story has never been told in full. Public figures whose lives deserve more than a Wikipedia page. Families who want the founder's account set down once, on their terms, while he can still give it. People who care about the difference between a book that flatters and a book that lasts. ## Who this is not for People who want a brochure with a hardcover. People who want every difficult fact removed until nothing real is left. The whole value of an authorised biography is that it tells the truth with care. If the goal is only flattery, a PR agency will serve you better, and cheaper. Q: What makes a biography last instead of gathering dust? One thing: it finds the contradiction at the centre of the person and tells it honestly. The visionary who was hard to live with. The builder who was afraid. Readers feel the difference between a book that is hiding something and a book that shows them a real human being. The honest book is the one that gets read and re-read. Q: Have you really written one, or just memoirs? A full authorised biography of an industry stalwart, start to finish, research to manuscript, and it became a bestseller. This is the exact thing, done, not adjacent work I am stretching to claim. Q: Why not have a journalist write it? A journalist writes the founder's world from the outside, often well. What they cannot do is recognise the interior of building, because they have not built. I have founded three companies and made payroll under pressure. When you describe the decision no one else could make, I am not learning it. I am remembering it. Q: What if I start and decide not to publish? That is your right, always. You own the work and the decision. Some clients write the book for the family and never release it publicly. Some change the scope halfway through. The control stays with you throughout. Q: We are a business family, not a single founder. Does that change things? Yes, and it is some of the most interesting work there is. A family across generations is a different structural problem from one life, with its own dedicated path. See family and dynastic legacy books. Q: How many interviews does it take? It depends on the life, but expect a series of recorded sessions over the months of the project, scheduled around you. The richest books come from many conversations rather than one marathon. The cadence is yours to set. Q: Can you work with an existing manuscript or notes? Yes. Sometimes a founder has notes, a half-draft, or a journalist's transcript already. I can take that as raw material and build the finished book around it, rather than start from a blank page. The voice and the structure still come from the work we do together. ### Related reading the three things I sell, each with its price - selected work: biography, novel and film - a founder story - a family and dynastic legacy book - how to write a family legacy book - what it costs - a business family history - biography writer in Mumbai ## The story has written itself. It has not been told. Tell me about the life and the enterprise. I respond within 48 hours, in strict confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/founder-story/ Title: Founder Story Ghostwriter Last updated: 2026-10-12 - # The real story is never the press release. Your founder story, told in full, by someone who has built companies. Begin the conversation See how it works 3x startup founder 22 years writing Bestselling biographer Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I am a founder-story ghostwriter and biographer. I write the account the world has not heard: the doubt, the near-failures, the choices no one saw. For founders approaching a milestone, an exit, or a handover. Confidential. One client at a time. ## Why your real story matters You built something significant. The version the world knows is the keynote, the funding announcement, and the polished origin story you have told a hundred times. The real story, the part worth telling, is somewhere else entirely. It is the loneliness of the person who cannot leave. It is the call you almost did not make. It is the months you made payroll on faith, the co-founder conversation that nearly ended it, the night you decided to keep going for reasons you have never said out loud. That story deserves more than a LinkedIn post and a podcast appearance. Most founders underinvest in this, and pay for it in ways they cannot trace. The investor who did not call back. The partnership that went to someone less capable but more visible. The keynote that went to the person who publishes, not the person who built. Your public narrative shapes how the world meets you before you speak. Left to chance, it is thin. Built with care, it does work for you for years. And there is a window. The story is sharpest while you are still in it or just out of it, before the details soften into the version you tell at dinners. The book you write at the milestone, the exit, or the handover catches the truth while it is still raw. The book you write a decade later catches the legend. ## I have built, and I write. Most ghostwriters are writers who do not understand business, or executives who cannot write. I am neither. I am a three-time startup founder with an MBA from MDI Gurgaon who has written every week for twenty-two years and authored a bestselling biography. I have made payroll under pressure. I know the specific loneliness of being the person who cannot leave. I know the difference between what a company says publicly and what its founders carry privately, because I have carried it. That is not something a journalist learns. It is something only a builder knows. When you tell me about the night it almost went under, I am not taking notes on an experience I have read about. I am recognising one I have lived. ## Why a founder needs a founder who writes ### A builder who writes Three startups, an MBA, twelve years inside India's largest houses. I understand the interior world of building because I have lived it, not observed it. ### One writer, your voice You work with me from first call to last word. The finished work sounds unmistakably like you, not like a generic executive. ### Built for the time-poor You are busy. We work over voice memo and video. You talk, I write, you review. The process is built around a founder's calendar. ### Absolute discretion An NDA before a word is shared. The cap table, the conflicts, the numbers stay between us. You decide what becomes public. ### It can become a film I am a novelist and a short-film co-producer. For the right story, the book is the start of a conversation about a screen story. India is making founder biopics now. ### Strategy first, then words I think about the architecture of what you say, when you say it, and what it positions you to do next. The narrative is built to do a job. Reading well is the minimum. ## What I write ### Founder memoir Your full arc, in your voice. For founders approaching a milestone, an exit, or a handover who want the real story told, not the press-release version. From a tight book to a full account. ### Authorised biography The definitive, research-intensive account of a company and a life worth documenting. More on authorised biography. ### Thought leadership and positioning The essays, op-eds, talks, and LinkedIn writing that build authority before the company's story is fully written. Your single most important idea, placed where your peers actually read. ## How it works ### The first conversation One call to find the real story under the official one. This is diagnosis, not a pitch. I want the part you do not usually tell. ### A page in your voice You send a five-minute voice memo. I send back one page, written as you. You judge the voice before any commitment. ### Structural diagnosis I find the dramatic question at the centre of the company and the life. The near-failure that reoriented everything. The single arc that makes your story yours and not every other founder's. ### Async interviews Recorded sessions on your schedule, by video or voice memo across time zones. Built so that a founder between rounds, or mid-raise, or post-exit, can actually do it. ### The writing Delivered in stages. You review each one. The voice is checked against you until the work sounds more like you than what you would write yourself under pressure. ### Deliver and refine Every draft includes a revision cycle. The work is finished when you feel it is exactly right, not when it is merely done. ## The proof The most significant work I do is confidential. What is public, I share. I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a bestseller. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel, The Nidhi Kapoor Story, now in feature-film development. I co-produced five short films, with recognition at MAMI and Filmfare. I have published in The Ken. I founded three companies and have run C4E for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others, since 2014. 3x startup founder Bestselling biographer MBA, MDI Gurgaon 22 years writing Published novelist 5 short films Founder Thesis podcast I have built a company, survived three startups, and spent twenty-two years writing about what it means to be human. That combination is rare, and it is what a founder story needs. ## Who I am I am Saurabh Garg. I graduated from MDI Gurgaon in 2006 and became a three-time founder rather than join a bank. I built C4E from nothing in 2014 and still run it, for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, and Maruti Suzuki. I have written every week since 2004, not for a portfolio, but because I cannot stop thinking. I know what it costs to build something from nothing, the loneliness and the doubt and the decisions that shape other people's livelihoods, because I have lived all of it. That is the interior world your story comes from, and it is the one I write from. ## Common questions Q: Will my name be on it? Only if you want it to be. The work is yours, the voice is yours, the story is yours. I am the hands. My name appears nowhere unless you choose to credit me. Q: Will it sound like a press release? No. That is the failure I exist to avoid. The whole point is the real story under the official one, told in your voice. Start with a page in your voice and judge for yourself. Q: Is everything confidential? An NDA is signed before any story is shared. The cap table, the conflicts, the numbers, the near-failures, all of it stays between us unless you decide otherwise. Q: I am short on time. Does this actually work? Yes, and it is built for that. We work over voice memo and video on your schedule. You talk, I write, you review. Founders between rounds and post-exit do this around their calendars. Q: When is the right time to write it? At a milestone, an exit, or a handover, while the story is still sharp. The book you write now catches the truth. The book you write in a decade catches the legend. Q: Could it become a film? For the right story, yes. I am a published novelist and a short-film co-producer, and India is actively making founder biopics. The book is the foundation; the screen conversation follows. Q: Who owns the finished work? You do, entirely. Full copyright transfers to you on completion. Q: How much does it cost? Priced by depth, not word count. A full founder book is US$25,000 over six months. See what it costs. ## What you receive A finished book or body of writing in your voice, delivered in stages with a revision cycle at each one. Full copyright, transferred to you on completion. Your name on it, or mine nowhere, as you choose. A narrative built to work for you: in a room, on a stage, and in the minds of the people you want to reach. ## Who this is for Founders approaching a milestone, an exit, or a handover who want the real story told, not the press-release version. Operators becoming public thinkers who want their authority built on something true. Founders between Series A and IPO who want their narrative set before the company's story is fully written. People who built something hard and are tired of it being reduced to a tagline. ## Who this is not for Founders who want a ghostwriter to manufacture a heroic myth with no rough edges. The whole point is the real story: the doubt, the near-failures, the choices no one saw. Remove all of that and you are left with the press release you already have. If you only want polish, you do not need me. Q: I have already told my story on podcasts. Why write it down? A podcast is a moment. A book is a record. Spoken answers are reactive and scattered across forty episodes. A written account is built with structure, holds the full arc in one place, and works long after the episode is forgotten. The book is the one that lasts. Q: Can you also write my ongoing posts and op-eds alongside the book? Yes. Many founders start with thought-leadership writing and build toward a book, or run both. After months of working together I know how you think, which makes the shorter pieces sound more like you than what you would write yourself under pressure. Q: What if the company is still going and the story is not finished? Most founder stories are written mid-flight, and that is fine. The book captures an arc to here: a milestone, a chapter, a turning point. It does not need an ending to be true. It needs a question at its centre, and those exist long before the exit. Q: How do we protect sensitive business information? An NDA covers everything from the first conversation. The cap table, the numbers, the conflicts, the things said in confidence stay in confidence. You decide, section by section, what becomes public and what stays in the private account. Q: Will this actually help the business, or is it vanity? A clear public narrative is not vanity. It shapes who invests, who partners, who joins, and who invites you to the room. The founders whose stories are understood get opportunities the quiet ones do not. The book is an asset, not an ornament. Q: How much of your time, and mine, does this take? The demand on you is mostly the interviews, scheduled around your calendar by voice memo or video. Between sessions I carry the work. You stay involved through reviews, not drafting. It is built so a working founder can actually finish it. Q: What if I am not sure I have a story yet? Most founders feel that, and most are wrong about it. The story is rarely the obvious win. It is the decision under pressure, the thing you almost did not do, the belief that held. One conversation usually surfaces it. If after that call I do not see a real story, I will tell you plainly. ## If you are not ready for a book A book is the largest version of this work and it is not the only one. If the story is not found yet, or you can say it in private and lose it on a stage, or the problem is that your whole company tells it differently, start in the founder section: founder storytelling to find the arc, founder coaching to say it out loud, mentoring when the problem that week is not a story problem, and company story building for the version your team repeats without you. ### Free printable: Before the handover 39 questions to record with a founder, in eight sessions, so the next generation inherits the reasons along with the rules. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="5"] ### Related reading selected work: biography, novel and film - founder storytelling, coaching and company story - founder coaching - an authorised biography - why confidentiality matters when you hire a ghostwriter - how a ghostwriter captures your voice - what the work costs - a business family history - biography writer in Mumbai ## You built it. Now tell it, in full. The doubt, the near-failures, the choices no one saw. I respond within 48 hours, in strict confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/family-legacy/ Title: Family & Dynastic Legacy Book Writer Last updated: 2026-10-12 - # Family & Dynastic Legacy Book Writer The story of what one generation builds and what the next inherits. Written with discretion, for the people who come after. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write family and dynastic legacy books for Indian business families and the diaspora. The multi-generational account that the next generation can hold, the one that explains what the family built, and why. Confidential. One family at a time. Begin the conversation See how it works 22 years writing 12 years inside India's houses A bestselling biography ## A family biography is a different kind of work. A CEO memoir is the story of one person's decisions. A family book is something else. It is the story of what one generation builds and what the next inherits. The silences between generations. The things never said at the dinner table that shape every major decision the family makes anyway. It is the harder book to write, and the more important one to get right, because it outlives everyone in it. The Tata story, the Birla story, the Godrej story are not business histories. They are India's story, told through one family's choices under pressure. Partition, independence, the Emergency, liberalisation, globalisation, each one a fork in the road that a family took or refused. To write a family like that, you need a writer who understands both the business and the country, both the public record and the private psychology. You need someone who can hold four generations in their head without flattening any single person inside it. There is also a clock, and for business families it is unusually specific. India's 300 most valuable family businesses expect INR 130 lakh crore to pass between generations in the next five years (Barclays Private Clients and Hurun India, 2025). Succession is the moment a family decides what it stands for and writes it down, or does not, and regrets it. The legacy book belongs to that moment. It is the artefact that survives the handover. ## What I bring to a family book ### Multi-generational architecture A story that spans four or five generations without losing the reader or flattening anyone in it. This is the hardest structural problem in the form, and it is the one I solve first. ### The builder's eye As a three-time founder with an MBA, I know what it costs to build. That empathy shapes every question I ask and every scene I write. ### A global register I write for the family in India and the grandchildren abroad at once. A dynastic book that only works in one country is half a book. ### Deep discretion What goes in is a craft decision. What stays out is a moral one. The family reviews every section. There are no surprises. ### One writer, full trust No team, no rotating freelancers inside your family's private history. One person, present, who earns the trust slowly and honours it absolutely. ### Built to last The work is unhurried and rigorous, made to be referenced for decades and read by a generation that has not been born yet. ## What I write ### Family legacy biography The multi-generational story of a family and its enterprise, built for the next generation to understand where they came from and why it matters. Especially for Indian business families and the diaspora whose story spans continents. ### Institutional and corporate history The founding story, growth, and cultural DNA of a company, NGO, or institution. Written to outlast any individual and be referenced for decades. ### Oral history and letters to the future Structured interviews with the elders and key witnesses, shaped into a permanent record. Long-form reflective writing addressed to a specific future reader: a child, a successor, a generation yet unborn. ## How it works ### The first conversation One call to understand the family, the enterprise, and what you want the next generation to hold. This is diagnosis, and it is confidential from the first word. ### Scope and confidentiality An NDA, a clear scope, and an agreement on access: which family members and witnesses I may interview, which archives I may see, what is off limits. ### Mapping the generations I build the architecture of the story across the generations and find the thread that runs through all of them. The book is structured before it is written. ### Interviews and archives Recorded sessions with the elders while they can tell it, and with the family who remember it differently. Letters, photographs, ledgers, the documents that anchor memory. ### Write, with the family in the room The manuscript is delivered in sections. The family reviews each one before it is final. The work is collaborative by design, because the story belongs to the family. ### Deliver and preserve A finished book, made to last, in a form the family can keep, print, and hand down. The work is finished when it is exactly right, not merely complete. ## On discretion A family considering a biography is not primarily asking: can this person write. They are asking: can I trust this person with the things that never become public. The stories that live only in family memory. The failures that were survived. The relationships that shaped everything but have no place in a press release. My answer is plain. I have never disclosed a client's private material, not a detail, not an anecdote, not a name, without explicit written consent. The most significant work I have done is not on this page, and that is the point. The family reviews every section before it is finalised. There are no surprises. The story belongs to you. I am the one with the craft to find its shape. ## The proof I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a bestseller built from records going back almost forty years. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel now in film development. I co-produced five short films. Since 2014 I have run C4E for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, and Maruti Suzuki, which means I have worked inside India's largest houses and seen how they think about their own narrative. Bestselling authorised biography 12 years inside India's houses MBA, MDI Gurgaon 3x startup founder Published novelist 5 short films Founder Thesis podcast I understand the business and the country, the public record and the private reality. A family book needs a writer who can hold both. I can. ## Who I am I am Saurabh Garg. I have written every week since 2004. I hold an MBA from MDI Gurgaon, I have founded three companies, and I have run a communications collective since 2014 for some of India's largest industrial and consumer houses. I study the Mahabharata, a four-generation family story if there ever was one, and I apply it to how I think about dynasty, inheritance, and the weight one generation hands the next. When you trust me with your family's story, you trust someone who has built, who has written, and who understands what a name carries. ### Free printable: Before the handover 39 questions to record with a founder, in eight sessions, so the next generation inherits the reasons along with the rules. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="5"] ## Common questions Q: Who is a family legacy book for? Business families and founders in their later years, in India and the diaspora, who want the story held by the next generation, told once, in full, and on their terms. Q: How private is this? Entirely. An NDA is signed before any story is shared. The family reviews and approves every section before it is final. I have never disclosed a client's private material without written consent. Q: Will the whole family be involved? As much or as little as you decide. I interview the people you permit, in the order that serves the book. Some families want one voice to lead; others want many. Both work. Q: What about the difficult parts of our history? We decide together what is in and what stays out. What stays out is a moral decision I take with as much care as the craft. A family book serves the reader and the family at once, and I do not pretend those are the same obligation. Q: How long does it take? Typically three to nine months, depending on the generations covered and access to the people who lived it. Multi-generational books take longer than a single memoir, because the research is wider. Q: Who owns the finished book? The family does, entirely. Full copyright transfers to you on completion. My name appears nowhere unless you choose to credit me. Q: Why should we start now? Because the people who can tell it from the inside are here now. Once the elders are gone, the story can only be built from the outside. Most families start too late. The ones whose stories survive started while the founder could still talk. Q: How much does it cost? Priced by the depth of the work, not by word count. A family book is US$25,000 over six months, and a multi-generation book is quoted above that after a first conversation. See what it costs. ## What you receive A finished, multi-generational manuscript, delivered in sections with the family reviewing each one. The research and oral-history record behind it. Full copyright, transferred to the family on completion. A book made to be printed, kept, and handed down, in a form a generation not yet born can read. ## Who this is for Indian business families and the diaspora who want the story of the enterprise and the family held together, told once, in full, on their terms. Founders in their later years who want to set down what they built and why, while they can. Families approaching a succession or a handover, the moment a legacy is defined or lost. ## Who this is not for Families who want a sanitised pamphlet for a corporate anniversary, with every hard chapter removed. A real family book holds the difficult parts with care, by agreement. If the goal is only public relations, this is not the right work. Q: What if different family members remember things differently? They always do, and that is part of the truth, not a problem to erase. A good family book can hold more than one memory of the same event without taking sides. Where a fact must be settled, the family settles it. Where a feeling differs, the book has room for both. Q: Can we keep it private, just for the family? Yes. Many families do exactly that: a private edition, printed for the family and never sold. Others publish. The choice is yours, and it can be made late in the process. Q: How do you handle the parts we would rather not include? We agree the boundaries early, and the family reviews every section. What stays out is a decision I take with as much seriousness as what goes in. Nothing reaches the page that the family has not seen. Q: Is this only for very wealthy families? No. It is for families who value the story, whatever the size of the enterprise. The work scales to the scope. A focused single-generation book is a different size from a four-generation dynasty, and is priced accordingly. Q: Who leads the project from the family's side? Usually one person becomes the point of contact, often the family member who started the conversation. They coordinate access and reviews, while I do the interviewing and writing. It keeps the work moving without asking the whole family to manage it. Q: How soon should we start? While the elders can still tell it. The single most common regret in this work is waiting. Once the first generation is gone, the story can only be assembled from the outside, and it is never the same book. Q: Can the book include photographs and documents? Yes, and the best family books do. Photographs, letters, ledgers, and old documents anchor the writing and give the reader something to hold. I help you choose what earns its place, so the images carry the story rather than crowd it. The finished edition can be designed around them, so the book is as much an object to hold as a story to read. ### Related reading the three things I sell, each with its price - selected work: biography, novel and film - هذه الصفحة للعائلات العربية - how to write your family's legacy book - a diaspora memoir - an authorised biography - a family history book - what a personal historian does ## Tell it once, in full, before the elders are gone. The book that the next generation will hold. I respond within 48 hours, in strict confidence. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/family-history-book-writer/ Title: Family History Book Writer: Four Generations, One Book Last updated: 2026-10-04 # Family History Book Writer Four generations, three countries, eleven people who remember it differently. Somebody has to decide what the book is about. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. A single memoir has one narrator. A family history has a crowd, and the crowd is the problem. Your uncle has a version. Your mother has another. There is a cousin in Toronto who has the letters and has not spoken to anyone since 2011. The writing is the easy part. Deciding what the book is about is the job. ## What a family history book actually is Not a family tree. A tree tells you who. A history tells you what happened and what it cost. The best ones have a spine: one migration, one business, one decision, one house. Everything else hangs off it. Families usually start by wanting everything. Everyone included, every branch equal, nobody offended. That produces a document nobody reads, including the family. The books that get read are the ones where somebody chose an argument and followed it. ## How it gets built ### The census Who is alive, who holds what, who is not speaking to whom. This map decides the interview order, and the oldest people go first regardless of anything else. ### Oral history first Interviews with everyone who was there, separately. Twenty to sixty hours across the family. Recorded and transcribed, because this is the part with an expiry date. ### The archive Letters, ledgers, land papers, passports, court records, school certificates, photographs. Dated and identified while somebody alive can still name the people in them. ### The spine The one thread the book follows. Chosen after the interviews, not before, because the interviews almost always change what the family thought the story was. ### The write Eight to eighteen months depending on generations and geography. Phased, so the family sees the shape early and nothing arrives as a surprise. ### The read-through An agreed group reads before publication. Agreed in advance, in writing, with agreed limits on what they can change. This step saves families. ## The contradictions Your uncle says his father sold the land to save the business. Your mother says he sold it to pay a debt nobody mentions. Both were there. Neither is lying. A bad family history picks one and prints it. A good one says: he sold the land in 1976, his son remembers it as a rescue, his daughter remembers it as a cover, and the sale deed shows the price. Then it moves on. That is the craft, and it is why family histories need a writer from outside the family. Anyone inside it has a side, whether they admit it or not. ## The diaspora version Most of the family histories I write are split across countries. The first generation is in India, the second in the Gulf or the US, the third has never lived anywhere else. The book has to work for all three, which means it must land for an aunt in Pune and a grandchild in New Jersey at the same time. That is the hardest technical problem in this kind of book. A reference that needs no explaining in Pune has to be carried without a footnote for a reader in New Jersey, and without condescending to either. It is the reason I do this work rather than something easier. ## What it costs A sample page in your family's voice is US$1,000, credited against the fee. A single-subject book is US$25,000 over six months. A multi-generation book is quoted above that after a first conversation, because the interview load, the archive work and the family diplomacy are all larger than a single-subject book. The honest constraint: I take one at a time, and a four-generation book can run eighteen months. If your family needs it printed for a wedding in April, say so on the first call and I will tell you straight whether it is possible. Begin the conversation Read the how-to guide first ## Questions families ask Q: How do you write a family history book? Interview the oldest generation first, gather and date the archive, find the one thread the book follows, then write it in phases with an agreed group reading before publication. The order matters: recording expires, everything else waits. Q: What if relatives remember things differently? The book holds both accounts and names the document where one exists. Picking one version and printing it is how family histories start arguments that outlast the people in them. Q: How far back can a family history go? Living memory reaches about a hundred years through the oldest people you can interview. Beyond that it becomes genealogy and archival research, which is a different discipline and a different specialist. Q: Who should be interviewed? Everyone alive who was there, oldest first, and the people outside the family who were around: business partners, neighbours, the accountant of thirty years. Outsiders remember what insiders stopped noticing. Q: What if part of the family objects to the book? Agree the read-through group and their powers before writing starts, in writing. Objections raised in month two are a conversation. Objections raised at the printer are a crisis. Q: How long does a family history book take? Eight to eighteen months, depending on how many generations, how many countries and how much archive there is. The interviews alone can run three months when the family is spread across time zones. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - the gift book, ten stories in four months - a family legacy book - a business family history - what a personal historian does - a grandparent's life story - how to write your family's legacy book - memoir ghostwriting for the Indian diaspora ## Start with the oldest person in the family. Tell me who is still here and what the family has. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation There is a smaller way in. StoryHunt is an open call for ten hidden stories from the Indian diaspora, one story rather than a whole family history, and contributors keep their copyright. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/business-family-history-book/ Title: Business Family History Book: The Firm and the Family Last updated: 2026-10-12 # The Business Family History Two books are competing inside this one. The company's version, and what actually happened. The first is a brochure. The second is the reason to do it. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Indian business families are entering the largest wealth transfer in their history. Most of the founders are still alive. Most of their sons and daughters know the founding story only in the version told at anniversaries. A commissioned history is the one instrument that fixes that, and it is also the one most likely to be ruined by the people paying for it. ## The three books you could commission Book | Reader | What it must do | The risk | The family book | Forty relatives, private | Hold the truth, including the parts not said aloud | It becomes an argument in print | The industry book | Peers, press, employees | Establish the record and the reputation | It becomes a brochure nobody believes | The succession book | The next generation | Explain why decisions were taken, so they are not repeated blind | It becomes an instruction manual and gets ignored | Decide which one before anything else. The interview questions, the tone, what stays out and who reads it before publication all follow from that single choice. Families that skip it end up with a book that does all three badly. ## The parts that make it hard ### The founding myth Every firm has one and it is usually 70 percent true. The interesting 30 percent is the partner who left, the loan from the wrong person, the first product that failed. Removing it makes the book worthless as a record. ### The split Most Indian business families have one. Brothers, a division of assets, a decade of silence. The book has to acknowledge it or it has no credibility with anyone who was alive. ### The succession being argued about now Sometimes the book is commissioned during it. That is a live document with consequences, and it needs a writer who has sat in corporate rooms as well as kitchen tables. ### The women Almost always written out. The wife who funded the first year with her jewellery, the daughter who ran operations for a decade. Their absence is the most common defect in these books. ### Legal exposure Live disputes, regulatory history, named third parties. Some things do not go in a book, and knowing which is a judgment call taken early with your counsel, not a surprise in month nine. ## How I work on these The founder first, and at length. Thirty to fifty hours. Then the people around the founder: the brother, the first employee, the accountant of thirty years, the banker, the competitor who lost. The outside voices are what make it a history rather than an authorised statement. Then documents. Board minutes, ledgers, licences, court filings, the letters. Where memory and paper disagree, the book says both. Then a written agreement on the read-through: who reads before publication, what they can change, and what they cannot. This is agreed in month one, when everyone is calm, rather than in month twelve when they are not. I came to this from years running communications for large Indian corporates alongside twenty-two years of writing, and I have written an authorised biography of an industry stalwart. The room is familiar. So is the moment when a founder decides whether to tell you the real version. ## Confidentiality An NDA before any material is shared, not after. One writer, so the material sits with one person rather than a roster. I have never disclosed a client's private material, not a detail, not a name, without written consent. For a family with a live dispute or a listed company, the number of people who see the material is itself a term worth negotiating. ## What it costs and how long Scoped after a first conversation. These sit at the top of my range because of the interview load, the archive work and the stakes. Twelve to eighteen months is normal. Agencies price comparable books at $57,500 to $250,000 and I am in that conversation, with the difference that the person you meet writes every word. Begin the conversation See the authorised biography work ### Free printable: Before the handover 39 questions to record with a founder, in eight sessions, so the next generation inherits the reasons along with the rules. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="5"] ## Questions business families ask Q: Should a business family history be honest about disputes? It has to acknowledge them or it loses credibility with every reader who was alive at the time. Honest does not mean forensic. The book can state that a split happened and what it cost without litigating it in print. Q: Who owns the book and controls what goes in? You own it and copyright transfers on completion. Control is set up front through a named read-through group with written limits on what they can change. Vague control arrangements are the single biggest cause of these projects collapsing. Q: Can we commission this during a succession? Yes, and many are. It needs stated ground rules about what the book will and will not address while the matter is live, agreed with your counsel before interviews begin. Q: Will employees and partners be interviewed? They should be. A history built only from the family reads as an authorised statement. The first employee, the long-serving accountant and the competitor who lost are what turn it into a record. Q: How do you handle material that cannot be published? It gets recorded and kept out of the manuscript. Many families end up with two artefacts: the book, and a sealed archive of recordings and transcripts that stays private for a stated number of years. Q: How much does a business family history cost? Scoped after a first conversation and at the top of my range. Comparable agency books publish at $57,500 to $250,000. The interview load and the stakes, not the word count, drive the number. ### Related reading - the three things I sell, each with its price - هذه الصفحة للعائلات العربية - authorised biographies for founders - founder story ghostwriting - a family history book - a family legacy book - working with a confidential ghostwriter - what a personal historian does ## The founder is still here to tell it. Tell me about the family and the firm. I will tell you which of the three books you actually want. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/family-heirloom-book/ Title: The Family Heirloom Book: Every Voice, One Book Last updated: 2026-10-12 - # The Family Heirloom Book One book on the shelf in every house the family lives in. The voices, the photographs, the letters, the recipes and the tree, written by one person and bound to last. Tell me about your familyStart with one page Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 7 October 2026. Every family has the material. A steel trunk in Ludhiana with the land papers. A shoebox of black-and-white prints nobody has labelled. A grandmother who makes the dal one way and has never written it down. An uncle in Toronto with the letters. Most of it is one move, one clear-out or one funeral from gone. The heirloom book puts it between two covers, in an order that makes sense to a grandchild who has never seen the village. This page is about what goes into the book and what the book is. How a family decides what its story is about, and how I handle relatives who remember it differently, is on the family history page. ## What goes in ### The voices Interviews with the people who were there, oldest first, each one on their own before anyone is in a room together. Recorded and transcribed. In whatever mix of English, Hindi and Punjabi they think in. On video and voice from wherever they live. ### The archive Letters, ledgers, passports, school certificates, land papers, the wedding card from 1962. Read, dated and quoted where a document settles what memory cannot. ### The photographs You scan them, I place and caption them. The captions get written while somebody alive can still name the faces, which is the part most families leave too late. ### The family tree Drawn from the first conversation with the family and checked against the interviews. Every name spelled the way the family spells it, with the village and the years where anyone knows them. ### The kitchen If the family cooks, the recipes go in with the person who made them and the stories that came with the food. Quantities are taken down while she cooks, because "andaaz se" is not a measurement anyone can follow in Singapore. ### The recordings Every recording is handed over with the book. If you want it, a small printed code beside a story plays the voice telling it. ## The book itself A hardback, sewn rather than glued, on paper that holds a photograph. Cloth or leather on the cover, a slipcase if you want one. A larger, landscape format when the book is mostly pictures, a smaller one when it is mostly story. We choose it together with the printer once the manuscript is final, and I send you the printer's proof copy before the run. One copy for every house. A family spread across Mumbai, Dubai, London and Toronto gets its copies shipped to each address. Extra copies and extra addresses are billed at what the printer and the courier charge me, with nothing added. The print files are yours, so a reprint in twenty years does not need me. ## Who it is for ### Grandparents who crossed a border Partition, East Africa, the Gulf in the seventies. They are the last people who were in the room, and their stories are the first to go. ### Parents at home, children abroad A father in Pune, a daughter in London, a son in New Jersey. The book is the one thing all three households will own the same copy of. The interviews run fine across time zones. ### A date worth marking The 80th, the 50th anniversary, the house being sold. A date gives the book a deadline, and a book without a deadline does not get finished. How to give it without it landing badly. ## How it gets made Stage | What happens | What you see | The census | Who is alive, who holds what, who should be interviewed and in what order. NDA and contract signed. | The interview list and the calendar | The interviews | Sessions of ninety minutes, oldest people first, recorded and transcribed. | The chapter plan, before any prose | The archive | You send scans of the photographs and papers. I read them against the interviews. | A list of what goes in and what is missing | The writing | I write every page. Dated revision rounds with you and the people in the book. | Sample chapters, then the full draft | Design and print | Cover, layout, the tree, the photographs placed. A proof copy, then the print run. | Books at every address | The gift book takes four months from the first session to the box at your door. A full book takes six months of writing, with design and print scheduled once the manuscript is final. A book that covers four generations and three countries can take eight to eighteen months, and I will tell you which one you are looking at in the first conversation. ## What it costs Book | What it holds | Fee | One page first | A page in your family's voice, from your own material, so you can judge before you commit | US$1,000, credited against the book | The gift book | One parent or both. Ten or twelve stories, about 25,000 words with photographs. Design and ten hardbacks included. | US$10,000 | The full book | The whole story, 60,000 to 90,000 words, every interview it needs, archive research. Design and print quoted on their own line. | US$25,000 | A book across several generations and countries is quoted above the full book after the first conversation, because the interviews, the archive and the family diplomacy are all larger. Every fee is paid in parts against dated deliverables, and you can stop after any part and keep what is done. ## Why not an app A question-a-week service costs about a hundred US dollars a year. Your parent answers a prompt, software turns the answer into text, and a book arrives at the end. For a parent who likes to write, that is a good product. An heirloom book is a different job. Somebody has to talk to six people separately, notice that two of them describe the same year differently, read the land deed, decide which twelve photographs out of four hundred go in, and then write it so a grandmother in Amritsar and a grandson in Sydney both recognise the family. No prompt does that. That is what the fee pays for. ## What I can show you Every family book I write is private. I cannot show you someone else's grandmother, and you would not want me to show anyone yours. What is public: I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a bestseller built from records going back almost forty years. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I have written every week since 2004. The fair test is your own family. One page in your family's voice, from a recording or a letter you send me, for US$1,000. If it does not sound like them, you have lost very little. ## Questions families ask Q: How much does a family heirloom book cost? The gift book is US$10,000 with design and ten hardbacks included. The full book is US$25,000 for the writing, with design and print quoted separately. A multi-generation book is quoted after the first conversation. A single page in your family's voice is US$1,000 and is credited against the book. Q: How long does it take? Four months for the gift book, including print. Six months of writing for the full book, then design and print. Eight to eighteen months for a book across several generations and countries. Q: Which languages can the interviews be in? English, Hindi and Punjabi, in whatever mix the person speaking thinks in. The book is written in English. A Hindi or Gujarati edition is a separate commission with a separate translator. Q: Can relatives in other countries be interviewed? Yes. That is the usual case. The interviews run on video and voice, scheduled around each person's mornings, and the books ship to every address. Q: Can the recipes and the family tree go in? Yes. The tree is drawn from the first conversation and checked against the interviews. Recipes go in with the person who cooked them and the stories around the food, taken down while they cook. Q: What if my parent or grandparent is unwell? Then we start with the interviews, at whatever pace they can manage, and the book follows. The recordings are the part with an expiry date. Everything else can wait. Q: Who owns the book? You do. An NDA is signed before anyone tells me anything, and the copyright is assigned to you on the final payment. My name appears nowhere unless you want it there. Q: Can we print more copies later? Yes. The print files are yours. Extra copies at the time are billed at the printer's price, and a reprint years later does not need me. ### Related reading family history book writer - the gift book, ten stories in four months - a grandparent's life story - a family legacy book - what a personal historian does - questions to ask your parents - how to self-publish a biography ## Start with the oldest person in the house. Tell me who is still here, where the family lives and what is in the trunk. I respond within 48 hours. Tell me about your family --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/personal-historian/ Title: Personal Historian and Legacy Strategist Last updated: 2026-10-04 # Personal Historian A genealogist finds the names. A ghostwriter writes the book. A personal historian works out what the family actually has, and what it is about to lose. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Most families come to me asking for a book. About a third of them need something else first: somebody to look at what exists, work out what is disappearing fastest, and decide the order of the work. That is the personal historian's job. The book is one possible output. It is not always the first one. ## What a personal historian does ### Takes stock Who is still alive and how urgent each of them is. What documents exist and where. Which photographs still have somebody alive who can name the people in them. ### Records the oral history Structured interviews, properly recorded, transcribed and indexed. This is the part that expires. Everything else can wait a decade. This cannot. ### Organises the archive Letters, land papers, ledgers, passports, photographs. Dated, identified, digitised, and stored so that a grandchild in another country can actually find something. ### Decides the shape One book, four books, a book and an audio archive, or a chapter now and the rest later. This is the strategy part, and it is the part most families skip straight past. ### Writes what should be written Then the writing. A memoir, an authorised biography, a family history, or one chapter about the one thing that matters most. ## Personal historian, ghostwriter, genealogist | Genealogist | Ghostwriter | Personal historian | Works from | Records and archives | Interviews with one subject | Living memory plus records | Produces | A tree, sources, documents | A manuscript | Recordings, an archive, and usually a book | Answers | Who we are descended from | What this life was about | What this family has, and what it is losing | Urgency | Low. Records keep. | Depends on the subject | High. Memory does not keep. | The three overlap and good practitioners borrow from each other. I work as a personal historian and a writer, and when a family needs genealogy I say so and point them to somebody who does it properly. ## Legacy strategist The second half of the label, and the part that matters for business families. A legacy strategist asks what the record is for. A book for forty relatives is a different object from a book that goes to the industry, which is different again from a founder's account written while a succession is being argued about. The audience decides the form, the tone, what stays out, and who gets consulted before publication. Getting that wrong is expensive in a way that has nothing to do with writing. I came to this from twenty-two years of writing and years of running communications for large Indian corporates, which is where you learn that the question is never only what happened. It is who is reading, and what happens to them when they read it. ## When a family needs one When the eldest generation is over 80. When a patriarch has been diagnosed with something. When a business is passing to a generation that was not there for the hard part. When somebody has died and the family has realised how much went with them. When there are four boxes in a cupboard in Pune that nobody has opened since 1994. ## How to start A first conversation, free. If the work is urgent I will say so, and the recording starts first, because that is the part with a deadline attached to a person. The gift book is US$10,000 over four months. The full book is US$25,000 over six months. Begin the conversation See the family legacy work ## Questions people ask Q: What does a personal historian do? Records a family's living memory through structured interviews, organises the documents and photographs into an archive, and turns the result into a written record. The interviews are the urgent part because they expire with the people who hold them. Q: What is the difference between a personal historian and a genealogist? A genealogist works from records to establish who you descend from. A personal historian works from living memory to establish what happened and what it meant. Records keep. Memory does not. Q: How much does a personal historian cost? The gift book is US$10,000 over four months. A full book is US$25,000 over six months, and the wider market runs from $3,250 packaged services to $250,000 agency books. Q: What is a legacy strategist? Someone who decides what a family's record is for before deciding what it should be. Who reads it, what it needs to do, what stays out, and who gets consulted before publication. For business families this decision costs more than the writing. Q: Should we record interviews even if we are not ready for a book? Yes, and this is the single best advice on this site. Recording is the part with a clock on it. The book can be commissioned in five years. The interviews cannot be recorded in five years if the person is gone. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - the gift book, ten stories in four months - a family legacy book - a family history book - a grandparent's life story - a business family history - how to write your family's legacy book - about Saurabh Garg ## Start with what is disappearing fastest. Tell me who is still here and what exists. I will tell you the order to do it in. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/work/ Title: Work Last updated: 2026-10-05 # Published Work by Saurabh Garg: Books, Films and a Podcast The published books, the short films, and the podcast. The best work stays confidential. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## Selected work ### The work speaks.Where it can. Most of my significant work is protected by NDA. What is public, I share below. The three bestselling ghostwritten books and the ongoing retainer clients stay confidential, as promised. ### Biography. Flagship project ### The authorised biography of an industry stalwart I worked with an industry stalwart and told his story. Writing the biography meant going far beyond the public record. The story had written itself over the years but had never been told. I scoured records going back almost 40 years to understand the personal cost of building an institution that would outlast its leaders. That story lived in his memory, in old documents, in conversations with contemporaries. None of it organised, none of it structured for a reader. My work was to interview, research, find the dramatic question at the centre of the life, and build a manuscript that was both historically accurate and impossible to put down. The book became a bestseller. BestsellerFull manuscript ### Published novel. Original work ### The Nidhi Kapoor Story My debut novel. A crime thriller set in contemporary Bollywood, 90,000 words. A Bollywood actress begins receiving death threats from unknown assailants. The investigation that follows pulls back the curtain on fame, power, and the machinery of the film industry. Either you drop it within the first 20 words, or you cannot put it down. The Hindi edition was published in 2020. The novel is in active development as a feature film screenplay. It is available to read. If you want to know how I write, this is the most honest answer I can give you. 90,000 wordsEnglish & Hindi editionsIn film development ### Short film production Five short films co-produced, with recognition at MAMI, Filmfare, and more. Worked alongside award-winning independent directors. ### Podcasting. Founder Thesis Founder Thesis, built with Akshay Datt, one of India's longest-running founder interview shows. Hundreds of hours in the chair, drawing the real story out of the people who built companies. The instinct that makes a good interview is the one that makes a good book. ### Business journalism Published in The Ken. A deep investigative piece on IVM and India's podcasting industry, written to the standards of India's most rigorous subscriber-only business publication. Available on request. ### Narrative research The Hero's Journey project. Published applied analysis of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth across Indian cinema, including a structural breakdown of Munna Bhai MBBS. A demonstration of how I think about narrative. Read at saurabhgarg.com. Journalists will find the fact sheet and the fee on the press page, and a photograph comes back the same day from press@sgwashere.com. The work in progress is StoryHunt, an open call for ten Indian diaspora stories nobody wrote down, closing 31 October 2026. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/write-my-fathers-life-story/ Title: Write My Father’s Life Story: A Book Before It Is Too Late Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Write My Father's Life Story He will tell you the same four stories at dinner. There are two hundred he has never told anyone. I get those. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. You have thought about this for three years. Every Diwali somebody says we should write Papa's story down. Then everyone flies home and nothing happens. Here is what actually happens instead. I sit with your father, for thirty or forty hours, and I ask him the questions nobody in the family has ever asked. Then I write it as a book, in his voice, and you hold it. ## Why it has not happened yet Not laziness. Three real reasons, and they are the same in every family. ### He says there is nothing to tell Every father says this. He is comparing his life to a film. His grandchildren will compare it to nothing, because nothing is what they currently have. ### You cannot interview your own father You know too much and you are too involved. The questions that matter are the ones a son cannot ask and a father will not answer to a son. A stranger gets a different man. ### Nobody has the year You have a job, children, and a father in another country. The recorder app on your phone has four voice notes from 2023 and you have not opened them. ## What I ask him Not "tell me about your childhood." That gets you the four dinner stories in a longer form. What did the ticket cost, and who paid for it. Who did you write to in the first year, and did they write back. What did you eat when you had no money. What were you afraid of in 1979 that you have never told your wife. Who did you leave behind that you still think about. What did you want to be before you became this. When did you know the business was going to survive. What would you do differently, and do not say nothing. Two things happen in those rooms, every time. He tells me something the family has never heard. And he says, near the end, that nobody has asked him this before. ## What you get A book. Not a transcript, not a memory journal with prompts, not a slideshow. A book with a shape, a beginning that pulls, and an argument about what his life was actually about. Written in his voice, so his grandchildren hear him and not me. The interviews stay with you as audio. For many families that recording becomes the thing they play years later, and I have learned to treat it as a deliverable, not a byproduct. ## The part nobody says out loud There is a clock and you know it. The man who can tell you why he really left, what the first winter cost him, who he wrote to and who he never spoke to again, is here now. After that the story can only be built from the outside, from documents and other people's memory. It can never again be told from the inside. I have had two families call me after the funeral. Both times we made something honest from letters and interviews with people who knew him. Both times it was a smaller book than it should have been, and both families said the same sentence: we should have done this two years ago. ## How to bring it up with him Do not lead with a book. Books sound like ego and he will refuse on principle. Lead with the grandchildren. "Arjun is going to want to know where we came from, and he is going to ask you, and you are not going to be there to answer." Fathers who refuse for themselves say yes for a grandchild. Then let me handle the first conversation, which I have had many times and you have had none. Most fathers who agree reluctantly are the ones who talk for four hours in session two. ## How it runs ### One conversation first With you, free, about an hour. What the book is, who reads it, what shape it wants. Often the family has not agreed on this yet, and the call is where they do. ### A page in his voice Before you commit to a book, a paid page from a five-minute recording. You read it and you know. If it does not sound like him you have lost five minutes of his time and the price of a page. ### Interviews Thirty to sixty hours, unhurried, shaped around his energy. In person where the book asks for it, on video where it does not. In whatever mix of English, Hindi and Punjabi he thinks in. ### The writing Six months, by me, one book at a time. You see it in phases. Nothing is a surprise at the end. Begin the conversation Ask for a page in his voice ### Free printable: 100 questions to ask your parents Ten sessions, ten questions each, in the order that gets a parent talking. Print it, take it home, tick them off as you go. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="4"] ## Questions families ask Q: How do I convince my father to do this? Do not sell him a book. Tell him his grandchild will want to know and will not have anyone to ask. Then let me have the first conversation. Fathers refuse for themselves and agree for grandchildren, and the ones who agree reluctantly are usually the ones who talk the longest. Q: What if his English is not good? It does not need to be. We work in whatever mix of languages the story lives in. My job is to carry the voice and the meaning into a book that reads clean for a grandchild abroad while still sounding like the man who told it. Q: My father is 84 and his memory is going. Is it too late? No, and start now. Long-term memory usually outlasts short-term memory by years. Sessions get shorter and gentler and we lean harder on photographs and documents as prompts. What we cannot do is start later. Q: Can we do this if he lives in India and I live abroad? Yes. Most of my clients are split across countries. Interviews run over video and voice, and I travel to sit with him when the book asks for it. Q: What if he tells a story that hurts someone in the family? We agree early what is in and what stays out. What stays out is a decision taken with as much care as what goes in, before publication, not discovered after. Q: How much does it cost to write my father's life story? A full book is US$25,000 over six months. The market range runs from $59 memory apps to $250,000 agency packages, and the cost guide breaks down what each band actually buys. A shorter book of ten or twelve stories is the gift book, at US$10,000. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - 100 questions to ask your parents - the gift book, ten stories in four months - write my parents' life story - a grandparent's life story - memoir ghostwriting for the Indian diaspora - a family legacy book - what it costs - is my story worth telling ## He is here now. Tell me about your father and I will tell you what the book could be. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/write-my-parents-life-story/ Title: Write My Parents’ Life Story: A Memoir About Both of Them Last updated: 2026-10-11 # Write My Parents' Life Story Two people, one book. Their marriage is the story, and neither of them can tell it alone. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. A book about both your parents is not two biographies stapled at the spine. It is one story with two narrators who disagree, and the disagreement is the best material in it. Ask them separately why they moved in 1988 and you will get two different answers. Both true. Neither complete. That gap is where the book lives. ## Why the two-person book is harder, and better ### They remember different halves He remembers the job, the visa, the numbers. She remembers the flat, the neighbour, the winter, what it cost her to leave her mother. The full story needs both and neither of them has it. ### They perform for each other Interviewed together, they edit. He softens, she defers, and you get the version told at weddings. Interviewed separately, you get the real one. Then the book puts them back together. ### Your mother will say her part is boring She will. She is wrong and she is consistent about it. The domestic story is the one the grandchildren want, and it is the one that almost never gets written down. ### The contradictions are the plot Two accounts of the same decision is not a problem to resolve. It is the most honest thing a family book can do, and it needs a writer who knows how to hold both without picking a winner. ## How I run a two-parent book Separate interviews first, always. Fifteen to twenty hours each, alone, so neither is editing for the other. Then joint sessions on the moments where their accounts split, which are the sessions everybody remembers afterwards. Then documents: passports, letters, the photographs with dates on the back, the ledgers nobody has opened since 1994. The book is written as one narrative with a spine. Usually the migration, sometimes the business, sometimes a decision that reshaped everything after. Both voices come through, in their own registers, and where they disagree the page says so. ## When one parent is gone A common commission, and a different craft. The living parent carries the narration and the absent one is built from letters, photographs, documents and interviews with everyone who knew them: siblings, business partners, the friend from the first job, the neighbour who has been there since 1985. Say this plainly: it is a smaller book than the one you could have had. It is also the last chance to make it at all, and it is worth making. Half a story recorded beats a whole story lost. ## When you are commissioning it as a gift Often an adult child commissions this and the parents do not know yet. That first conversation matters more than anything else in the project, because a parent who feels investigated will give you the wedding version for forty hours. I handle that call. The frame is honour, not interview. In practice a parent who agrees reluctantly in week one is usually the one who calls me in month three with something he forgot to mention. Two smaller routes exist. The gift book tells ten or twelve of their stories in four months for US$10,000, printed. And the full guide shows you how to write the book yourself, free. ## What it costs and how long A single-subject book is US$25,000 over six months. A two-parent book is scoped after a first conversation and runs longer, because the interview load is close to double, so budget eight to twelve months and start with a paid page in their voice before committing to any of it. Begin the conversation See what it costs ## Questions families ask Q: Should my parents be interviewed together or separately? Separately first, for fifteen to twenty hours each, because together they edit for each other. Joint sessions come after, and they work best when aimed at the places their accounts disagree. Q: What if my parents remember the same event differently? They will, and the book keeps both. Two honest accounts of one decision is the truest thing a family book can hold. The craft is holding both without flattening either. Q: One of my parents has died. Can we still do this? Yes. The living parent narrates and the absent one is built from letters, documents, photographs and interviews with people who knew them. It is a smaller book than the one you could have had, and it is worth making. Q: My mother thinks her story is not interesting. What do I do? Nothing you say will change her mind, so do not argue. Let the interviews do it. Around hour six, when someone asks about the year she ran the house on one income in a country she did not choose, she stops calling it boring. Q: Can it be a surprise gift? Partly. The commission can be a surprise, the interviews cannot. Let me make the first approach so it lands as an honour rather than a project, and give them a real choice about doing it. Q: How long does a book about both parents take? Eight to twelve months. The interview load is close to double a single-subject book, and the writing has to hold two voices without letting either take over. ### Related reading - time left with parents calculator - life story question generator - gift your parents a book - 100 questions to ask your parents - write my father's life story - a grandparent's life story - a memoir as a gift - a family legacy book - memoir ghostwriting for the Indian diaspora - how to write your family's legacy book ## Both of them, in one book. Tell me about your parents and I will tell you what the book could be. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation Not ready to commission a book yet? Send the one story your parents tell most often to StoryHunt. Ten go into a Season 1 anthology, and I interview every one of the ten myself. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/grandparents-life-story/ Title: Your Grandparents’ Life Story, Written Down Before It Goes Last updated: 2026-10-04 # Your Grandparents' Life Story Ask most people the name of their great-grandfather's village and they cannot answer. Two generations is all it takes. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. A family loses its own history in about sixty years. Not through carelessness. Through arithmetic. The person who remembers dies, the person who half-remembers moves country, and the grandchild inherits a surname and a vague region. Your grandfather is the last person alive who was in the room. That is the entire argument for doing this now. ## What only they can tell you ### The village, and the way there The actual name, the district, which train, what the house looked like, who stayed. Once it goes it takes a professional genealogist and a year to get half of it back. ### Partition, and what came after The generation that crossed in 1947 is nearly gone. Most of them never told their children in detail, because they were busy surviving it. They will tell a patient stranger at 89 what they never told a son at 40. ### The first rupee How the business actually started. Not the founding myth on the company website. Who lent the money, what failed first, who was cheated and by whom. ### The women nobody wrote down Your grandmother's own life, before she became a grandmother. What she wanted to study. Who she nearly married. The years she ran everything while a man got the credit. ### The language and the food The dialect, the songs, what was cooked on which day and why. This is the layer that disappears first and the one grandchildren miss most. ## Working with someone in their eighties or nineties Different craft from interviewing a founder in his fifties. The sessions are shorter, ninety minutes rather than four hours, and there are more of them. We work in the part of the day when they are strongest, usually the morning. We repeat, because repetition brings back detail rather than boring them. Long-term memory usually outlasts short-term memory by years, which is the fact families get backwards. A grandmother who cannot remember what she ate at lunch can often describe a wedding in 1961 down to the colour of the sari and who did not attend. Photographs and documents are the best prompts I have. A ration card, a passport, a school certificate, a photograph with a date on the back. Gather them before we start and the interviews go twice as deep. And the honest caution. Some sessions do not work. Some days are bad days. I plan for that, and I record everything, because the sentence that arrives in the fourth hour of a slow week is often the sentence the whole book turns on. ## What the grandchildren get A book they can read at twelve and again at forty and get different things from. The audio of their grandmother's voice, which for many families becomes the thing they keep above the book itself. The photographs identified and dated while somebody still knows who is in them, which is a job that becomes impossible almost overnight. And an answer to the question every second-generation and third-generation child eventually asks, usually too late to ask the person who knew. ## Start smaller if you need to If a full book, at US$25,000 over six months, is not the right commitment yet, start with the gift book: ten or twelve of the stories that matter most, ten printed copies, four months, US$10,000. Partition. The crossing. The first shop. Families often go on to the full book after they read it. The ones who do not still have the recordings, and the recordings are the part that cannot be made later. If a grandchild wants to do the asking, the hundred questions are free. Begin the conversation Ask for a page in their voice ## Questions families ask Q: My grandfather is 92. Is he too old for this? No. Sessions get shorter and more frequent, we work in his strongest hours, and photographs do more of the prompting. Ninety-two is a reason to start this month, not a reason to skip it. Q: He has early dementia. Can we still record his story? Often yes, and the sooner the better. Long-term memory usually persists after short-term memory fades. We keep sessions short, follow his lead rather than a question list, and use objects and photographs to open doors. Some days will not work. We record everything anyway. Q: My grandmother refuses to talk about Partition. Should we push? Never push. That silence has held for seventy years and it is hers. What happens more often than not is that she talks about the years around it, and one afternoon, unprompted, she says the thing itself. If she never does, the book carries the silence honestly. Q: What should we gather before the interviews? Passports, ration cards, school certificates, letters, land papers, and every photograph with anything written on the back. Documents unlock detail that questions alone cannot reach. Q: They live in India and we live abroad. How does that work? Video and voice sessions for most of it, and I travel to sit with them for the parts that need a room. For a subject in their nineties I push hard for at least one stretch in person. Q: Can grandchildren take part? Yes, and it is worth doing. A grandchild asking one question in a session changes the register of the answer entirely. Grandparents explain things to grandchildren that they would never bother explaining to me. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - 100 questions to ask your parents - write my father's life story - write my parents' life story - a family history book - a family legacy book - how to write your family's legacy book - a memoir as a gift ## They are the last person who was in the room. Tell me about your grandparents and I will tell you what can still be captured. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation If your grandparent left India and the story of that leaving has never been written down, I am collecting ten of those for a book. The call is at StoryHunt and it costs nothing to enter. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/write-my-life-story/ Title: Write My Life Story: Your Own Memoir, In Your Own Voice Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Write My Life Story This one is not for a parent. It is yours. You have started it four times and the file is called untitled. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. You do not have a writing problem. You have a proximity problem. You know every name, every date, every turn. That is exactly why you cannot see the shape. You cannot feel what a stranger feels reading it, and you cannot find the one question at the centre of your own life that holds a reader and refuses to let go. You have lived it. You cannot see it. ## What I do that you cannot do for yourself ### Find the dramatic question Every life that reads well has one question running under it. Whether he would go back. Whether the business was worth the marriage. You cannot find yours because you already know the answer. ### Cut what you are attached to The two years you find most important are usually the two years a reader skips. Somebody has to say that, and it cannot be your spouse. ### Ask the question you avoid There is one in every life. You have built a way of telling the story that routes around it. I notice the route, and I ask. ### Keep your voice, not mine The whole craft is that the book sounds like you at your most articulate, on the day you were speaking well. Not like a writer doing an impression of you. ## What you have to supply Time, and honesty. Thirty to sixty hours of interviews, in blocks that fit your life, in person or over video. Whatever you already wrote, however rough, including the four abandoned attempts. Documents, photographs, diaries, letters, old emails. The names of six people I can interview who will contradict you. That last one is not a trick. A memoir written only from the inside is a defence. The book gets better the moment somebody who was there remembers it differently. ## The two fears, answered Will it sound like me? Judge it before you commit. I start with a paid page in your voice, built from a five-minute recording. You read it. If it does not sound like you, you have lost five minutes and the price of a page. Voice is the whole job and it should be tested first, not promised. Is it really my book if someone else wrote it? Your story, your voice, your name. I am the hands. Every memoir you admire by a founder or an actor was made this way, and the ones that read best are the ones where the writer disappeared completely. My name goes nowhere unless you put it there. ## Who this is for Founders who built something and want the real version recorded, not the press version. People who crossed an ocean at 23 and have a story their children only know in fragments. Anyone at 60 or 70 who has started to notice that nobody in the family can answer basic questions about where they came from. And people with one extraordinary chapter, an illness, a collapse, a rebuild, who do not need a whole life on the page, just that. ## Where this often ends up Some of these books are printed for forty people and never sold. Some go to publishers. Some become the source material for something else entirely. I have a novel of my own in screenplay development, so I will tell you honestly when a life has a film in it and when it does not, which is most of the time. Decide that at the end. Trying to write a bestseller from the first page is the reliable way to write nothing. ## What it costs A full memoir is US$25,000 over six months. Printing and the ISBN sit outside that fee, and how to self-publish a biography costs them line by line. For the wider market, a marketplace nonfiction book runs $18,000 to $50,000 and agencies publish $57,500 to $250,000. The cost guide breaks the whole market down band by band. The honest limit on my side: I write one book at a time, so I cannot do it fast. If you need a manuscript in eight weeks for a launch, hire an agency with a bench, and I will say that on the first call rather than after the deposit. Begin the conversation Ask for a page in your voice ## Questions people ask Q: How do I write my life story if I am not a writer? You talk. A ghostwriter interviews you for thirty to sixty hours, works from your documents and photographs, and writes the manuscript in your voice. Writing ability is not the constraint. Distance from your own life is. Q: Will the book sound like me or like the ghostwriter? Like you, and you should test it rather than trust it. Start with a paid page built from a five-minute recording and read it out loud before committing to anything larger. Q: How long does it take to write a memoir? Six months for a full-length book. Faster than that means fewer interviews, which shows up on every page. Q: Do I own the book if a ghostwriter writes it? Yes, entirely. Copyright transfers to you on completion, your name is on it, and the writer's name appears nowhere unless you choose to credit them. Get all of that in the contract. Q: Can I write my life story myself with help? Yes. Book coaching and developmental editing are the middle path: you write, someone shapes and pushes. It costs less and it costs you the year. Choose it if you actually want to write. Not if you only want the book. Q: What if parts of my story would upset people? We decide what is in and what stays out before a word is published. That decision is taken with as much care as the writing. A memoir that hurts people by accident is a failure of planning, not of honesty. ### Related reading - will it sound like me - ghostwriter or write it yourself - is my story worth telling - memoir ghostwriting for the Indian diaspora - founder story ghostwriting - what it costs ## The file called untitled has waited long enough. Tell me the story you have been carrying. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/memoir-as-a-gift/ Title: A Memoir as a Gift: The 70th, the 80th, the Anniversary Last updated: 2026-10-10 # A Memoir as a Gift He has everything. He returns whatever you buy. This is the only gift that cannot be bought again next year. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. The 80th birthday is nine months away and the family WhatsApp group has been arguing about it for three weeks. Somebody suggested a watch. Somebody suggested a holiday he will refuse to take. Commission his story instead. It is the one gift where the value is in the attention, not the object. ## Start now, not in month eight The single most common mistake. Families call me six weeks before the party. A full book runs six months. A single chapter with recorded interviews takes eight to twelve weeks. If the date is close, the honest move is to start the recordings now, give the first session as the present, and let the book follow. That works, and it works better than a rushed book. Time before the date | What is realistic | 12 months or more | A full memoir, printed and bound for the day | 6 to 12 months | A full memoir if interviews start immediately | 3 to 6 months | With five months, the gift book fits. With less, the interviews start and the book follows. | Under 3 months | Recorded interviews, transcribed, presented as a commitment. Do not rush a book. | ## How to give it without it landing badly The risk with this gift is real and worth naming. Commissioned wrong, a memoir at 80 sounds like an obituary being ordered early. I have watched it land that way once and I structure the first conversation to prevent it. ### Frame it as being asked, not recorded Nobody has asked him about his life in forty years. The gift is the asking. That is a different offer from "we would like to preserve you." ### Give the grandchildren the credit "Your grandchildren want to know and they want to hear it from you." Almost no one refuses that, including men who refuse everything else. ### Let him say no to parts Tell him upfront that anything he does not want in the book stays out, and mean it. Control is what makes a reluctant subject relax. ### Let me make the first approach I have had this conversation many times and you have had none. It goes better from a stranger who has done it before, and it is free. ## Which occasions this suits Milestone birthdays, most often the 70th, 75th and 80th. A 50th wedding anniversary, where the two-person book is the obvious form. A retirement, especially a founder handing over a firm. A wedding, where a family history is given to the couple. And the one nobody plans for, a diagnosis, where the work becomes urgent and the whole schedule changes. For the 60th, 70th and 80th in an Indian family, see what the three ceremonies mark. ## What the family actually receives A book, printed properly and bound, in as many copies as the family needs, shipped to whichever countries they live in. The full audio of the interviews, which is the part families tell me they play years later. The photographs identified and dated while somebody still knows who is in them. And the sessions themselves, which several families have told me were the gift, more than the book. Thirty hours of somebody asking your father about his life is not something he will get again. ## What it costs There are two sizes. The gift book is US$10,000: ten or twelve stories, about 25,000 words, ten printed hardbacks, four months. A full memoir is US$25,000 over six months. And if you would like to write it yourself, the full guide is free. Families often split the cost between siblings, which also solves the argument in the WhatsApp group about what to get him. Begin the conversation See how I price ### Free printable: 100 questions to ask your parents Ten sessions, ten questions each, in the order that gets a parent talking. Print it, take it home, tick them off as you go. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="4"] ## Questions people ask Q: What do you get someone who has everything? Attention. A commissioned memoir is thirty hours of someone asking about his life, and a book at the end of it. It cannot be bought again next year and it cannot be returned. Q: How far in advance should we commission a memoir gift? Twelve months for a full printed book, six months at a minimum. Under three months, start the recordings and present the first session as the gift, with the book to follow. Rushing a memoir shows on every page. Q: Can a memoir be a surprise? The commission can be. The interviews cannot, since he has to sit for them. Make the announcement the gift, then let the first conversation happen properly so he agrees rather than complies. Q: What if my father refuses? Some do, at first. Lead with the grandchildren, give him control over what stays out, and let me make the approach. Reluctant subjects are often the ones who talk for four hours in the second session. Q: Can siblings split the cost? Yes, and most do. Agree one point of contact for decisions before we start, because a book commissioned by a committee of five takes twice as long for reasons that have nothing to do with writing. Q: Is this better than a memory-prompt journal? Different. A journal at $59 is a good product if he will actually write every week for a year. A commissioned memoir does not depend on him writing at all, and it produces a book a stranger would read rather than a set of answers. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - the gift book, ten stories in four months - how to write your parents' life story yourself - write my father's life story - write my parents' life story - a grandparent's life story - for families - what an engagement costs - is my story worth telling ## The date is closer than you think. Tell me the occasion and the deadline. I will tell you what is realistic. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/biography-writer-mumbai-india/ Title: Ghostwriter and Biography Writer in Mumbai and Across India Last updated: 2026-10-12 # Ghostwriter and Biography Writer in Mumbai I travel for interviews across India. I can be at your father's house in Malabar Hill on Tuesday, or in Coimbatore on Thursday. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Most of the ghostwriting sold in India is sold by the word, by a company, through a roster. I am one writer who takes one book at a time and writes it himself. Twenty-two years of writing. An authorised biography of an industry stalwart. A published novel in screenplay development. Five short film co-productions. An MBA from MDI Gurgaon and years running communications for large Indian corporates. That last part matters more than it sounds, because it is where you learn how a founder's story lands in an industry that will read it. ## Being in the room Every other page on this site is about working across time zones with families abroad. This page is the opposite case. When the subject is in India and so am I, the work gets better. Interviews happen in his house, at his desk, with his ledgers on the table and his brother dropping in unannounced, which is where the best material arrives. I can go to the village. I can sit in the first factory. I can meet the man who lent him the money in 1981 and is now 88 and will not be doing video calls. None of that can be replicated over a screen, and for founder biographies it is often the difference between a book and a very good transcript. ## Where I work I travel for interviews across India: Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad. I schedule interviews in blocks so a founder gives me three days rather than twenty scattered hours. Tier-two cities, where a great many Indian business families actually built the thing, are part of the job and not an inconvenience. ## What Indian families commission ### The founder's authorised biography Written while he is here to argue with it. The version that includes the partner who left and the product that failed, which is the version worth having. ### The business family history Three or four generations, the split, the succession, the firm. Commissioned most often when the next generation is taking over. ### The parents' book, commissioned from abroad A son in New Jersey or Melbourne pays for it, and I sit with his father in Ludhiana. The most common single shape of my work. ### The grandparents' oral history Partition, the crossing, the first shop. The generation that has this is nearly gone and this work has a real deadline. ### The coffee-table commemorative A company anniversary or a milestone birthday, done properly rather than by a design agency filling pages around photographs. ## On price, plainly I am more expensive than an Indian ghostwriting shop and I am going to say why rather than pretend the comparison does not exist. Published Indian rates run about Rs 2 a word, which puts a 50,000-word book near Rs 1,00,000. At that rate the writer must produce many books a year, which means a roster, a brief, and speed. It is a real service and for some books it is the correct choice, and I will say so on a call. A full book is ₹20 lakh over six months. What you get for the difference is one writer, six months, thirty to fifty hours of interviews conducted by the person writing the book, and the same name on the contract as on the manuscript. ## Confidentiality, which matters more here Indian business families are small worlds. Everybody knows somebody. An NDA is signed before any story is shared, and the material sits with one writer rather than a roster, an editor, a project manager and a transcription vendor. I have never disclosed a client's private material, not a detail, not a name, without written consent. Begin the conversation See the authorised biography work ## Questions Indian clients ask Q: Are you available for in-person interviews in India? Yes. I travel for interviews across India, and I schedule in blocks so a founder gives me three concentrated days rather than twenty scattered hours. Q: How much does a biography writer in India cost? Indian shops publish about Rs 2 a word, roughly Rs 50,000 to Rs 1,00,000 a book. A full book is ₹20 lakh over six months. The difference buys one named writer for six months instead of a roster. Q: Can the interviews be in Hindi? Yes. I interview in English, Hindi and Punjabi, in whatever mix the subject thinks in. The manuscript is delivered in English unless you want otherwise, and it keeps the register of the person who told it. Q: Do you write in Hindi or other Indian languages? I write in English. For a Hindi or regional-language edition I work with a translator I trust and stay involved so the voice survives the crossing. Say it at the start, because it changes how the English is written. Q: Will you travel to the village or the first factory? Yes, and I push for it. Rooms hold detail that interviews do not reach. Some of the best pages in a founder biography come from an afternoon standing where it started. Q: Can you write a company anniversary book? Yes, when it is a real book rather than captions around photographs. The good ones are built on interviews with the people who were there in the hard years, including the ones who left. ### Related reading - authorised biographies for founders - a business family history - the biography writers worth talking to in India - what a ghostwriter actually costs - founder story ghostwriting - working with a confidential ghostwriter ## I can be in the room this month. Tell me who the book is about and where he is. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-dubai/ Title: Memoir and Biography Writer in Dubai and the UAE Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # Memoir & Biography Writer in Dubai & the UAE Dubai is full of stories that were never written down, carried by people who will not always be here to tell them. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write memoirs and authorised biographies for the Indian community in the UAE. For the founder who built a business from a single shopfront in Deira. For the family whose three generations sit between Gujarat and the Gulf. For the adult child who wakes up one day and realises they are running out of time to ask. In your voice, in strict confidence, one client at a time. I know this is not really about a book. It is about the ache of watching a parent get older and feeling the story slipping. It is about wanting your children to know where they came from, in a country that did not exist for your family two generations ago. I take that seriously, because it is the most important thing I do. Begin the conversation See how it works 22 years writing A bestselling biography In your time zone ## The clock is quieter here, and it runs faster than you think The Indian community in the UAE built itself in a single generation. The men and women who arrived with a suitcase and a plan and slept four to a room in Bur Dubai are in their later years now. Their children were raised in the UAE, fluent in a world their parents made possible and never fully belonged to. The story of how it happened lives in one place: the memory of the person who lived it. And memory does not wait. You can feel the clock if you let yourself. The father who tells the same three stories at every dinner, and you have never asked about the other forty. The mother whose first years here you know nothing about, because she was too busy surviving them to talk. Every year you wait is a year of detail that softens, names that blur, documents that get thrown out in a move. This is the one project that cannot be done later. Later is exactly the thing it is racing. ## The Gulf-Indian story is the most tellable, and the least told The UAE holds one of the largest concentrations of self-made Indian wealth in the world, the great majority of it built by living first-generation founders. Those are the most tellable arcs there are: a person who started with nothing and built an enterprise inside one working life, in a foreign country, against the odds. And almost none of them are written down. The founder is busy. The story feels ordinary to the one who lived it. The clock is silent until it is not. India is three hours by air and ninety minutes ahead of your clock. I know the India your family left and the Gulf you built in, the references and the silences, the things that need no explaining for an Indian reader and careful context for a grandchild born in Dubai. A writer who understands one of those worlds writes half the book. A writer who understands neither writes a brochure. ## What I write for the UAE ### Your story, or your father's The full arc of a life, in your voice, written by me. Often it is an adult child who calls, wanting a parent's story captured before it is gone. It becomes the one gift that cannot be bought later. More on diaspora memoir. ### Founder story and authorised biography The real account of building in the Gulf, not the keynote version. The doubt, the near-failures, the choices no one saw, told in full and held in confidence. More on founder stories. ### Family legacy book The multi-generational story of a business family that runs between India and the Gulf, built for the next generation to understand where they came from and why it matters. More on family legacy. ### The numbers, for a family in the UAE A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, written by me. That buys thirty to sixty hours of interviews, a manuscript of sixty to ninety thousand words, three revision rounds, and the copyright, assigned to you. A page in your voice comes first, at US$1,000, credited against the fee. Every line of it is on what it costs. ## How the work goes ### One conversation, no pressure We begin with a single call. I ask the questions almost no one has asked you, or your father, about your own life. This is not a sales pitch. It is me listening for what is actually there, and you deciding whether you want to do this at all. ### A page in your voice You send a short voice memo. I send back one page, written as you. You read it and ask one thing: does this sound like me? If it does, we go on. If it does not, you have spent five minutes and the price of one page. ### Finding the shape I find the one question at the centre of the life. The wound that became the gift. The single thing that makes this story yours and not every other story of leaving and building. ### The interviews Recorded sessions, unhurried, scheduled around you or your parent's energy. Where it serves the book, with the people who knew you differently. Documents, photographs, the things others remember that you have forgotten. ### The writing I write in stages. You read each one. The voice is checked against you at every turn, until a reader would feel they are in the room with you, not with a writer. ### The book in your hands Delivered with a revision cycle at every stage. It is finished not when it is complete, but when you hold it and feel it is exactly right. Full copyright is yours. My name appears nowhere unless you want it to. ## Why trust me with it I do not have a wall of client logos, because the most significant work I do is confidential, and that is the point. What I can show, I will. I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, built from records going back almost forty years, and it became a bestseller. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel now in film development, and I co-produced five short films. I also built three startups, and since 2014 I have run a communications firm for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others. 22 years writing Bestselling biographer MBA, MDI Gurgaon 3x founder Published novelist One client at a time Most ghostwriters are writers who never built anything, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work reads like neither. ## Who this is for People who can feel the clock and refuse to let the story go unwritten. Adult children who want a parent's life held while the parent can still tell it. Founders and families whose real story has never been told in full. If your story lives in two countries and the people who carry it will not always be here, this is for you. ## Who this is not for People who want a keepsake printed by next week, or who want every hard or tender thing removed until only a highlight reel is left. This work is honest, unhurried, and made to last. If speed and volume matter more than depth and truth, a template product will serve you better. ## Common questions Q: Do you travel to Dubai? Yes, when the book asks for it. Most of the work happens over video and voice memo, with focused in-person sessions where they add the most. The short flight and shared time zone make it easy to be present. Q: My father is getting older. Is it too late? No, and the sooner the better. The sessions are unhurried and shaped around his energy. The whole point of starting now is access, while the memory is vivid, the documents are findable, and he is here to tell it himself. The hardest version of this work is the one that begins after he is gone. Q: He is a private man. Will this be confidential? Completely. An NDA is signed before any story is shared. You decide what becomes public, page by page. The most significant books I have written are not on this site, and never will be. Q: I am a busy founder. Does this actually work? Yes, it is built for that. You talk, in sessions scheduled around you, by voice memo across time zones if that is easier. I carry the writing. You stay involved through reviews, not drafting. Q: What will it cost? A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, and See what it costs. Q: Will it sound like him, or like a writer? Like him. Voice is the whole craft. We start with a page in his voice so you can judge before you commit to anything. Go deeper: memoir for the diaspora, authorised biography, family legacy books, founder stories. ## What you will have when it is done A book, in your voice, that your children can hold and their children after them. The day your father landed, in his own words. The reason your mother was braver than you ever knew. The story that, right now, exists only inside a memory that will not last forever, set down in a form that will. People spend their whole lives building things that fade: companies change hands, money moves, houses are sold. This does not fade. It is the closest thing there is to keeping a voice in the room after the person who owned it has gone. ## A word on waiting Almost everyone waits. For retirement, for the right moment, for the full story to feel finished. The families whose stories survive are the ones who started before they felt ready, while the person who lived it was still here, the memory vivid, the documents still in a drawer somewhere. There is no perfect time for this. There is only now, and later. Now is the only one that still has them in it. That is the whole reason I do this work, and the whole reason not to put it off. ### Related reading ghostwriter in Singapore - biographer in London - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - memoir for the Indian diaspora - the best ghostwriters for the diaspora - هذه الصفحة للعائلات العربية - begin a conversation ## Do not let the Gulf story go unwritten. The man who can tell it is here now. Tell me about him, in strict confidence. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ar/ Title: كاتب سير ومذكرات للعائلات والمؤسسين في الإمارات والخليج Last updated: 2026-10-04 - # كاتب سير ومذكرات للعائلات والمؤسسين في الإمارات والخليج قصة الشركة، وقصة العائلة، وقصة من بدأ كل ذلك. بصوتكم، وبسرية تامة. ابدأوا المحادثة 22 عامًا في الكتابة سيرة معتمدة من الأكثر مبيعًا عميل واحد في كل مرة حُدِّثت في 18 سبتمبر 2026 أنا سوراب غارغ (Saurabh Garg)، كاتب سير ومذكرات. كتبتُ السيرة الذاتية المعتمدة لأحد رواد قطاع تقنية المعلومات في الهند، من سجلات تمتد نحو أربعين عامًا، وصارت من الكتب الأكثر مبيعًا. اليوم أكتب للعائلات والمؤسسين في الإمارات والخليج: قصة الشركة التي بدأت بمكتب واحد، وقصة عائلة الأعمال التي تنقل عملها من جيل إلى جيل، وقصة الأب أو الأم كما يرويانها بلسانهما. الكتاب يُكتب بصوتكم، لا بصوتي. اسمي لا يظهر عليه إلا إذا أردتم ذلك. وتُوقَّع اتفاقية سرية قبل أن تُروى أي قصة. ابدأوا المحادثة كيف يسير العمل ## ما الذي أكتبه ### السيرة الذاتية المعتمدة حياة شخص واحد، تُكتب بإذنه وبمشاركته، من المقابلات والوثائق وشهادات من عرفوه. تناسب المؤسس أو رب العائلة الذي يريد أن تُروى قصته بدقة. التفاصيل بالإنجليزية. ### المذكرات قصتكم بضمير المتكلم، وبصوتكم أنتم. تتحدثون وأنا أكتب. تراجعون كل مرحلة، حتى يقرأ القارئ الكتاب ويشعر أنكم معه في الغرفة. ### كتاب إرث العائلة قصة عائلة أعمال عبر أجيالها: من أسّس، وكيف انتقل العمل، وأي القيم بقيت. يُكتب ليقرأه الجيل القادم ويعرف من أين جاء. التفاصيل بالإنجليزية. ### قصة الشركة القصة الحقيقية لبناء شركة، لا نسخة المؤتمرات. القرارات، والمنعطفات، والأشخاص الذين صنعوا الفرق. التفاصيل بالإنجليزية. ## لغة الكتاب أكتب بالإنجليزية، وهي لغة الكتاب الذي أسلّمه. تجري المقابلات بالإنجليزية، ويمكن أن تجري بالعربية بحضور مترجم تختارونه. إن أردتم نسخة عربية من الكتاب، تُترجم المخطوطة بعد اعتمادها على يد مترجم أدبي توافقون عليه، وتكلفة الترجمة منفصلة عن أجر الكتابة. ## السرية أغلب ما كتبته لا يظهر على هذا الموقع، وهذا مقصود. كتبتُ ثلاثة كتب أخرى من الأكثر مبيعًا بأسماء أصحابها، وكلها محمية باتفاقيات سرية. أنتم تقررون ما يُنشر وما يبقى داخل العائلة، صفحة بصفحة. وحقوق النشر كاملة لكم. ## كيف يسير العمل ### محادثة أولى مكالمة واحدة، بلا التزام. أسمع ما في القصة، وتقررون إن كنتم تريدون المضي فيها. ### صفحة بصوتكم ترسلون تسجيلًا صوتيًا قصيرًا، وأعيد إليكم صفحة واحدة مكتوبة بصوتكم. تكلفتها US$1,000 وتُخصم من أجر الكتاب. إن لم تشبهكم، نتوقف هنا. ### المقابلات من ثلاثين إلى ستين ساعة من المقابلات المسجلة، عبر الفيديو أو حضوريًا في الإمارات حين يحتاج الكتاب ذلك، وبمواعيد تناسبكم. ومعها الوثائق والصور وشهادات من عرفوكم. ### الكتابة أكتب على مراحل، وتقرؤون كل مرحلة. ثلاث جولات مراجعة، حتى يبدو الكتاب بصوتكم في كل صفحة. ### الكتاب مخطوطة من ستين إلى تسعين ألف كلمة خلال ستة أشهر، وحقوق النشر كاملة باسمكم. ## التكلفة الكتاب الكامل، مذكرات أو سيرة ذاتية، أجره US$25,000 على ستة أشهر، وأكتبه بنفسي. تبدأ الصفحة التجريبية بمبلغ US$1,000 يُخصم من الأجر. التفاصيل كاملة في صفحة التكلفة بالإنجليزية. ## لماذا تثقون بي 22 عامًا في الكتابة. سيرة ذاتية معتمدة من الأكثر مبيعًا، وثلاثة كتب أخرى من الأكثر مبيعًا كتبتها بأسماء أصحابها. رواية منشورة قيد التطوير السينمائي، وخمسة أفلام قصيرة شاركتُ في إنتاجها. أسستُ ثلاث شركات ناشئة، ومنذ 2014 أدير شركة اتصالات من عملائها ماهيندرا وغودريج وبنك ICICI. 22 عامًا في الكتابة كاتب سيرة من الأكثر مبيعًا ماجستير إدارة الأعمال، MDI Gurgaon مؤسس ثلاث شركات روائي منشور عميل واحد في كل مرة ## لمن هذا العمل لمؤسس بنى شركة ويريد أن يعرف أبناؤه كيف بُنيت. لعائلة أعمال تريد أن تنقل قصتها وقيمها إلى الجيل القادم. لابن أو ابنة يريدان أن تُكتب قصة أحد الوالدين بصوته، وهو حاضر ليرويها. وليس لمن يريد كتابًا خلال أسبوع، أو صورة مصقولة تُحذف منها كل لحظة صعبة. هذا عمل صبور، ومكتوب ليبقى. ## أسئلة متكررة Q: هل تكتب بالعربية؟ لا. أكتب بالإنجليزية. يمكن أن تجري المقابلات بالعربية بحضور مترجم تختارونه، ويمكن ترجمة المخطوطة المعتمدة إلى العربية على يد مترجم أدبي توافقون عليه، بتكلفة منفصلة. Q: هل تسافر إلى الإمارات؟ نعم، حين يحتاج الكتاب ذلك. يجري معظم العمل عبر الفيديو والتسجيلات الصوتية، مع جلسات حضورية حيث تضيف أكثر. Q: هل يبقى العمل سريًا؟ نعم. تُوقَّع اتفاقية سرية قبل أن تُروى أي قصة. أنتم تقررون ما يُنشر، صفحة بصفحة. ولا يظهر اسمي على الكتاب إلا إذا أردتم. Q: والدي متقدم في السن. هل تناسبه الجلسات؟ نعم. الجلسات هادئة، وتُحدد مواعيدها ومدتها بحسب طاقته. والبدء الآن يعني أن يروي القصة بنفسه، وذاكرته حاضرة، والوثائق في متناول اليد. Q: كم يستغرق الكتاب؟ ستة أشهر للكتاب الكامل، من المحادثة الأولى إلى المخطوطة النهائية. Q: كم التكلفة؟ الكتاب الكامل US$25,000 على ستة أشهر. التفاصيل بالإنجليزية. ### صفحات بالإنجليزية Authorised biography - Business family history book - Company story - What it costs ## ما بنيتموه يستحق أن يُكتب كما عشتموه. أخبروني عن القصة، بسرية تامة. الاستمارة بالإنجليزية، ويمكنكم الكتابة بالعربية أو بالإنجليزية. أرد خلال 48 ساعة. ابدأوا المحادثة --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-singapore/ Title: Memoir & Biography Writer in Singapore Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # Memoir & Biography Writer for the Indian Diaspora in Singapore You built a life in Singapore. Your children are growing up Singaporean. The story of how your family got here, and why, is one only you can tell, and only for so long. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write memoirs and authorised biographies for the Indian community in Singapore. For the professional who came for a job and stayed for a life. For the business family that runs between Chennai and Shenton Way. For the adult child who can feel that the window is closing. In your voice, in strict confidence, one client at a time. I understand this is tender. Asking a parent to tell their story can feel like admitting they will not always be here. It is also the most loving thing you can do for them, and for your own children. I hold that with care, because for the families I work with, this is never just a book. Begin the conversation See how it works 22 years writing A bestselling biography India and the diaspora, both ## The handover is already happening, whether the story is told or not The Indian community in Singapore is settled, accomplished, and at a quiet turning point. The generation that arrived in the boom years, for one posting that became a life, is older now. The children are fully Singaporean. They know the shape of the family story, the city your parents left, the year they came, but not the inside of it. Not the fear on the flight. Not the first lonely Deepavali far from home. Not what was given up so they could have this. That inside is the part that vanishes first. It lives only in the memory of the people who carried it, and memory is not a safe place to keep something precious. Every year the details soften. The handover of a family is not only money and a name. It is the story, and the story is the one thing that gets lost in the move from one generation to the next, unless someone writes it down while it can still be told. ## A story that lives in two registers at once A Singapore-Indian story is a between-two-worlds story by its nature. There is the India your family left, with its references that need no explanation for an Indian reader. There is the Singapore you built, legible to your children but foreign to your cousins back home. The whole craft of this book is making it work for both at once: an aunt in Chennai and a grandchild in Singapore, reading the same page and each feeling it is theirs. I write for, and am read by, Indians across South-East Asia. I know both registers. A book that only lands in one country is half a book, and your family does not live in one country. ## What I write ### Your memoir, or your parents' Your life, or the migration story of a parent captured while they can still tell it. Often a gift from a settled child to an ageing parent, and the one gift that has a deadline. More on diaspora memoir. ### Authorised biography and founder story The definitive account of a life and a company worth documenting, told in full, held in confidence. More on authorised biography. ### Family legacy book The multi-generational story of a family and its enterprise across India and Singapore, built for a generation that grew up between worlds. More on family legacy. ### The numbers, for a family in Singapore A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, written by me. That buys thirty to sixty hours of interviews, a manuscript of sixty to ninety thousand words, three revision rounds, and the copyright, assigned to you. A page in your voice comes first, at US$1,000, credited against the fee. Every line of it is on what it costs. ## How the work goes ### One conversation, no pressure We begin with a single call. I ask the questions almost no one has asked you, or your father, about your own life. This is not a sales pitch. It is me listening for what is actually there, and you deciding whether you want to do this at all. ### A page in your voice You send a short voice memo. I send back one page, written as you. You read it and ask one thing: does this sound like me? If it does, we go on. If it does not, you have spent five minutes and the price of one page. ### Finding the shape I find the one question at the centre of the life. The wound that became the gift. The single thing that makes this story yours and not every other story of leaving and building. ### The interviews Recorded sessions, unhurried, scheduled around you or your parent's energy. Where it serves the book, with the people who knew you differently. Documents, photographs, the things others remember that you have forgotten. ### The writing I write in stages. You read each one. The voice is checked against you at every turn, until a reader would feel they are in the room with you, not with a writer. ### The book in your hands Delivered with a revision cycle at every stage. It is finished not when it is complete, but when you hold it and feel it is exactly right. Full copyright is yours. My name appears nowhere unless you want it to. ## Why trust me with it I do not have a wall of client logos, because the most significant work I do is confidential, and that is the point. What I can show, I will. I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, built from records going back almost forty years, and it became a bestseller. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel now in film development, and I co-produced five short films. I also built three startups, and since 2014 I have run a communications firm for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others. 22 years writing Bestselling biographer MBA, MDI Gurgaon 3x founder Published novelist One client at a time Most ghostwriters are writers who never built anything, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work reads like neither. ## Who this is for People who can feel the clock and refuse to let the story go unwritten. Adult children who want a parent's life held while the parent can still tell it. Founders and families whose real story has never been told in full. If your story lives in two countries and the people who carry it will not always be here, this is for you. ## Who this is not for People who want a keepsake printed by next week, or who want every hard or tender thing removed until only a highlight reel is left. This work is honest, unhurried, and made to last. If speed and volume matter more than depth and truth, a template product will serve you better. ## Common questions Q: How do we work across the distance? Over video and voice memo, in sessions scheduled around you, with in-person work where it earns its place. The depth does not drop with the distance. I have done this for families across South-East Asia. Q: My parent is ageing. Have we left it too late? No. Start now and you start while the memory is vivid and the parent can tell it themselves. The sessions are gentle and paced to their energy. The version of this work to avoid is the one that begins after they are gone, when the story can only be built from the outside. Q: Is everything confidential? Yes. An NDA is signed before any story is shared, and you control every page. Q: Will it sound like me, or like a stranger? Like you. We begin with a page in your voice so you can judge before committing to anything. Q: What does it cost? A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, and See what it costs. Q: Can it be a gift, where my parent does not know yet? Often it is. I handle that first conversation with care, so the parent feels honoured, not interviewed. Go deeper: memoir for the diaspora, authorised biography, family legacy books, founder stories. ## What you will have when it is done A book, in your voice, that your children can hold and their children after them. The day your father landed, in his own words. The reason your mother was braver than you ever knew. The story that, right now, exists only inside a memory that will not last forever, set down in a form that will. People spend their whole lives building things that fade: companies change hands, money moves, houses are sold. This does not fade. It is the closest thing there is to keeping a voice in the room after the person who owned it has gone. ## A word on waiting Almost everyone waits. For retirement, for the right moment, for the full story to feel finished. The families whose stories survive are the ones who started before they felt ready, while the person who lived it was still here, the memory vivid, the documents still in a drawer somewhere. There is no perfect time for this. There is only now, and later. Now is the only one that still has them in it. That is the whole reason I do this work, and the whole reason not to put it off. ### Related reading ghostwriter in Dubai - biographer in London - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - memoir for the Indian diaspora - begin a conversation ## Tell the story before the window closes. Your parents can still tell it. That will not always be true. Tell me about them, in confidence. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/biographer-london-uk/ Title: Memoir & Biography Writer for British Indians in London Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # Memoir & Biography Writer for British Indians & NRIs in London The British-Indian story is one of the oldest and deepest in the diaspora, and much of it is about to be lost with the generation that lived it. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write memoirs and authorised biographies for British Indians and NRIs in the UK. For the family that arrived with nothing and built a name. For the founder whose company is also a family history. For the grandchild who wants the story written while there is still someone to tell it. In your voice, in strict confidence, one client at a time. I work from Dubai and Mumbai. UK families meet me over video and voice memo, and in person in London when a session needs the room. I know how heavy this can feel. These stories hold loss as much as triumph, and asking for them can open old wounds. I treat that with the care it deserves. What stays out of the book matters as much to me as what goes in, and the family decides. This is never just a book. It is a generation's memory, caught before it goes. Begin the conversation See how it works 22 years writing A bestselling biography India and the diaspora, both ## The longest story, and the closest to being forgotten The Indian families who came to Britain in the sixties and seventies carried more history than almost any diaspora alive. Partition. The leaving of a newly independent India. The cold first winters, the corner shop that opened at six and closed at midnight, the names changed to be pronounceable, the racism survived in silence, the children pushed toward medicine and law. That generation is in its eighties now. When they go, they take a chapter of British history and Indian history with them, and most of it has never been written down. This is the quiet emergency at the centre of so many British-Indian families. The grandfather who will not talk about partition. The grandmother whose courage is a family legend with no details attached. You feel, without saying it, that there is a clock running, and that one day soon the questions you keep meaning to ask will have no one left to answer them. That day arrives sooner than anyone expects. ## From partition to the present, in one book The UK holds the oldest and most established Indian diaspora wealth, and some of its longest family arcs. A British-Indian story can span more history than almost any other: an India before independence, a Britain that did not want you, a family that became part of the country anyway. That length is what makes the book hard to write and worth writing. Holding four or five generations without losing the reader or flattening anyone is the central craft, and the first problem I solve. I write for the Indian reader and the British one at once. I know the India your family left, the history they carried, and the country they built in, with the context a grandchild born in London needs and the truth an elder will recognise. ## What I write ### Family legacy book The multi-generational story of a British-Indian family and its enterprise, from partition to the present, built for the next generation. More on family legacy. ### Memoir, yours or a parent's The migration story captured while the people who lived it can still tell it. The corner shop, the cold, the climb, in their own voice. More on diaspora memoir. ### Authorised biography The definitive account of a founder or a life worth documenting, research-intensive, built to last. More on authorised biography. ### The numbers, for a family in the UK A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, written by me. That buys thirty to sixty hours of interviews, a manuscript of sixty to ninety thousand words, three revision rounds, and the copyright, assigned to you. A page in your voice comes first, at US$1,000, credited against the fee. Every line of it is on what it costs. ## How the work goes ### One conversation, no pressure We begin with a single call. I ask the questions almost no one has asked you, or your father, about your own life. This is not a sales pitch. It is me listening for what is actually there, and you deciding whether you want to do this at all. ### A page in your voice You send a short voice memo. I send back one page, written as you. You read it and ask one thing: does this sound like me? If it does, we go on. If it does not, you have spent five minutes and the price of one page. ### Finding the shape I find the one question at the centre of the life. The wound that became the gift. The single thing that makes this story yours and not every other story of leaving and building. ### The interviews Recorded sessions, unhurried, scheduled around you or your parent's energy. Where it serves the book, with the people who knew you differently. Documents, photographs, the things others remember that you have forgotten. ### The writing I write in stages. You read each one. The voice is checked against you at every turn, until a reader would feel they are in the room with you, not with a writer. ### The book in your hands Delivered with a revision cycle at every stage. It is finished not when it is complete, but when you hold it and feel it is exactly right. Full copyright is yours. My name appears nowhere unless you want it to. ## Why trust me with it I do not have a wall of client logos, because the most significant work I do is confidential, and that is the point. What I can show, I will. I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, built from records going back almost forty years, and it became a bestseller. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel now in film development, and I co-produced five short films. I also built three startups, and since 2014 I have run a communications firm for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others. 22 years writing Bestselling biographer MBA, MDI Gurgaon 3x founder Published novelist One client at a time Most ghostwriters are writers who never built anything, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work reads like neither. ## Who this is for People who can feel the clock and refuse to let the story go unwritten. Adult children who want a parent's life held while the parent can still tell it. Founders and families whose real story has never been told in full. If your story lives in two countries and the people who carry it will not always be here, this is for you. ## Who this is not for People who want a keepsake printed by next week, or who want every hard or tender thing removed until only a highlight reel is left. This work is honest, unhurried, and made to last. If speed and volume matter more than depth and truth, a template product will serve you better. ## Common questions Q: Do you work with families based in the UK? Often. We work over video and voice memo across time zones, with in-person sessions where they add the most. Distance has never stopped this work. Q: My grandparents are very old. Is it too late? It is late, which is exactly why you should start now. The sessions are gentle and paced to their strength. Every week that passes is detail lost. Once they are gone, the story can only be assembled from the outside, and it is never the same book. Q: Our history has painful parts. How do you handle that? With care, and on your terms. We agree early what is in and what stays out. What stays out is a decision I take as seriously as the craft. The family reviews every section. Nothing reaches the page that you have not seen. Q: Is it confidential? Always. An NDA is signed before any story is shared. Q: Can you hold a story that spans generations? Yes. Multi-generational architecture is the hardest structural problem in this work, and the one I am built to solve. Q: What does it cost? A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, and See what it costs. Go deeper: memoir for the diaspora, authorised biography, family legacy books, founder stories. ## What you will have when it is done A book, in your voice, that your children can hold and their children after them. The day your father landed, in his own words. The reason your mother was braver than you ever knew. The story that, right now, exists only inside a memory that will not last forever, set down in a form that will. People spend their whole lives building things that fade: companies change hands, money moves, houses are sold. This does not fade. It is the closest thing there is to keeping a voice in the room after the person who owned it has gone. ## A word on waiting Almost everyone waits. For retirement, for the right moment, for the full story to feel finished. The families whose stories survive are the ones who started before they felt ready, while the person who lived it was still here, the memory vivid, the documents still in a drawer somewhere. There is no perfect time for this. There is only now, and later. Now is the only one that still has them in it. That is the whole reason I do this work, and the whole reason not to put it off. ### Related reading ghostwriter in Dubai - ghostwriter in Singapore - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - memoir for the Indian diaspora - an authorised biography - begin a conversation ## Catch the story before the generation goes. Your elders carry a history no one else can tell. Tell me about them, in confidence. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-indian-americans-us/ Title: Memoir & Biography Ghostwriter for Indian Americans Last updated: 2026-10-05 - # Memoir & Biography Ghostwriter for Indian Americans Most second-generation Indian Americans know little about their parents' migration. The story is here now, in a person who can still tell it. It does not stay forever. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I write memoirs and authorised biographies for Indian Americans. For the founder whose real story is more than the funding announcement. For the adult child who wants a parent's migration captured before it blurs into a few repeated anecdotes. In your voice, in strict confidence, one client at a time. I know what is underneath this. It is love, and a quiet fear of being the one who let the story slip. It is wanting your kids, raised in New Jersey or the Bay Area, to feel the weight of what your family chose to do and why. I hold that with the seriousness it deserves, because for the families I work with, this was never about a book. Begin the conversation See how it works 22 years writing A bestselling biography Both worlds, one book ## The largest diaspora, and the one most at risk of forgetting The United States holds the largest and most accomplished Indian diaspora in the world, and a clock that almost no one is watching. The engineers and doctors who came in the skilled-migration waves of the seventies, eighties, and nineties are entering their later years. Their American-born children grew up between two worlds and, research suggests, know little of the one their parents left. The outline is there: a city in India, a year, a green card. The inside is not. The fear, the loneliness, the sacrifice that paid for everything the next generation takes for granted. That inside is what disappears first, and fastest, because there is always next Thanksgiving to ask, until there is not. The parent who deflects every question with a joke. The childhood in India you have only ever seen in three faded photographs. The version of your mother who was brave in ways you will never fully know, because she was too busy building your life to tell you about hers. You feel the clock without naming it. Naming it is the first brave thing. Acting on it is the second. ## The story that feels ordinary is the one they will most want Here is the thing almost every Indian-American parent gets wrong: they think their story is too ordinary to write down. They are wrong, and the proof is their own children, who would give a great deal to know it. The migration that feels unremarkable to the person who lived it is the rare and precious thing to the generation that grew up on its far side. Worthy was never the right test. Wanted is. I write for the Indian reader and the American one at once. I know the India your family left and the country they built in, with the context a grandchild born in the US needs and the truth your parent will recognise. A book that only works in one of those two countries is half a book, and your family lives in both. ## What I write ### Your parents' migration story The most common reason an Indian-American family calls me. Captured while the parent can still tell it, in their own voice, for the children and the grandchildren. More on diaspora memoir. ### Founder story The real account of building a company, told in full, by a writer who has built companies himself and knows the interior of it. More on founder stories. ### Authorised biography and family legacy The definitive account of a life, or the multi-generational story of a family and its enterprise across India and America. More on family legacy. ### The numbers, for a family in the US A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, written by me. That buys thirty to sixty hours of interviews, a manuscript of sixty to ninety thousand words, three revision rounds, and the copyright, assigned to you. A page in your voice comes first, at US$1,000, credited against the fee. Every line of it is on what it costs. ## How the work goes ### One conversation, no pressure We begin with a single call. I ask the questions almost no one has asked you, or your father, about your own life. This is not a sales pitch. It is me listening for what is actually there, and you deciding whether you want to do this at all. ### A page in your voice You send a short voice memo. I send back one page, written as you. You read it and ask one thing: does this sound like me? If it does, we go on. If it does not, you have spent five minutes and the price of one page. ### Finding the shape I find the one question at the centre of the life. The wound that became the gift. The single thing that makes this story yours and not every other story of leaving and building. ### The interviews Recorded sessions, unhurried, scheduled around you or your parent's energy. Where it serves the book, with the people who knew you differently. Documents, photographs, the things others remember that you have forgotten. ### The writing I write in stages. You read each one. The voice is checked against you at every turn, until a reader would feel they are in the room with you, not with a writer. ### The book in your hands Delivered with a revision cycle at every stage. It is finished not when it is complete, but when you hold it and feel it is exactly right. Full copyright is yours. My name appears nowhere unless you want it to. ## Why trust me with it I do not have a wall of client logos, because the most significant work I do is confidential, and that is the point. What I can show, I will. I wrote the authorised biography of an industry stalwart, built from records going back almost forty years, and it became a bestseller. I have ghostwritten three more bestsellers, held under NDA. I published a novel now in film development, and I co-produced five short films. I also built three startups, and since 2014 I have run a communications firm for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others. 22 years writing Bestselling biographer MBA, MDI Gurgaon 3x founder Published novelist One client at a time Most ghostwriters are writers who never built anything, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work reads like neither. ## Who this is for People who can feel the clock and refuse to let the story go unwritten. Adult children who want a parent's life held while the parent can still tell it. Founders and families whose real story has never been told in full. If your story lives in two countries and the people who carry it will not always be here, this is for you. ## Who this is not for People who want a keepsake printed by next week, or who want every hard or tender thing removed until only a highlight reel is left. This work is honest, unhurried, and made to last. If speed and volume matter more than depth and truth, a template product will serve you better. ## Common questions Q: I live in the US. How do we work together? Over video and voice memo, in sessions scheduled around your calendar across time zones, with in-person work where it earns its place. The work travels. The depth does not drop with the distance. Q: My parents are getting older. Is it too late? No, but the window is real. Start now and you start while the memory is vivid and they can tell it themselves. The sessions are gentle and paced to their energy. The hardest version of this is the one that begins after they are gone. Q: Can this be a gift for a parent who does not know yet? Often it is. An adult child commissions the book and brings the parent in gently. I handle that first conversation with care, so they feel honoured, not interrogated. Q: My parent thinks their story is boring. What do I do? Almost every parent says that, and almost every one is wrong. The story is not the obvious milestones. It is the decision under pressure, the thing they almost did not do, the people they left behind. One conversation usually surfaces it. Q: Is everything confidential? Yes. An NDA is signed before any story is shared, and you control every page. Q: What does it cost? A full memoir or biography is US$25,000 over six months, and See what it costs. Go deeper: memoir for the diaspora, authorised biography, family legacy books, founder stories. ## What you will have when it is done A book, in your voice, that your children can hold and their children after them. The day your father landed, in his own words. The reason your mother was braver than you ever knew. The story that, right now, exists only inside a memory that will not last forever, set down in a form that will. People spend their whole lives building things that fade: companies change hands, money moves, houses are sold. This does not fade. It is the closest thing there is to keeping a voice in the room after the person who owned it has gone. ## A word on waiting Almost everyone waits. For retirement, for the right moment, for the full story to feel finished. The families whose stories survive are the ones who started before they felt ready, while the person who lived it was still here, the memory vivid, the documents still in a drawer somewhere. There is no perfect time for this. There is only now, and later. Now is the only one that still has them in it. That is the whole reason I do this work, and the whole reason not to put it off. ### Related reading ghostwriter in Dubai - ghostwriter in Singapore - biographer in London - memoir for the Indian diaspora - the best ghostwriters for the diaspora - begin a conversation ## The story is here now. It does not wait. Your parents can still tell it, in their own voice. That is not forever. Tell me about them, in confidence. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-canada/ Title: Memoir and Biography Writer in Canada Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Memoir and Biography Writer in Canada 1.86 million people of Indian origin in Canada. Almost none of their migration stories are written down. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. The 2021 census counted 1,858,755 people of Indian origin in Canada, 5.1 percent of the country. Half a million of them arrived after 2011. The generation that came first, through Vancouver in the seventies and Toronto in the eighties, is now in its seventies and eighties. I write their stories. Memoirs, authorised biographies and family legacy books, for Indo-Canadian families, written by one named writer who understands both the country they left and the one they built in. ## The Canadian version of the story ### The first winter Every family has this chapter and almost nobody has written it down. What it cost, what he wore, who he called. It is the detail a grandchild in Mississauga cannot imagine and most wants. ### The credential that did not transfer The engineer who drove a cab. The doctor who did a second residency at 44. This is the defining Indo-Canadian experience and it is almost absent from the record. ### Punjab, and what came after 1984 A large part of the community carries a history that was never discussed at home. It is handled with care, at the family's pace, and only as far as they want to go. ### The business built out of a garage in Surrey Trucking, construction, groceries, real estate. Firms now worth serious money whose founding stories exist only in the founder's head. ### The children who are entirely Canadian The reason the book gets commissioned. A daughter in Calgary who speaks no Punjabi and wants to know where she came from before she cannot ask. ## Where my clients are Toronto and the GTA, Brampton and Mississauga above all. Vancouver and Surrey. Calgary and Edmonton. Montreal and Ottawa. Winnipeg, where some of the oldest families in the community have been for three generations. The work runs over video and voice memo across the time difference, which is nine and a half hours to India and manageable in practice because early mornings in Canada are evenings in India. For books that need a room, I travel. ## Why a writer who knows both countries A Canadian writer will write the arrival beautifully and get the departure wrong. The village, the joint family, the reason a man left when the family was doing fine, the specific shame of a failed business in a town where everyone knew. Those need no explanation to me and they need careful, unpatronising context for a reader in Toronto. That is the whole technical problem of a diaspora memoir. It has to land for an aunt in Ludhiana and a grandson in Brampton at the same time. A writer who knows one side writes half the book. ## How it works A first conversation, free, about an hour. Then a paid page in your voice, built from a five-minute recording, so you can judge the voice before committing to anything. Then thirty to sixty hours of interviews and six months of writing. One client at a time. My name appears nowhere unless you ask. A full book is US$25,000 over six months. Begin the conversation Ask for a page in your voice ## Questions Canadian families ask Q: Do you work with clients in Canada? Yes, across Toronto, the GTA, Vancouver, Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Ottawa. Interviews run over video and voice memo, and I travel when the book asks for it. Q: How do the time zones work? Early mornings in Canada are evenings in India, which gives a comfortable overlap. Most families settle into a fixed weekly slot within two sessions. Q: My father speaks Punjabi more comfortably than English. Is that a problem? No. We work in whatever mix of languages the story lives in. The book reads clean for a grandchild in Canada while still sounding like the man who told it. Q: Can the book be printed and shipped in Canada? Yes. Printing is arranged where the family is, and copies go to whichever countries the family lives in. Most of my families need shipments to at least two. Q: What does it cost in Canadian dollars? A full book is C$50,000 over six months. The gift book is C$20,000. Payment is by international transfer. ### Related reading - memoir ghostwriting for the Indian diaspora - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - biographer in London - ghostwriter in Australia - write my father's life story - a family legacy book ## The first generation is in its eighties. Tell me about your family and I will tell you what the book could be. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-australia/ Title: Memoir and Biography Writer in Australia Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Memoir and Biography Writer in Australia 784,000 people claimed Indian ancestry at the 2021 census. It is the fastest-growing diaspora in the country and the youngest, which is exactly why the elders need recording now. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Australia's Indian community is unusual. It arrived late and grew fast. The 2021 census recorded 783,958 people of Indian ancestry, 3.1 percent of the country, with 673,352 born in India. Most families here are one generation deep. That shapes the books. In Canada or the UK I am often writing about a family that has been there since the sixties. In Australia I am usually writing the first chapter of a family's presence in the country, while the person who wrote it is still in their fifties or sixties. ## What an Indian-Australian book usually contains ### The student visa A very large share of these families started with someone arriving to study, working nights, and staying. It is the founding chapter of the community and it is barely recorded anywhere. ### The distance Australia is far in a way the US and UK are not. Missed funerals, parents seen once every three years, a mother who has never met a grandchild in person. This is the emotional centre of many of these books. ### The parents left in India Often the second commission. A family in Melbourne asks me to record a grandfather in Hyderabad, because the visits are too short and too few to ever do it themselves. ### The business built here Medical practices, IT firms, restaurants, freight, property. Founders in their fifties who are only now realising the story is worth writing while they can still remember the hard years exactly. ### Children with Australian accents The reason it gets commissioned. A son in Sydney who has been to India four times and wants to know what his father actually gave up. ## Where my clients are Melbourne above all, then Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra. The work runs over video and voice memo. Australia is four and a half to six and a half hours ahead of India depending on the state and the season, which makes it one of the easiest diasporas to schedule with. Mornings in Australia are early mornings in India, evenings work both ways. ## The split-country commission The most common shape of an Australian project. The client is in Melbourne. The subject is a parent in Chennai or Amritsar who is 80 and not travelling again. I travel to India for the interviews. I sit with your father in his own house, in his own language, and record properly. You join the sessions you want to join. That solves the problem that the family in Australia cannot solve from twelve thousand kilometres away with a phone and two weeks of annual leave. ## How it works A first conversation, free. Then a paid page in your voice or your father's, built from a five-minute recording, so you judge the voice before committing. Then interviews, then six months of writing. One client at a time. My name goes nowhere unless you ask. A full book is US$25,000 over six months. Begin the conversation Ask for a page in your voice ## Questions Australian families ask Q: Do you work with clients in Australia? Yes, across Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra, over video and voice memo. Australia and India overlap well, which makes scheduling easier here than for most diasporas. Q: Can you interview my parents in India while we are in Australia? Yes, and this is the most common Australian commission. I travel to India and sit with them in their own house and their own language, with you joining the sessions you want to join. Q: My parents are in a Telugu or Tamil-speaking household. Does that work? Yes. Interviews happen in whatever mix of languages the story lives in, with interpretation arranged where the language is outside mine. The book reads clean in English for the grandchildren. Q: We arrived on a student visa in 2003. Is that enough of a story? It is the story. That arrival is the founding chapter of Indian Australia and almost none of it has been written down. Your children will not know what those years cost unless somebody records it. Q: How is the book printed and delivered? Printing is arranged where the family is and copies ship to whichever countries the family lives in, which for Australian families almost always means at least two. ### Related reading - memoir ghostwriting for the Indian diaspora - ghostwriter in Singapore - ghostwriter in Canada - ghostwriter for Indian-Americans - write my parents' life story - a grandparent's life story ## Twelve thousand kilometres is not a reason to lose the story. Tell me where your family is and I will tell you how it would work. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/founders/ Title: Founder Storytelling, Coaching and Company Story Last updated: 2026-10-05 # Founder Storytelling, Coaching, Mentoring and Company Story Nobody in your company can tell your story without you in the room. Four ways in, one writer, one client at a time. Begin the conversation See the four ways in Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The short answer This is the work around the writing. I coach founders on the story they say out loud, sit on call as the operator in between, and build the company story that everyone else has to be able to repeat. If what you want is the book itself, that is founder story ghostwriting. Every engagement here starts with one conversation and is scoped after it. A positioning sprint costs $30,000 and ends in a six-slide deck. A three-day pitch workshop costs $50,000. A four-week messaging engagement costs $25,000 and produces soundbites. I read twenty of these pages before I built this section. The thing you hold at the end is almost always a deck. A deck does not survive you leaving the room. Somebody has to stand up and present it, and that somebody is you, and you are the constraint. Meanwhile the founder-brand shops sell the opposite problem: reach without a story underneath it. One of them promises your vanity metrics will drop and your revenue will climb. They are selling attention. The consultancies are selling slides. Between those two things sits the actual asset, which is a story you own, that other people can carry, in words that hold up when somebody pushes back. ## Four ways in ### Founder storytelling Your own story, built as an arc and not a timeline. The one you use on a stage, in a first meeting, and at the top of a raise. Finding it, then making it say-able. ### Founder coaching A programme with an agenda and an end date. We work on how you say it, week by week, until you stop needing the notes. ### Founder mentoring No agenda. An operator on call. You bring the problem the week it lands, and it is not always a story problem. ### Company story building The story the company tells when you are not there. Written down, on the record, for a raise, a rebrand, an anniversary or a handover. ## Which one do you want If this is you | Start here | I keep telling it differently every time and none of the versions land | Founder storytelling | I have the story. I am bad at saying it, on stage and in the room | Founder coaching | I do not want a programme. I want someone who has done this to pick up | Founder mentoring | My team all describe the company differently and I cannot fix it by repeating myself | Company story building | We are turning fifty, or the founder is stepping back, and it should be on the record | Company story building | I want the whole thing written as a book, in my voice | Founder story ghostwriting | It is the family and the firm across three generations, and it is private | Business family history book | ## Why me and not a coach I have asked hundreds of Indian founders the same question for five years. On Founder Thesis, the podcast I built with Akshay Datt, the question is always some version of what actually happened. Here is what I learned doing it: almost nobody tells it well in the first hour. The real story arrives in the third, after the prepared version runs out. That is not a coaching insight I read. It is a thing I watched happen a few hundred times. I have also built. Three startups. C4E since 2014, for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell and Maruti Suzuki. A fractional CMO practice in Dubai. I have made payroll on faith and I have shut things down. When you tell me about the month it nearly went, I am not taking notes on a case study. And I write. A published novel. A weekly post since 2004. A bestselling authorised biography of an industry stalwart, plus three more bestsellers under NDA. The coaches cannot write it. The writers have not built. That gap is the whole business. ## How it starts ### One conversation Ninety minutes, on a call, under NDA. I am looking for the part you do not usually say. This is a diagnosis and not a pitch, and it costs nothing. ### I tell you what I think you have Sometimes it is a coaching problem. Sometimes it is a company problem wearing a founder costume. Twice it has been neither and I said so. You get that verdict whether or not you hire me. ### A scope, then a price Written, with what you get and when. Nothing on this page is priced before that conversation, because the four things on it are not the same size of work. ## Who this is not for Founders who want reach this quarter. Buy that from a content shop, they are good at it and they are cheaper than me. Founders who want the rough edges sanded off: the doubt and the near-miss and the decision you still argue about are the parts that make anybody believe the rest, and a story with all of them removed is the press release you already have. And founders who want to be told the story is fine. Sometimes it is not fine, and I will say so on the first call. ## Questions founders ask Q: Is this a coaching business or a writing business? Both, and the order matters. The coaching is how the material gets out of your head. The writing is what you keep afterwards. Most people in this market sell one or the other, which is why so many founders end up with a deck nobody reads or a book that sounds like a stranger. Q: How is founder coaching different from founder mentoring here? Coaching has an agenda and an end date. We work on a defined thing, week by week, and then it finishes. Mentoring has neither. You bring whatever landed that week, and about half of it is not a story problem at all. Different work, different rhythm, and you can want one without the other. Q: What does it cost? Nothing here is priced on the page, because a six-week coaching programme and a company history are not the same size of work. What is published is the writing side: the biography and founder book engagement sits at ₹20 lakh, with publishing costed apart from it. Coaching, mentoring and company story are scoped after the first conversation. Q: Do I have to end up with a book? No. Plenty of this work ends in a written narrative document, a talk, or a founder who can finally do it without notes. The book is one possible output and it is the largest one. If you want it, it is here. Q: Will you make viral videos or run my LinkedIn? No. There are good people who do that and I am not one of them. I work on what you say, and on getting it written down so it lasts longer than a post. If your problem is distribution, hire a content shop and come to me after. Q: Is any of it confidential? An NDA is signed before the first conversation. The cap table, the conflicts, the numbers and the things said in confidence stay in confidence. You decide, line by line, what becomes public. Q: I am not in India. Does this work across time zones? Yes. I work with founders in the US, the UK, the UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia. Sessions run by video on your clock, and the material moves by voice memo in between so nothing waits on a calendar. Q: How much of my time does it take? Coaching is an hour a week plus the thinking in between. Mentoring is a call when you need one. A company story runs on interviews, mine and your team's, scheduled around you. The writing is my time and not yours. ### Related reading - founder story ghostwriting, if you want the book - a business family history book, for the firm across generations - what the work costs - a page in your voice, before you commit to anything - every question people ask, answered - why confidentiality matters ## You have told it a hundred times. It has never been written down. One conversation, ninety minutes, under NDA. I tell you what I think you have, whether or not you hire me. I reply within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/founders/founder-storytelling/ Title: Founder Storytelling: Find the Story, Make It Say-able Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Founder Storytelling A timeline is not a story. Finding the arc under what actually happened, and making it say-able out loud. Begin the conversation See the whole section Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The short answer Founder storytelling is two jobs. Find the dramatic question at the centre of what you built, which is almost never the thing you currently open with. Then get it into words you can say out loud, in a room, to somebody who interrupts. The output is a written narrative you own, not a deck I present. Ask a founder for the story and you get a chronology. Born here, studied there, worked at the company, saw the problem, quit, built it, raised, hired, here we are. Every beat is true. None of it is a story, because a story needs a question at the middle of it that the listener wants answered, and a chronology has none. I learned this the slow way. On Founder Thesis, the podcast I built with Akshay Datt, I have spent five years asking Indian founders what actually happened. The first hour is the version they have told before. It is smooth and it is dead. The story arrives around the third hour, when the prepared answers run out and somebody says the thing they had decided not to say. That is the beat the whole arc hangs off, and the founder is usually surprised it was there. ## What a founder story is made of ### The question One dramatic question the company is an answer to. Not the mission line. The thing that was uncertain, that you did not know would work, that somebody sensible told you was wrong. ### The turn The decision under pressure that reoriented everything after it. Most founders skip this in public because it involves being wrong first. It is the part that makes the rest believable. ### The cost What it took. The money, the friendship, the years, the thing you gave up. A story with no cost in it reads as luck, and nobody buys from luck. ### The proof One number or one named fact that a sceptic can check. Everything else in the story is claim. This is the part that survives the pushback. ## Where the story gets used This is the part founders underrate. The arc is one asset and it has five surfaces, and the reason to build it once, properly, is that all five then run off the same spine instead of contradicting each other. Surface | What changes when the arc exists | The raise | The first four minutes stop being company history and start being a reason to keep listening. The deck follows the story instead of replacing it. | The stage | You stop needing notes, because you are recalling something that happened instead of reciting something you wrote. | Hiring | The senior person you want has three offers. The one they take is usually the one they can explain to their partner at dinner. | Press and podcasts | Journalists take the angle you hand them or they invent one. Handing them a real turn beats handing them a milestone. | The company | Your team stops describing the company five different ways. That is the company story job, and this is where it starts. | ## How the work runs ### The first conversation Ninety minutes under NDA. I am hunting for the beat you have decided not to say. This costs nothing and you get my honest read at the end of it, hire me or not. ### Interviews, on the record Three to six recorded sessions, by video or voice memo, on your clock. Some of them are with other people: the co-founder, the first employee, the investor who said no. Their version is where yours turns out to be wrong in useful ways. ### The structural read I come back with the question, the turn, the cost and the proof, written down, and an argument for why those and not the ones you expected. You push back. We settle it. ### The narrative, written The arc as a document you own. Long form, in your voice, with the short versions cut from it: the two-minute one, the four-minute one, the one paragraph. ### Saying it out loud You say it back to me and I interrupt. Then again. Written words and said words are not the same words, and the gap only shows up when somebody is difficult at you on purpose. THE TESTBruce Weindruch, who founded The History Factory and has been doing this for corporations since 1979, has one test for work like this, and it is better than any pitch line: did this really help us do what we had to do? If the arc does not change the raise, the hire or the room, it was decoration. ## What you get A written narrative document, yours, full copyright. The short versions cut from it. A recording archive of every interview, which matters more than founders expect: it is the raw material for a book later, and it is the only copy of what the first employee remembers before they forget it. What you do not get is a deck. There are firms that will sell you one for $30,000 and it will be a good deck. It also needs you in the room to work, which is the problem you came in with. ## Who this is for Founders raising, where the story is doing real work in the first four minutes. Founders about to become public: a listing, a large round, a category the press has noticed. Operators who have built for a decade and get introduced with the wrong sentence. And founders who have told it so many times they can no longer hear it, which is more common than any of the others. ## Questions founders ask about founder storytelling Q: What is founder storytelling? Finding the dramatic question at the centre of what you built, then putting it in words you can say out loud under pressure. It is not a chronology of the company and it is not a personal brand exercise. The output is a written narrative you own, with the short versions cut from it. Q: How is this different from a positioning sprint? Positioning is about the product and the market it sits in. This is about the founder and the decisions. They are related and they are not the same, and a positioning deck will not help you when somebody on stage asks why you nearly shut it down in year two. Q: What if I do not think I have a story? Most founders say this and most are wrong. The story is rarely the win. It is the decision under pressure and the thing you almost did not do. One conversation usually finds it. If it does not, I will tell you plainly instead of manufacturing one. Q: Do you interview other people or only me? Other people, and it is the part that changes the work most. The co-founder, the first employee, the investor who passed. Their account is where your version turns out to be incomplete, and that gap is often the story. Q: Will it sound like me or like you? Like you. That is the whole test and you can check it cheaply before committing anything: send a five-minute voice memo and I send back one page written as you. Judge the voice before the engagement, not after. Q: Can this become a book? Yes, and the interview archive is the reason it is easy. Everything recorded here is the raw material. The book engagement is founder story ghostwriting and it is priced at what it costs. Q: How long does it take? Six to ten weeks for the arc and the document, driven mostly by how fast the interviews get scheduled. A book on top of it runs six months. Q: Is it confidential? An NDA is signed before the first conversation and covers every interview, including the ones with your team. You decide what leaves the room. ### Related reading - the whole founder section - founder coaching, if you have the story and cannot say it - company story building, for the version your team repeats - founder story ghostwriting, if you want the book - a page in your voice - what the work costs ## The story is sharpest while you are still in it. Ninety minutes, under NDA, no charge. You get my honest read on what you have, whether or not you hire me. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/founders/founder-coaching/ Title: Founder Coaching: Six Weeks on What You Say Last updated: 2026-10-04 # Founder Coaching Most founder coaching never touches what you actually say. Six weeks, an agenda, an end date. On the words, in the rooms where they cost you something. Begin the conversation See the whole section Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The short answer A defined founder coaching programme on how you tell your story out loud. Six sessions over six to eight weeks, one hour each, with work in between and a written arc at the end. It is about the words and the rooms, not about your childhood. The fee is on request: ask on the first call, which is free. I read the pages of every serious founder-coaching practice I could open before building this. Reboot, which is the most credible brand in the category, opens with a line I like: better humans make better leaders. It sells executive coaching, a co-founder bootcamp, and sessions with horses. It sells no narrative product at all. The big platforms name competencies like strategic clarity and team impact. Not one of them names storytelling. That is a real gap and it is not a criticism of them. Inner work is inner work and some founders need it more than they need a better opening line. But a founder who cannot say the thing has a specific, fixable, expensive problem, and almost nobody in coaching is set up to fix it. The people who are set up to fix it are speaker coaches, who will teach you to deliver a story you have not found yet. ## What we work on ### The first four minutes Of a pitch, a keynote, a podcast, a first meeting with somebody senior. The part where the listener decides whether to keep paying attention. Most founders spend it on company history. ### The hard question Why you nearly folded. Why the co-founder left. Why the numbers dipped. You will be asked. Rehearsed evasion reads as evasion, and the honest version is almost always stronger than founders believe. ### Saying it short The same story at four minutes, at ninety seconds, and in one sentence. These are three different builds and the one-sentence version is the hardest. ### What you will not say The line you have decided is off limits. Some of them should stay off limits. Some of them are the story. Knowing which is which is most of the work. ### Writing in public If you want to publish, how to do it without hiring a ghost. I have written a weekly post since 2004. The useful part is the container, not the inspiration. ### Being interrupted I push back mid-sentence, on purpose, until the story holds. Rooms do this. Practice that does not is not practice. ## How the six weeks run ### Week zero, the read Ninety minutes under NDA, free. I listen to how you tell it now and say where it breaks. If coaching is the wrong answer for you I say that here, and twice I have. ### Weeks one and two, the arc We find the question, the turn, the cost and the proof. You talk, I write it down, you argue with what I wrote. By the end of week two there is a document. ### Weeks three and four, out loud Recorded. You say it, I interrupt, we watch it back. This is the part founders dread and the part that changes the most. ### Week five, the short versions Ninety seconds and one sentence, built off the same spine so they never contradict the long one. ### Week six, the real room You take it into something that matters. A pitch, a panel, a board. Then we debrief what actually happened, which is never what we planned for. WHAT ENDSIt ends. Six weeks, then it stops, and you keep the document and the recordings. Open-ended is available and it is a different thing, called mentoring. Founder coaching that never finishes is a subscription, and you should be suspicious of it. ## Why a founder and not a coach Three startups. C4E since 2014, for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell and Maruti Suzuki. A fractional CMO practice across Dubai and the Gulf. I have made payroll under pressure and I have closed things down, so when you tell me about the month it nearly went I am not working from a case study. And I have run the interview a few hundred times. On Founder Thesis, five years of asking founders what actually happened, I watched the same thing repeat: the prepared version is smooth and dead, and the real one shows up in the third hour. Six weeks of coaching is a way of getting to the third hour without needing three hours every time. The gap I will name: I am not a certified coach and I do not do inner work. If what you need is the thing underneath the words, hire someone trained for it. Some founders need both, in that order. ## Who this is not for Founders who want reach and posting volume. That is a content shop and they are better and cheaper at it. Founders who want somebody to agree with them for an hour a week. And founders who want the rough edges gone: the doubt and the near-miss are what make a listener believe the rest, and taking them out leaves the press release you already have. ## Questions founders ask about coaching Q: What is founder coaching, here? A six-week programme on how you tell your story out loud, with an agenda and an end date. Six one-hour sessions, work in between, and a written narrative arc plus the short versions at the end. It works on the words and the rooms. Inner life is somebody else's job. Q: How is this different from executive coaching? Executive coaching works on how you lead and how you feel. Good ones are excellent at it and I am not one of them. This works on what comes out of your mouth in a raise, a keynote or a first meeting, and on getting it written down so it stops changing every time you say it. Q: Are you a certified coach? No. I am a three-time founder who has written every week since 2004 and interviewed hundreds of founders on the record. If certification matters to you for this, hire a certified coach. Q: What does founder coaching cost? The fee is on request. Ask on the first call, or write and I will send it. For reference on the writing side, the founder book engagement is published at ₹20 lakh. The first ninety minutes cost nothing. Q: Can we do it remotely? Yes, and most of it is remote. Founders in the US, the UK, the UAE, Singapore, Canada and Australia work with me by video on their clock, with voice memos in between so nothing waits for a calendar. Q: What if six weeks is not enough? Then you want mentoring, which is open-ended and has no agenda. Some founders run the six weeks and then move to that. Some finish and are done, which is the intended outcome. Q: Do you coach teams or only the founder? Founders and, where it matters, the two or three people who tell the company story without you. If the whole team says it differently, that is a company story problem and coaching one person will not fix it. Q: Will you write my LinkedIn posts? Not as part of coaching. Coaching teaches you the container so you can write them. If you want them written for you, that is a separate conversation and honestly a content shop may serve you better. Q: Is it confidential? An NDA before the first call, covering the sessions and the recordings. Nothing leaves without you saying so. ### Related reading - the whole founder section - founder storytelling, if you have not found the story yet - founder mentoring, if you want no agenda - company story building - what the work costs - every question people ask, answered ## You have said it a hundred times. It still comes out differently every time. Ninety minutes, under NDA, no charge. I tell you where it breaks, whether or not you hire me. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/founders/founder-mentoring/ Title: Founder Mentoring: An Operator on Call Last updated: 2026-10-02 # Founder Mentoring Some weeks the problem is not the story. No agenda, no curriculum, no end date. You bring what landed. Begin the conversation See the whole section Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The short answer An operator on call. Two calls a month, no fixed agenda, and messages in between when something is on fire. Half of it is narrative and half of it is the ordinary hard stuff: a co-founder conversation, a pricing call, whether to take the money. Open-ended, and you can stop whenever it stops being useful. Coaching has a shape. You sign up for a thing, we do the thing, it finishes. That works when you know what the thing is. Plenty of weeks you do not. A senior hire resigns on a Tuesday, an investor asks a question you cannot answer on the Wednesday, and by Friday you have talked yourself into something you would not have said out loud to another founder. That is what this is. Somebody who has been in the chair, who is not on your board, does not have a cheque in the company, and has no reason to manage you. ## What founders bring ### The co-founder conversation The one you have rehearsed for four months. Usually the question is not what to say. It is whether you have already decided and are looking for permission. ### The raise, before it starts What the story has to carry, who is going to say no, and whether the round you want is the round the company needs. ### Hiring senior The person is better than you at the thing. That is the point and it is also why it goes wrong. I have got this right twice and wrong more than that. ### Marketing that is not working Twenty years of it, in India and the Gulf, for large companies and for nobody. Most of the time the channel is fine and the story is thin. ### Whether to keep going Nobody asks this out loud. Founders ask it constantly. It is the conversation this arrangement exists for. ### Saying it in public What to publish, what to hold, and how to write anything at all in a week where nothing worked. ## How it works ### One conversation first Ninety minutes under NDA, free. Partly the diagnosis, partly whether we can talk to each other. Half of mentoring is fit and it shows up in the first hour. ### Two calls a month An hour each, on your clock, wherever you are. No agenda unless you bring one. If a month is quiet we skip it instead of manufacturing a session. ### Messages in between Voice memo or text when something lands. Same day where I can, next day otherwise. This is the part founders end up using most. ### It stops when it stops Monthly. No lock-in, no notice period, no exit conversation. When it stops earning its place, say so and we stop. THE LIMITI take three mentoring founders at a time. That is not scarcity marketing, it is the number of people whose companies I can hold in my head well enough to be useful about them on a Tuesday with no notice. When the three are full I will tell you, and I will not put you on a list. ## What I have done Three startups. C4E since 2014, for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell and Maruti Suzuki. The Red Sparrow, a brand and design studio, exited in March 2024. Purple Pencil Project, exited November 2024. A fractional CMO practice across Dubai and the Gulf, working with SMEs, family businesses and recently funded startups. Small angel cheques into founders I trust, with no fund behind them and no deal flow to chase. And Founder Thesis, five years and hundreds of long-form interviews with Indian founders about what actually happened. That is the closest thing I have to a dataset. It is also why I am careful about advice: I have heard the same decision go well and go badly enough times to distrust anybody who is certain about it. What I am not: an engineer, a product manager, or an institutional investor. If your problem is technical architecture or a term sheet's fine print, I will say so and point you at someone better. Long Haul Ventures, where I helped first-time Indian founders raise, has been on hold since 2023, so I am not current on the fundraising market the way an active operator in it would be. ## Who this is not for Founders who want a board member. I have no cheque in your company and no vote, which is the point. Founders who want an answer instead of a conversation: I will usually have an opinion and it is still your call. And founders looking for reassurance on a schedule. Two calls a month with somebody agreeing with you is an expensive habit. ## Questions founders ask about mentoring Q: What is the difference between your coaching and your mentoring? Coaching is six weeks with an agenda and an end date, on how you tell your story. Mentoring has no agenda and no end date, and about half of what comes up is not a story problem. Different work. You can want one without the other, and some founders run coaching first and then move to this. Q: How often do we talk? Two calls a month, an hour each, plus messages in between when something lands. Quiet months get skipped instead of filled. Q: What does founder mentoring cost? A monthly fee, on request, with no lock-in and no notice period. The first ninety minutes cost nothing. Q: Do you take equity instead of a fee? No. I angel invest and I mentor, and I keep them apart. A mentor with a position in your company has a reason to want a particular answer, and you should be able to ask me whether to shut it down without wondering about that. Q: Are you on my cap table or my board? Neither, unless we have separately agreed an angel cheque, which is a different conversation and does not come with mentoring attached. Q: How many founders do you mentor? Three at a time. When it is full I will tell you it is full instead of keeping a waiting list. Q: I am outside India. Does this work? Yes. Calls run on your clock by video, and the messages in between are asynchronous, which suits a time-zone gap better than a fixed weekly slot does. Q: Is it confidential? An NDA before the first call. The numbers, the cap table, the conflicts and the things said at eleven at night stay where they were said. Q: Can mentoring turn into writing my story? Often, and in that order. A year of conversations is the best possible input to founder storytelling or a book, because by then I know how you think. ### Related reading - the whole founder section - founder coaching, if you want an agenda and an end date - founder storytelling - company story building - founder story ghostwriting - what the work costs ## Three founders at a time. That is the whole capacity. Ninety minutes, under NDA, no charge, and it is as much about fit as diagnosis. I reply within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/founders/company-story/ Title: Company Story Building and the Corporate History Book Last updated: 2026-10-04 # Company Story Building and the Corporate History Book Ask five people in your company what it does. Count the answers. The version that survives you not being there. Begin the conversation See the whole section Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The short answer Two related things. The company story is the narrative your team, your site and your recruiters all run off, written once so they stop contradicting each other. The corporate history book is the full account, researched and interviewed, for a milestone or a handover. Both start with people talking on the record. Both leave you owning the recordings. A founder story belongs to a person. A company story has to work in somebody else's mouth. That is the whole difference, and it is why repeating yourself in all-hands does not fix it. Your head of sales is not going to say your sentence. He is going to say a version of it he half-remembers, to a customer, on a Thursday, and that version is the one the market hears. ## When companies commission this Almost never because somebody woke up wanting a story. There is a trigger, and naming yours matters more than the format, because it decides what the thing has to do. Trigger | What the story has to do | A milestone year | Give the anniversary a reason to exist. The History Factory, which has done this for corporations since 1979, says it plainly in its own white paper: anniversaries do not have inherent meaning or value. You supply the meaning or you get a cake. | A founder stepping back | Get what is in one head onto the record before the handover, so the next chief executive inherits an account and not a legend. This is the trigger with a deadline attached, and the deadline is a person. | A merger or an acquisition | Build one story out of two, so the combined company has a shared account of where it came from instead of two tribes with two versions. | A rebrand or a repositioning | Settle what is true about the company before the agency decides what it should look like. Cheaper in that order. | Hiring against bigger names | Give a senior candidate something to weigh besides money. In the History Factory's 2024 Heritage Gap Report, over 80% of job seekers said a company's history of innovation matters to them and 92% were looking for a history of stability. | People leaving | Interview the first employees while they are still reachable. This is the only one where waiting a year loses something you cannot get back. | THE SUPPLY GAPThe same Heritage Gap Report looked at twenty companies and found thirteen of them published fewer than ten pieces about their own history in all of 2023. Buyers, employees and candidates all say the history matters. Companies are not telling it. That gap is the opportunity, and it is not a marketing problem. ## What gets built ### The company narrative The account, written long, in one voice. Where it came from, what was actually hard, what the company decided and refused. Everything else is cut from this. ### The versions people use Two minutes, ninety seconds, one paragraph, one line. Built off the same spine so your head of sales and your recruiter are not describing two companies. ### The interview archive Every session recorded and transcribed. Founders, early employees, the customer from year one, the investor who passed. You keep all of it, and it is what makes a book possible later. ### The corporate history book Where the trigger deserves it. The full researched account, published or printed privately, for the milestone, the archive and the shelf in reception. ## How it runs ### Scoping Ninety minutes under NDA with whoever owns this internally. What the trigger is, what date it has to be ready for, and who has to agree. Free, and you get my read either way. ### The interviews Eight to thirty conversations depending on the age of the company. Founders, the early team, the people who left, and where the record allows it the customers and the investors. Recorded and transcribed. ### The archive What already exists. Old decks, board minutes, the first website, the email thread where the pivot was decided. Companies have more of this than they think and it is usually in one person's Gmail. ### The structural read I come back with what the story is, which parts contradict each other, and where the account you have been telling is not what the interviews say. That last one is the uncomfortable meeting and it is the valuable one. ### The writing Delivered in stages, reviewed at each. For a narrative, weeks. For a full corporate history, twelve to eighteen months, which is what everybody serious in this category quotes. ## What this costs, and why nobody will tell you I went looking for published prices for a corporate history and found two on the open web. Storied Gifts lists $10,000 to $15,000. Legacy Books says a corporate history has a minimum project size of $20,000 and some exceed $40,000. Everybody else asks you to call, and one of them, Bookhouse Group, is honest about why: quote high and you scare the client off, quote low and you are stuck with it. I will not pretend to price this page either, because a written company narrative and an eighteen-month researched history are not the same job. What I will do is publish the number I can publish. The founder book engagement is ₹20 lakh, with design, ISBN and print costed apart from the writing. A company story is scoped against that after the first conversation, and you get the scope in writing before anything is signed. ## The version of this that already exists Indian companies have done this well and mostly quietly. Godrej commissioned a two-volume centenary history from B. K. Karanjia, and the company archive grew out of the project, and not the other way around. Harsh Mariwala's account of building Marico was written with Ram Charan. Subhash Chandra's Zee book carries Pranjal Sharma. J. R. D. Tata's life was written by R. M. Lala with his co-operation. None of these are vanity, and none of them were written by the founder alone. The one I keep coming back to is Verizon. Ivan Seidenberg agreed to the book on a stated condition: he was not interested in writing another self-serving chief executive memoir. Fifty-plus interviews later, the word he used for what they had made was storytelling. That condition is the right one to start from, and it is the one I would hold you to. THE TESTBruce Weindruch's question, after forty-odd years of doing this for corporations: did this really help us do what we had to do? Ask it before you commission, not after. If the honest answer is that it decorates a milestone, do not spend the money. ## Is this the same as a family history book? No, and picking the right one matters. This page is the company: living, commercial, the thing your team and your market deal with. If what you want is the family and the firm across three generations, the marriages and the partitions and the things nobody writes down, that is a business family history book and it is a different job with different interviews and usually a private print run. Some families commission both. Most want one and describe the other. ## Questions companies ask Q: What is company story building? Writing the company's narrative once, from interviews and the archive, so that everyone who has to tell it is telling the same one. It produces a long written account, the short versions cut from it, and a transcribed recording archive you own. Q: How is a corporate history book different from the narrative? Scale and permanence. The narrative is a document your team works from and takes weeks. The corporate history is the full researched account, runs twelve to eighteen months, and exists to be read in twenty years. Companies usually commission the history for a milestone and the narrative for a Tuesday. Q: How long does a corporate history book take? Twelve to eighteen months is the honest range and it is what the specialist firms quote too. The History Factory says an anniversary needs about two years of lead time and a book eighteen months minimum. If your milestone is nine months away, say so on the first call and we scope something that can be finished. Q: What does a company story cost? Scoped after the first conversation, because a written narrative and an eighteen-month history are different jobs. For reference, the two published prices on the open web for a corporate history are $10,000 to $15,000 and a $20,000 minimum. The one number I publish is the ₹20 lakh founder book engagement. Q: Who do you interview? Founders, the early employees, the people who have since left, and where you allow it customers and investors. The ones who left are usually the most useful and the most often skipped. Q: What if the interviews contradict the story we tell? They will, somewhere. That meeting is the point of the exercise. You decide what the account says, and you decide it knowing what your own people remember. Q: Do we own the recordings and the copyright? Yes, all of it, transferred on completion. The transcripts and recordings are yours to keep whether or not a book ever gets made from them. Q: Can this stay private instead of published? Yes, and many are. A private print run for the family, the board and the archive is a normal outcome. Publishing is a separate decision, costed separately. Q: Do you work outside India? Yes. India, the UAE, the UK, the US, Singapore, Canada and Australia. Interviews run by video, and I travel for the ones that need a room. ### Related reading - the whole founder section - a business family history book, for the family across generations - founder storytelling, for the story that belongs to you - an authorised biography - what the work costs - how to self-publish, if you want to print it yourself ## The people who remember year one are not going to be reachable forever. Ninety minutes, under NDA, no charge. Bring the trigger and the date it has to be ready for. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/time-left-with-parents/ Title: Time Left With Parents Calculator, for Families Apart Last updated: 2026-10-12 # Time left with parents calculator Two weeks a year at home in Pune comes to 196 days with a mother of 68. Put in your own numbers. Mother's age Father's age Where do they live?AustraliaBahrainBangladeshCanadaChinaFijiGermanyGuyanaIndiaIrelandKenyaKuwaitMalaysiaMauritiusNepalNetherlandsNew ZealandOmanPakistanPhilippinesQatarSaudi ArabiaSingaporeSouth AfricaSri LankaTanzaniaTrinidad and TobagoUAEUgandaUnited KingdomUnited StatesLeave an age blank to count one parent. Count their visits to you as well as yours to them. Visits a year Days each visit Share this ### Your mother, 68 196 days That is about 6 months, spread across about 14 visits. WHO's 2023 tables give a woman of 68 in India 14 more years on average. One more trip a year takes it to 391 days with her. ### Your father, 72 137 days That is about 5 months, spread across about 10 visits. WHO's 2023 tables give a man of 72 in India 10 more years on average. One more trip a year takes it to 274 days with him. These are averages for the country your parents live in, from WHO's 2023 life tables. Your parents are not averages. Use the number to plan the next visit. It predicts nothing. Turn the next visit into a book Built by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer, on WHO life tables for 31 countries. Updated 11 October 2026. ## How the number is worked out ### 1/ Years left, by country The World Health Organization publishes, for every country, how many years a person of a given age has left on average. A woman of 70 in India has 12.5. In the United Kingdom she has 16.6. In the UAE, 16.2. ### 2/ Your parent's age The tables run in five-year steps from 40 to 85. An age between two steps is read off a straight line between them. Past 85 the line keeps falling and stops at one year. ### 3/ Days together Those years are multiplied by the days you spend in the same house each year: trips times days, never more than 365. That is the number. ## What the number is for Tim Urban did this sum for his own parents in December 2015, in a post called The Tail End. He was 34. His finding: "when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time." He grew up in the same country as his parents. Most of the families I write for did not. A child in the same city who visits every Sunday gets 52 days a year. A child in Dubai or Toronto who flies home for two weeks gets 14. The calculator does not make that number bigger. The visit can hold more. Use one evening of the next trip to ask a question nobody in the family has asked. The life story question generator gives you ten to start with, and the 100 questions to ask your parents run in the order that gets a parent talking. If you want the answers kept, in their words, with the photographs, that is the gift book. Ten stories, ten hardback copies, four months. I write it. The number of visits goes down by one each time you fly home. What they tell you on those visits can stay. ## Questions people ask Q: How do I work out how much time I have left with my parents? Take the years your parent has left on average, from a life table for their country, their age and their sex. Multiply by the days you spend together each year. A mother of 68 in India has about 14 years on WHO's 2023 tables. At one visit of 14 days a year, that is 196 days. Q: Where does the data come from? The World Health Organization's Global Health Observatory, life tables for 2023, indicator "ex", the years of life remaining at a given age. It is published by country and by sex. The calculator carries the tables for 31 countries, chosen for where Indian and South Asian families live. Q: My parents' country is not on the list. What do I pick? Pick the closest neighbour. Countries in one region sit close together: at 70, a woman in Kenya has 11.8 years left on average, in Uganda 11.6, in Tanzania 11.4. Q: Is this a prediction of how long my parents will live? No. It is an average for millions of people of the same age, sex and country. Health, money, where they live and luck move any one person a long way from it, in both directions. Read it as a reason to plan, never as a forecast. Q: Why are my mother's and father's numbers different? Women live longer. In 29 of the 31 countries here, a woman of 70 has more years left than a man of 70. In India she has 12.5 and he has 11. Bahrain and Qatar are the two exceptions. Q: Do the days they spend with me count? Yes. Count every day you are under the same roof, at their home or yours. If they spend three months a year with you, put 1 time a year and 90 days. Q: Is anything I type saved? No. The sum runs in your browser. The ages you type are not sent anywhere and are gone when you close the page. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - interview your parents from abroad - write my parents' life story - life story question generator - ghostwriter cost calculator --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/ghostwriter-cost-calculator/ Title: Ghostwriter Cost Calculator: Real Published Rates, 2026 Last updated: 2026-10-11 # Ghostwriter cost calculator Ghostwriter.in charges Rs 2 a word. Reedsy's average memoir writer charges $0.51. Pick a length and see what five kinds of writer charge for your book. How long is the book?20,000 words, about 80 pages30,000 words, about 120 pages50,000 words, about 200 pages65,000 words, about 260 pages80,000 words, about 320 pages100,000 words, about 400 pagesPages at 250 words each, the measure Ghostwriter.in prices by. Hours of interviews5 hours10 hours20 hours30 hours40 hours60 hoursMy own books take 30 to 60 hours. A 50,000-word book with 30 hours of interviews costs Rs 1,45,000 at the low end of the market and $250,000 at the top. Indian volume shop Rs 1,45,000 ($2,900) Ghostwriter.in's published rate: Rs 500 a page of 250 words, plus 45 interviews of 40 minutes. A writer from a roster. Packaged memoir service from $24,000 StoryTerrace PRO: 125 pages and up, 10 hours of interviews and up. Classic stops at 120 pages and 10 hours. Marketplace freelancer about $25,500 Reedsy's 2026 average for memoir is $0.51 a word. Their memoir range is $18,000 to $50,000. You pick from up to five quotes. New York agency $57,500 to $250,000 Kevin Anderson & Associates publishes two packages: $57,500 to $95,000, and $115,000 to $250,000. Flat, whatever the length. Me, one book at a time US$25,000 The full book at any length: 30 to 60 hours of interviews, six months, every word written by me. The gift book, ten stories in four months, is US$10,000. Ghostwriter.in, StoryTerrace and Kevin Anderson & Associates publish these prices on their own sites. Reedsy's figures come from its June 2026 cost guide. Nothing here is my estimate of anyone else's price. Ask what your book would cost Built by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer, from each seller's own published rates. Checked 11 October 2026. ## Why one book costs Rs 1 lakh or $250,000 Same length, same interviews, a price gap of more than a hundred times. The gap is who writes it, and how many other books that writer is writing at the same time. Ghostwriter.in publishes Rs 500 a page and a writer from its roster. StoryTerrace matches you with a writer from a pool. Reedsy lets you pick one freelancer from up to five quotes. Kevin Anderson & Associates sells you a package, and you meet the writer after you sign. The full breakdown, band by band, with what each one hides, is in how much a ghostwriter costs. ## Where I sit One price for the full book: US$25,000, six months, written by me, one book at a time. That is a Reedsy writer's fee, with a named author's attention. The gap in my offer is speed. If you need the book in eight weeks for a launch or a birthday, hire a shop with a bench of writers. I would rather say that here than take the deposit. ## Questions people ask Q: How much does a ghostwriter cost for a memoir? Reedsy's 2026 range for biographies and memoirs is $18,000 to $50,000, at $0.51 a word on average. StoryTerrace starts at $3,250 for 60 to 120 pages. Ghostwriter.in charges Rs 500 a page. Kevin Anderson & Associates publishes $57,500 to $250,000. The calculator puts all of them against your length. Q: How does the calculator work it out? It uses each seller's own published numbers. Ghostwriter.in: Rs 500 or US$10 a page of 250 words, Rs 10,000 for up to ten 40-minute interviews, then Rs 1,000 each. StoryTerrace: Classic up to 120 pages and 10 hours, PRO above that. Reedsy: your word count times $0.51. Kevin Anderson & Associates: flat packages, whatever the length. Q: Why are Indian ghostwriters so much cheaper? Rs 2 a word is a volume price. A writer can only earn a living at that rate by writing several books at once, with fewer interviews and less time per chapter. Some of those books are good. Ask who writes yours, and ask to speak to them before you pay. Q: How many words is a memoir? Anything from 20,000 words for a short family book to 100,000 for a full life. At 250 words a page, 50,000 words is about 200 printed pages. Q: Does the price include printing and publishing? Most do not. These are prices for the manuscript. Design, print and ISBN are separate. What those cost is in the guide to self-publishing a biography. Q: Why does your price not change with the length? Because the cost of a memoir is the listening, and the six months. A long book from a parent who loves to talk can take less time than a short one from a parent who has to be asked the same question three ways. ### Related reading - how much a ghostwriter costs - how I price - solo writer, agency or marketplace - time left with parents calculator - life story question generator --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/life-story-question-generator/ Title: Life Story Question Generator for Parents and Grandparents Last updated: 2026-10-11 # Life story question generator Ten questions for a parent or grandparent, one from each chapter of a life, in the order that gets them talking. Written for families who grew up in India, East Africa or the Gulf. Who are you asking?My mother or fatherA grandparent How many questions?5, for forty-five minutes10, for ninety minutes Which part of their life?All of it, a question a chapterThe house they grew up inThe people before themSchool and friendsFirst job, first moneyThe marriageThe moveWork and the bad yearTheir childrenLoss and what heldLooking back, and the photographsThe kitchen Another setCopy the list - The houseWalk me through the house you grew up in, from the front door. What did you see first? - The people before themWhat did you call your grandparents? What were their real names? - School and friendsHow did you get to school? Walk me through the route. - First job, first moneyHow did you get your first job? Who knew whom? - The marriageHow did the proposal come? Who brought it, and what did they say about the other family? - The moveWhen was leaving first discussed? Who raised it? - Work and the bad yearWhat is the work you are proudest of? Take me to the day it came together. - You, from their sideHow did you find out I was coming? Who did you tell first? - Loss and what heldWho is the first person you lost? How old were you? - Looking back, and the photographsWho is this? And this? Say the full names, and how each person is related to me. After every answer, ask one of these: What happened next? Who else was there? What did it smell like? Say more about that. Let me ask them for you Built by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer, from his 100 questions to ask your parents. Updated 11 October 2026. ## How to ask them ### 1/ Ask for a day, never a decade "What was your childhood like?" gets you "It was fine." "What did you eat before school?" gets you the kitchen, the stove and the sister who burnt the rotis. A book is made of days. ### 2/ One question. Then silence. Count to seven before you speak again. Your mother is walking back to 1968. The second half of a good answer arrives after the pause you wanted to fill. ### 3/ Record it Put your phone face down on the table and press record. You will not remember the words, and the words are the book. The gap in these questions: they are written for one kind of childhood. A parent who grew up in Lucknow, Nairobi or Muscat will know every room in them. A parent who grew up in Leeds will find some of them strange. Six rules, all ten chapters and every question are on 100 questions to ask your parents. If they live in another country, read how to interview your parents from abroad. ## Questions people ask Q: What are good questions to ask about someone's life story? Questions that ask for one day, one room or one meal. "Walk me through the house you grew up in, from the front door" works. "Tell me about your childhood" does not. Ask in the order the life happened: the house first, the hard years late, the photographs last. Q: How many questions should I ask in one sitting? Ten. Asked well, with follow-ups, ten questions fill ninety minutes. After that a parent gets tired and starts giving short answers. Q: What language should I ask in? The language the memory lives in. If your mother grew up in Gujarati, her kitchen is in Gujarati. Ask there and translate later. Q: What if they do not want to answer? Move to the next question and come back another day, or never. Some of these questions say so out loud: "You can tell me and we can keep it out of the book." A parent who trusts the edit tells you more. Q: Can I use these for my grandparents? Yes. Pick "A grandparent" and the chapter about raising you becomes a chapter about raising their own children, your mother or father among them. Q: Is anything I pick saved? No. The questions are picked in your browser. Nothing is sent or stored. ### Related reading - 100 questions to ask your parents - my grandparents' story - how to write your parents' life story - time left with parents calculator - ghostwriter cost calculator --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/how-to-write-family-legacy-book/ Title: How to Write Your Family’s Legacy Book: A Diaspora Guide Last updated: 2026-10-03 - # How to Write Your Family's Legacy Book: A Diaspora Guide A practical guide to capturing your family's story before the people who hold it are gone. Begin the conversation Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. A practical guide to capturing your family's story across two worlds. How to record the oral history, handle the family sensitivities, and start before the elders are gone. ## Start before you are ready The single biggest regret families carry is waiting. The stories that survive are the ones recorded while the first generation was still here, the memories vivid, the documents findable. You do not need the full story to begin. You need a recorder and a first question. ## Six steps to capture the story ### Decide who you are telling, and why A book for your children reads differently from one for a wider public. Name the reader first. It sets the tone for everything. ### Record before you write Sit with the person. Record audio or video. Do not edit as you go. The goal is to capture the voice, the pauses, the way they tell it. ### Ask for scenes, not summaries "Tell me about the day you landed" beats "tell me about your life". A life has no shape. A scene does. ### Gather the documents Passports, letters, photographs, the first salary slip, the shop sign. These anchor memory and give a reader something to hold. ### Agree what stays out Every Indian family has things that are not said at the dinner table. Settle early on what is in and what stays out. What stays out is a decision worth taking with care. ### Find the shape A story is not a timeline. It is one question with a human answer. Find the question at the centre of the life, and build everything around it. ## Questions to ask your father before it is too late A short list to start. What did you carry when you left? Who did you leave behind? What did the first year cost you? When did this country start to feel like home? What did you want for us that you never said? The full list is something I share with clients. ## Doing it yourself, or with a writer You can record and shape the story yourself, and many families do. If the book is about your mother or father, the full twelve-step guide and the hundred questions are both free. A writer earns their place at one point: turning hours of recording into something a stranger cannot put down, while keeping the voice unmistakably theirs. That is the craft. If you reach that point, I write memoirs and family legacy books for the Indian diaspora. More on family legacy books. Begin the conversation ### Related reading how to write your parents' life story yourself - 100 questions to ask your parents - a family and dynastic legacy book - a memoir for the Indian diaspora - begin a conversation - a grandparent's life story - a family history book --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/self-publish-a-biography/ Title: How to Self-Publish a Biography: The Complete Guide Last updated: 2026-10-12 # How to self-publish a biography Read this before you pick anybody. The whole map, from a finished manuscript to a book a stranger can order, with the real numbers and the two decisions that everything else hangs off. Begin the conversationGet the ISBN first Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Every price here comes from the seller's own live page or the issuing agency's own site. Checked 3 September 2026. Rupee conversions at 95.6 to the dollar and 129.7 to the pound. Where I could not open a source, I say so on the line. ## The short answer Self-publishing a biography is six jobs, and the writing is only the first. You need an edit, a design, an ISBN, a printer, a distributor and a legal read. You can buy them separately for roughly $4,000 to $14,000 outside India, or ₹1.5 lakh to ₹4 lakh inside it, and keep every right and every rupee of royalty. Or you buy a package. Notion Press in Chennai sells five of them, from ₹39,990 to ₹1,99,990. Packages are not a scam and they are not a bargain. They are convenience, priced. Before any of that, answer one question. Is this a book for sixty people who already love the subject, or a book for strangers? Nearly every expensive mistake in this business comes from a family answering the second when they meant the first. ### On this page - The question that comes first - The five roads - What it actually costs - Editing, the line you cannot cut - Design, typesetting, cover - The ISBN and the copyright page - On demand, or a print run - Distribution, and what a bookshop wants - The money, worked through - Publishing from India - The vanity press test - The legal chapter - What actually sells a memoir - Twelve months, laid out - The mistakes I watch families make - Questions people ask ## The question that comes first A man in Croydon wrote to me last year about his mother. She came from Nairobi in 1972 with two suitcases and a sewing machine, and he had four hours of tape and a shoebox of photographs. He asked me what a launch costs. Wrong question, and it was going to cost him about £6,000 to find that out. His book had a readership of roughly ninety people, all of whom already knew and loved his mother. Ninety people do not need a distributor, a marketing budget, an Amazon ad campaign or a publicist. They need a beautiful object in the post before Diwali. He was about to buy an infrastructure for strangers who were never coming. So answer this before you price anything. ### The family book If the readers are already in your phone - Sixty to three hundred copies, most of them given, not sold - The object matters more than the listing. Hardback, good paper, sewn if you can afford it - Distribution is a courier, not a channel - An ISBN is optional. Get one anyway so a library catalogue holds the record - Marketing budget: zero, correctly - Where the money should go: editing, design, and print quality ### The book for strangers If success means somebody you have never met buys it - Print on demand, because you cannot forecast a stranger - Your own ISBN, never the platform's - Metadata, categories and comparable titles done properly - A real distributor, and a wholesale discount a shop will accept - A legal read, because strangers include the litigious - Where the money should go: editing, then discoverability Most family biographies are the left column and get sold the right column. That is the single most expensive error in this whole guide, and it is made before anybody spends a rupee. You can also be honest and say it is both. A book for the family, with an ISBN and a print-on-demand listing so a cousin in Toronto can order one at midnight. That is a good plan and it is cheap. What it is not is a launch. ## The five roads Once the manuscript exists, there are five ways it becomes a book. The trade calls them different things in different countries, so here they are by what actually happens to your money and your rights. Road | You pay | You get | Rights | Right for a biography when | Trade publisher | Nothing. They pay you | Editorial, design, print, sales force, bookshops | You license them, usually for years | The subject is already famous, or the story has a national hook. For a private life story, it is not coming | Paid package, sometimes called hybrid | ₹40,000 to ₹2,00,000 and up | A bundle: cover, layout, ISBN, listings, some marketing | Usually yours, but read the agreement | You want one invoice and one point of contact, and you accept a markup for it | Assembled yourself | You hire each specialist | Exactly what you chose, at cost | Entirely yours | You have time, judgement, and someone to project-manage it | Pure platform | Almost nothing upfront | KDP or IngramSpark do print and fulfilment | Yours, unless you take a free platform ISBN | A book for strangers on a thin budget | Private print | A printer's invoice | Boxes of books at your door | Entirely yours | The family book. Underrated, and usually correct | Nobody tells you the fifth one exists, because nobody makes a recurring margin on it. A local printer, a good designer, three hundred hardbacks, done. For a great many family biographies it is the right answer and it finishes in eight weeks. ## What it actually costs Two honest budgets. The first is a family book done well without a package. The second is a book meant to reach strangers. Both assume the manuscript already exists at about 80,000 words, which is a normal length for one life told properly. ### The family book, three hundred hardbacks Copyedit and proofread$3,500 to $4,400 Photo restoration and captions$300 to $800 Cover and interior design$1,100 to $2,000 ISBNFree in India, $125 in the US, £93 in the UK Print, 300 hardbacks$2,000 to $5,000. In India, a fraction of it MarketingNothing, and that is correct ### The book for strangers Developmental edit$2,800 to $3,600 Copyedit$2,160 to $2,800 Proofread$1,360 to $1,600 Cover, interior, ebook build$1,150 to $2,500 ISBNs, block of ten$295, or £174, or free in India Copyright registration, US$45 to $65 Legal read, if living people are named$500 to $3,000 PrintNothing. On demand, per copy sold Add it up and the second budget lands between about $8,000 and $14,000 before a single copy sells. That is the honest range for a properly made book aimed at strangers, and it is why the ₹40,000 package looks so attractive. Hold that thought until the vanity press section. ## Editing, the line you cannot cut The Editorial Freelancers Association publishes a rate chart from a survey of its members. It is the largest public dataset on what editing costs, the 2026 chart draws on over 1,100 respondents describing their 2025 work, and it has rows for memoir specifically. Those are the ones below, not the general ones. What it is | Per word | Per hour | On 80,000 words | Developmental edit. Structure, order, what stays out | 3.5 to 4.5 cents | $60 to $75 | $2,800 to $3,600 | Line edit. Sentence by sentence, for rhythm and clarity | 3.0 to 4.0 cents | $50 to $65 | $2,400 to $3,200 | Copyedit. Grammar, consistency, fact flags | 2.7 to 3.5 cents | $49 to $55 | $2,160 to $2,800 | Proofread. The last pass, on the laid-out pages | 1.7 to 2.0 cents | $40 to $50 | $1,360 to $1,600 | Reedsy, which runs a marketplace and publishes averages from its own quote data, lands in the same country: about $2,880 for a developmental edit on 80,000 words, $2,160 for a copyedit and $1,600 for a proofread. Two independent sources agreeing is about as good as this industry's numbers get. In Britain the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading publishes suggested minimum hourly rates, from 1 March 2026: £31.92 for proofreading, £37.11 for copyediting and £42.66 for substantial editing, rewriting or development editing. The CIEP is careful to say it has no authority to tell anyone what to charge. Read them as a floor a professional will not go under. In Australia, IPEd puts an established professional editor at A$100 to A$150 an hour. Three things worth knowing before you buy an edit. A developmental edit and a copyedit are different jobs and a great many services quietly sell you the second while calling it the first. Ask which one you are getting, in writing. On a biography the developmental edit is the one that matters most, because a life arrives in the wrong order and somebody has to decide what the book is about. Do not buy a proofread before the pages are laid out. Proofreading is the pass over the typeset proof. Run it on a Word file and you will pay for it twice. And an Indian editor costs a fraction of these numbers and is frequently better on an Indian book, because they know that Ludhiana is not near Lucknow and that a mama and a chacha are not the same relative. Rate cards from Chicago do not price that in. ## Design, typesetting, cover A biography is a harder design job than a novel, and the reason is photographs. A novel is text. A family biography is text plus forty scanned pictures of varying quality, a family tree, possibly a map, letters, a passport page, a ship's manifest. Every one of those has to be placed, captioned, credited and printed at a resolution that survives the press. This is where cheap layout shows, and it shows forever. Budget separately for a cover and for the interior, and there is real data on both. Reedsy analysed more than 9,600 cover design jobs run through its marketplace in 2025. Across all categories the average cover came to $880, with most between $625 and $1,250. Biography and memoir came in at a median of $680 and an average of $760, among the cheapest categories on the platform, because a memoir cover is usually one photograph and good typography while a fantasy cover is an illustration. Fantasy averaged $1,760. Interior typesetting is priced by page or by project. Reedsy puts half of all interior design work between $475 and $1,275. The EFA's own chart puts book layout at $50 to $55 an hour, or $5.00 to $7.50 a page. Fixed-price shops sit in the same band: Ebook Launch charges from $239 for print interior formatting up to 50,000 words, and Damonza lists a standard front cover at $645. A book with plate sections costs more than a book without them, wherever you buy it. The one specification worth insisting on Get the source files. The InDesign or Affinity package, the fonts list, the print-ready PDF and the cover at full bleed. Designers who will not hand over source files are selling you a dependency. In ten years you will want a reprint with a corrected date, and you do not want that to be a new design job. ## The ISBN and the copyright page The whole method is on its own page, because it needed one: how to get an ISBN in India, the UK and the USA. The short version, for this map. An ISBN is free in India from the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency, £93 for a single number from Nielsen in Britain, and $125 for a single number from Bowker in America. You must apply to the agency of the country you live in, and India requires that a self-publishing author actually reside there. Every format needs its own number, so a paperback, a hardback and an EPUB is three. An ISBN gives you no copyright. Copyright registration is a separate act, and worth doing where a register exists. In the United States it is $45 for a single author filing one work electronically, or $65 on the standard application. Britain has no register at all. India registers through the Copyright Office. The copyright page itself deserves two minutes of care. It carries the ISBN, the copyright line, the year, the edition statement, the printer where a jurisdiction requires it, and any photograph credits. It is the page a librarian reads and the page a lawyer reads. It is also the page most self-published books get visibly wrong, and it is the first thing that tells a bookseller an amateur made this. ## On demand, or a print run Print on demand means a copy is manufactured when somebody orders it. No inventory, no upfront cost, a higher price per copy and a physically lighter book. A print run means you buy five hundred copies at once, cheaply, and store them in your garage. For the book aimed at strangers, print on demand, every time. You cannot forecast demand for an unknown biography and a garage full of unsold copies of your father's life is a sad thing to own. For the family book, a run. You know the number, it is the guest list, and the unit cost collapses. This is also the only route to the things that make a book feel like an heirloom: a case bind, a sewn spine, decent board, a cloth cover, a ribbon. Print on demand does none of that well. An Indian printer doing three hundred hardbacks will beat any on-demand unit price and beat it on quality too. Amazon's KDP publishes its print costs, so you can do the arithmetic yourself before you commit to anything. Marketplace | Fixed, per book | Per page, black ink | A 320-page paperback | Amazon.com | $1.00 | $0.012 | $4.84 | Amazon.co.uk | £0.85 | £0.010 | £4.05 | Amazon.de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .ie | €0.75 | €0.012 | €4.59 | Amazon.com.au | A$2.42 | A$0.022 | A$9.46 | Amazon.ca | C$1.26 | C$0.016 | C$6.38 | In India the equivalent numbers are published by Pothi, which runs a print-on-demand service and exposes a live calculator. A 250-page black and white paperback at 5.5 by 8.5 inches came out on 3 September 2026 at ₹272 for one copy, ₹217.60 each at 100, ₹163.20 each at 500 and ₹136.00 each at 1,000. That is a fixed ₹72 a copy plus about 80 paise a page, falling with volume. Offset is cheaper still, and here I have to report a gap where a number should be. I checked Repro, Thomson Press, Replika, Nutech and several others on 3 September 2026 and not one Indian offset printer publishes a rate. Every quote is a phone call. The indicative bands that circulate, around ₹95 to ₹120 a copy for 500 copies of a 300-page paperback, come from publishers' blogs and not from printers, so treat them as a direction and get three quotes. What is safe to say is that at 500 copies offset beats print on demand by a wide margin in India, and that the gap is why a family book should be printed here. Two footnotes on that table. A short book is priced differently: under 110 pages KDP charges a flat fee with no per-page component, $2.30 in the US, which makes a hundred-page family record cheaper to make than the arithmetic above suggests. And Australia gets paperback and Kindle but no hardcover at all. Colour changes everything. On Amazon.com premium colour runs $0.065 a page against $0.012 for black, so those forty family photographs turn a $4.84 book into something near $22 to manufacture. This is why almost every well-made family biography puts its pictures in one or two glossy plate sections instead of scattering them through the text. It is a design decision that is really a cost decision. ## Distribution, and what a bookshop wants Two names matter, and they do different jobs. KDP is Amazon's own. It prints and fulfils on the Amazon marketplaces and pays the best royalty on Amazon sales. It also says, in its own words, that "amazon.com.br, amazon.com.in, and amazon.com.mx do not support paperback and hardcover distribution." Amazon.in is a full Kindle store and not a print market. If your buyers are in India, KDP print is not your route, and this catches Indian authors constantly. Paperbacks you see on Amazon.in are third-party resellers importing copies, and they earn you no print royalty at all. IngramSpark is the trade's own wholesaler wearing a self-publishing hat. It prints in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and the UAE, it converts a print book to an ebook at $0.60 a page, and it pays 85% of the net revenue it receives on ebook sales. Its distribution reaches the wholesalers that actual bookshops and libraries order from, which Amazon's own channel does not. Title setup is free. Ingram's own pricing page says "It costs you nothing to sign up for an IngramSpark account and to upload your print or ebook", the setup fee that used to be $49 was abolished, and there is no charge to add markets later. The revision fee is contested, and I would rather tell you that than pick a side. Ingram's own user guide, version 3.3 and dated 24 August 2026, says revisions are unlimited and free until you approve the eproof, and that "after the eproof is approved, revisions or resubmissions for completed print and ebook titles are subject to a $25 revision fee." The Alliance of Independent Authors reports that fee was removed in February 2026. The authoritative rate card only opens when you log in, and I could not read it on 3 September 2026. Budget the $25, and check it inside your account. Two other Ingram numbers are simply not public. It publishes no per-page print rate anywhere, so you cannot price a book before opening an account, which is the one place Amazon is more honest. And its global distribution fee, reported by the trade press as rising from 1.5% to 1.875% of list price in February 2026, appears on no Ingram page I could find. A great many self-published authors use both, and that is the sensible default: KDP for Amazon, Ingram for everything else. What a bookshop actually wants Being available is not being stocked, and there are numbers attached to the difference. You set your own wholesale discount with IngramSpark, anywhere from 40% to 55% in the US. Its own discount worksheet warns that "applying a wholesale discount less than 53% in the U.S. and U.K. (and less than 48% in Australia) can limit retail interest in your title", because a short discount "is not typically a big enough incentive for a bookstore to purchase your book." The user guide puts the working answer at 53% to 55%, with returnable status. Gardners, the big British wholesaler, is blunter still on its supplier page: "We normally ask for 60% discount off the RRP." Ingram's own worked example on a $21.99 book shows what the lever costs. At a 40% discount you keep $7.01 after print. At 55% you keep $5.91. Buy the shelf, or keep the dollar. You cannot do both. Returnable is the expensive half. Books can come back at any time, for any reason. Ingram's Yes-Deliver option, which is US only, charges you the wholesale cost of each returned book plus $3.00 a book to a US address and $20.00 a book outside it. Choose Yes-Destroy and they pulp it and charge you the wholesale cost. Ingram also warns that publisher compensation can go negative, where price and discount together do not cover the print cost. In the UAE, every title prints non-returnable. And Ingram's own caveat is the sentence to remember: "There is no guarantee that any given wholesaler, reseller, or retailer will purchase or make any book available for sale, no matter the wholesale discount." That is the gap between "available in 30,000 bookstores" as a package sells it and a book actually on a table in Bandra. ### What each market actually demands The architecture is the same everywhere and the risk position is not. No chain in any of these countries buys direct from a self-publisher. You need a wholesaler, and then you need to meet the chain's terms through them. Market | The route | The condition that decides it | United Kingdom | Waterstones does not trade direct. It sources through wholesalers such as Gardners, in its own words | Waterstones buys firm sale, so no returns. Your record must be with NielsenIQ BookData, which is "the sole provider of book information to Waterstones", and needs a THEMA subject code and a UK territorial rights statement. You need a UK address and UK stock | United States | Barnes & Noble's small press desk, with a wholesaler behind you | The opposite of Britain: "If your local Barnes & Noble wants to sell your book, your book must be in our system as a returnable item." Also a Bookland EAN barcode with the US retail price embedded and printed on it, and the title and author printed on the spine. Four to six weeks for a decision | India | A distributor. Prakash Books says it services hundreds of self-published authors into 2,100 plus stores | Nobody publishes terms. Crossword's own "Become a Supplier" page renders the customer FAQ and lists no vendor contact, and its author programme button leads to a Google Form for children's storytelling weekends. Bahrisons' publishing page links off-site. Every Indian discount figure in circulation comes from a self-publishing company's blog | Two consequences worth naming. Britain and America want opposite things from the same book, so a title configured for Waterstones is configured wrong for Barnes & Noble. And Barnes & Noble's own print-on-demand imprint cannot be returnable under its own terms, which means a book published through B&N Press structurally cannot reach a B&N shelf. That is worth reading twice. The British paperwork also has a clock on it. Nielsen advises that a title record be submitted at least twenty weeks before publication, and a basic listing costs nothing. Twenty weeks. Put it in the calendar the day you have a title. One more, from Barnes & Noble's own help pages, because it is the kind of thing families fall for: "Barnes & Noble will never reach out to authors and offer in-store placement for your books in exchange for money." For a private biography, be honest that bookshop distribution is close to irrelevant. Nobody browses into a shop and buys the life story of a stranger's father. Your buyers arrive because they know the name. ## The money, worked through Amazon publishes the formula and its own worked example, so there is no need to guess. The royalty rate on Amazon marketplaces is 60% for list prices above the threshold, which on Amazon.com is $9.99, and 50% at or below it. Expanded Distribution, meaning sales through wholesalers to shops and libraries, pays 40%. The formula is the same in every case: (Royalty rate x list price) – printing costs = royalty Amazon's own example: a 333-page black ink paperback listed at $15 on the US marketplace returns (0.60 x $15) minus $5.00, which is $4.00. Through Expanded Distribution the same book returns (0.40 x $15) minus $5.00, which is $1.00. Now your book. A 320-page paperback biography. Where and how | List | Royalty rate | Print cost | You keep | Amazon.com | $16.99 | 60% | $4.84 | $5.35 | Amazon.co.uk | £12.99 | 60% | £4.05 | £3.74 | Through a wholesaler to a shop | $16.99 | 40% | $4.84 | $1.96 | Kindle ebook, priced in the band | $7.99 | 70%, less delivery | None | About $5.50 | On the ebook, Amazon pays 70% only between $2.99 and $12.99 on the US store, with equivalent bands elsewhere, and 35% outside that range. That upper limit sat at $9.99 from 2007 until July 2026, so any advice written before then has the wrong number in it. Delivery cost comes out of the 70% option, and a photo-heavy biography file is not small, so check it. Price your ebook at $14.99 and you drop to 35%, which means you earn less at the higher price. That trap catches people every week. Two more things about that table. Expanded Distribution, the row that pays $1.96, is how KDP reaches shops and libraries, and it is weaker than it looks. It pays a flat 40% with no discount lever, it is paperback only, and it offers no returnability option at all. Since a US chain will not shelve a non-returnable book, KDP's Expanded Distribution cannot be made bookstore-viable at any setting. It also needs an ISBN never submitted elsewhere, so a title cannot run through both KDP Expanded Distribution and IngramSpark on the same number. And for this book in particular it is moot: KDP's Expanded Distribution excludes biographies outright, alongside cookbooks, travel guides, workbooks, journals and colouring books. If shops matter for a biography, Ingram is not the better option. It is the only one. And a caution for the Gulf and Singapore: Amazon has no marketplace in either. Amazon.ae and Amazon.sg appear on none of KDP's paperback, hardcover or Kindle store lists, there is no dirham or Singapore dollar pricing anywhere in KDP, and buyers there purchase from Amazon.com. The UAE is a 70% royalty territory. Singapore is not, so a Singapore ebook sale pays you 35%. Expanded Distribution reaches distributors in the United States and the United Kingdom only, and nowhere else at all. Then the honest arithmetic. At $5.35 a copy, recovering a $10,000 production budget takes 1,869 sales. Hold that number. We come back to it. ## Publishing from India Four things work differently here, and three of them are in your favour. The ISBN is free. An American pays $125 and a Briton pays £93 for the same thirteen digits that the Ministry of Education gives an Indian author for nothing. Almost no Indian author I meet knows this, and a startling number have paid a packager a "registration fee" for it. Free, with one sting Register on the Indian portal as "Self published By Author" and the screen tells you plainly that a single ISBN will be allotted in that category. One number, against one title. You can come back for another once you have used it, so three formats means three separate applications at roughly a week each. Register as an individual publisher instead and you are eligible for a block of ten. The whole method is on the ISBN page. Printing is cheap and good. Indian offset printing on a run of three hundred to a thousand is among the best value anywhere, and the finishing options that make a book feel like an heirloom are affordable here in a way they are not in London or New Jersey. For any family book, print in India even if you live elsewhere, and post them. Editing is cheap and often better, for the reasons in the editing section. Copyright registration is cheap too. A literary work costs ₹500 under the Second Schedule to the Copyright Rules 2013, one work per application, with a mandatory thirty-day objection window before the entry goes into the Register. The ₹2,000 figure people quote is the row for artistic works used on goods, and the 2021 amendment rules took literary works out of it. The one that is against you is Amazon. KDP states plainly that amazon.in does not support paperback and hardcover distribution, so KDP print does not serve Indian buyers at all. And for Kindle, Amazon requires that a book be enrolled in KDP Select, meaning digital exclusivity, before it will pay the 70% royalty on sales to customers in India, along with Brazil, Japan and Mexico. Everywhere else 70% is available without exclusivity. So an Indian author selling mainly to Indian readers is asked to choose between exclusivity and half the ebook royalty. There is a route into Indian print through Ingram's Global Connect programme, which names India among its partner-printer markets, so a book set up with IngramSpark can be manufactured locally for Indian buyers. Global Connect titles are non-returnable and cannot be drop-shipped, and I could not confirm which Indian printer currently sits behind it, so treat it as a thing to ask Ingram about and not a plan. For most family biographies the answer is to stop optimising. Print locally, sell to the people who want it, and put a modest ebook up without agonising over the rate. ## The vanity press test Start with the two watchdogs, because they have done the definitional work. Writer Beware, run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, defines a vanity or subsidy publisher as one that "charges a fee to produce a book, or requires the author to buy something", and says of a traditional publisher, simply, "There's no cost to the author." Its published warning signs include a vanity operation presenting itself as a traditional one, a fee that does not appear in the contract, language like "co-op", "joint venture" or "partner", verbal promises that never make it into writing, refusal to give a firm price, a promise of profit, and pressure selling. It adds one that catches people off guard: "Reputable literary agents and freelance editors don't work with vanity publishers." If your editor refers you to a publisher, ask who pays whom. The Alliance of Independent Authors is harder still. It defines vanity publishing as "a publishing service that engages in misleading or, in the worst cases, outright deceptive practices, with the intention not of bringing books to readers but of extracting as much money as possible from the authors." Its test is arithmetic. Divide what the service costs by what you earn on one copy. That is how many copies you must sell to break even. In ALLi's words, if that number would make you a New York Times bestseller, walk away. It documents markups to match: Kirkus reviews that sell for $425 direct being resold at $3,000, and copyright registration available online for $35 resold at a 400% markup. Run that break-even test on this page's own numbers. A ₹39,990 package against a book earning you ₹450 a copy needs 89 sales. That is achievable for a family book. A ₹1,99,990 package needs 445, from a readership that was always going to be a WhatsApp group. ### What the Indian houses actually charge Notion Press in Chennai is one of the larger ones and it publishes its prices, which I credit it for, because several do not. As of 3 September 2026 its packages run Gold at ₹39,990, Diamond at ₹54,990, Sapphire at ₹89,990, Ruby at ₹1,39,990 and Spotlight at ₹1,99,990. It states that authors keep 100% of profits, that the agreement is non-exclusive, and that "you retain all the rights to your book." The others sit on the same ladder. BlueRose runs ₹39,990 to ₹1,99,990, though it publishes those prices only as an image file, which is a choice. Evincepub starts lower, at ₹9,999 plus GST, and runs to ₹1,24,999. Clever Fox has nine rungs from ₹3,000 to ₹1,85,999, and a separate hybrid ladder reaching ₹3,70,000 with a line item for airport distribution at ₹2,59,000. White Falcon and Invincible publish no prices at all; you get a consultation. Now hold one number against another. A ₹39,990 entry package gives you five to ten author copies. Printing 500 copies of the same book costs about ₹81,600 through Pothi's own calculator, and less on offset. Every rupee of package fee above the print cost is service and marketing margin, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to sell, so long as you can see it. And read the small print against the headline. Notion Press's own page carries both "100% of the profits" and this: "No royalty will be paid to authors on copies sold during the days when the book is under promotions." Those promotional windows are a package deliverable you paid for. Nobody in this group defines the cost base that gets subtracted before the 100% is calculated, which is the sentence that decides what the 100% is worth. Take the pricing at face value, and then price the parts. The Gold package at ₹39,990 gives you cover and interior design, an ISBN, copyright registration, distribution, ten author copies and a month of Amazon promotion. The ISBN inside it costs the company nothing, because it is free from the government. The copyright registration is a form. The distribution is an upload. What you are really buying is the design and the project management, and ₹39,990 for that is not outrageous. It is also not a bargain. It is convenience, priced, and if you have the time it is cheaper assembled. Climb the ladder and the arithmetic changes. Spotlight at ₹1,99,990 adds LinkedIn marketing, Amazon ads, Instagram campaigns and Amazon Prime placement. Ask what any of that is worth on a biography of a private person. You are being sold reach for a book whose readership is a list of names you already have. Three deliverables on these ladders deserve a flat no. Paid reviews, which appear as "verified Amazon reviews, up to 10" on one package and "30 book reviews" on another, breach Amazon's terms and put your listing at risk. Unnamed media counts, like "150+ news links" or "40 news portals", with not one outlet named on the page. And bestseller language, where one house answers "Can we make your book a bestseller?" with "Yes" and names a tier after it. BlueRose's own price sheet ends with the best advice on any of these pages: "Ensure written confirmation of promised deliverables from your consultant to prevent future discrepancies." So use five questions on any package, anywhere in the world. - Whose name goes on the ISBN? If the answer is the company's, they are the publisher of record, permanently, and you will need a new ISBN to leave. India's own ISBN agency calls this practice not recommended, in writing. - What exactly is the edit? If the package says "editing" without saying developmental, line, copy or proof, assume the cheapest one. Ask for the number of words and the number of passes. - Who owns the design files? If you cannot walk away with the print-ready PDF and the source package, you are renting your own book. - What does "distribution to 30,000 stores" mean? Almost always it means listed with wholesalers, which is not the same as stocked. Ask how many physical shops carried their last ten biographies. A straight answer is a good sign, and you will rarely get one. - Do they pay for reviews? Some packages include a number of "verified reviews." Paid reviews violate Amazon's terms and put your listing at risk. If it is in the package, that alone is a reason to walk. A company that answers all five plainly is a service business, and a service business is a fine thing to buy from. A company that gets vague on any of them is selling you your own hope back. ## The legal chapter This is the section that gets skipped and it is the one that ends books. A biography is a factual account of real people, some of them alive, some of them related to you, and at least one of them likely to be unhappy. I am a writer and not a lawyer. Nothing here is legal advice. What follows is the shape of the problem, so you know when to pay somebody who does give advice. ### India Defamation is both a civil wrong and a crime. The criminal provision moved from the Indian Penal Code to section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, carrying the substance forward. It punishes defamation with simple imprisonment up to two years, or a fine, or both, or community service. Printing or engraving matter you know to be defamatory is a separate offence with the same maximum, which reaches your printer as well as you. Two features of the Indian provision matter enormously for a biography. First, truth alone is not a defence. The first exception protects an imputation "which is true concerning any person, if it be for the public good that the imputation should be made or published", and it adds that whether it is for the public good is a question of fact. So a true account of a family quarrel, published because it is true, is not automatically safe. It has to clear public good as well, and a private family history is a hard place to argue that. There is a second Indian statute worth knowing about, and almost nobody writing a memoir does. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 carries no exemption for journalism, literature or art. Earlier drafts had one and it did not survive into the Act. A biographer processing personal data about living people in India is working without the carve-out that writers in most comparable countries rely on. The arguments available are that the data was already publicly available, and, more weakly, the research and archiving provision. That is a thinner shield than it should be, and it is worth a lawyer's half hour. Second, the dead are covered. Explanation 1 to the section says it may amount to defamation to impute something to a deceased person, if it would harm their reputation were they living, and is intended to hurt the feelings of family or near relatives. Most countries let you write freely about the dead. India does not, quite. In a book about a grandfather, with surviving relatives who disagree about him, that is a live risk and almost nobody writing a family memoir knows it exists. ### The United Kingdom Start with a correction people need. The Defamation Act 2013 says at section 17(2) that it "extends to England and Wales only". There is no such thing as UK defamation law. Scotland and Northern Ireland are separate. Section 1 sets a serious harm threshold: a statement is not defamatory unless publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the claimant's reputation, and a body trading for profit must show serious financial loss. Section 2 makes truth a defence, and puts the burden on the defendant to show the imputation is substantially true. That is the reverse of the American position, and it is why keeping the tape matters more in London than in New York. Section 4 gives a public interest defence where the writer reasonably believed publication was in the public interest. Limitation is one year, under section 4A of the Limitation Act 1980. Section 8 creates the single publication rule, so the clock runs from first publication. Read the exception, though. It does not apply where "the manner of the later publication is materially different". A paperback edition, an audiobook or a heavily promoted excerpt can restart the clock on a chapter you thought was long past litigating. Section 9 is the libel tourism provision, and it helps a diaspora author. Against a defendant not domiciled in the UK, an English court has no jurisdiction unless England and Wales is clearly the most appropriate place to bring the claim. The British risk is not libel For a biography, misuse of private information is the sharper danger, and two features make it so. It is independent of truth, so a wholly accurate private fact can found a claim. And the one-year defamation clock does not apply to it. The Supreme Court in Bloomberg LP v ZXC, decided in February 2022, set the two-stage test: does the person have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and if so, how does that balance against free expression. It held that someone under criminal investigation generally has a reasonable expectation of privacy up to the point of charge. If your book says a living person was investigated and never charged, stop and take advice. The UK statutory text above was read through archived captures of the official pages, because legislation.gov.uk was answering with a bot challenge on 3 September 2026. Take it as the shape of the law, and take an English solicitor's advice if the book names living people in Britain. ### The United States The friendliest of the three for a biographer. Truth is a complete defence, full stop, with none of the public-good second limb that Indian law adds. A libel claim needs a living subject, so writing about the dead carries no defamation exposure at all, which is the exact opposite of the Indian position. Public officials and public figures must prove actual malice, which New York Times v Sullivan in 1964 defined as publishing "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". It is a very hard standard to meet, and Curtis Publishing v Butts extended it beyond officials to public figures three years later. Private individuals face a lower bar. Gertz v Robert Welch in 1974 let each state set its own standard so long as it does not impose liability without fault, which in most states means negligence. So the protection thins exactly where a family biography lives, because your uncle is a private individual. Two more things help. Anti-SLAPP laws, which let a defendant knock out a meritless suit early and often recover costs, existed in 40 states and the District of Columbia as of March 2026. And the right of publicity, which covers commercial use of a person's name or likeness, does not reach books. The Authors Guild puts it plainly: books and articles are exempt as expressive works, and you do not need permission from a person or their descendants to write about them. Which disposes of a myth worth naming. Life rights are not a legal requirement. Nobody can sell you the exclusive right to tell a true story, and no source I read asserts you need one. What people actually mean by buying life rights is buying cooperation, access and an agreement not to sue. Those are worth having. They are a commercial arrangement, not a permission slip. ### The Gulf, which is a different kind of problem For readers in the UAE the constraint is not a lawsuit, it is a permit. Every book, printed or electronic, needs approval from the National Media Authority before it may be circulated or distributed in the country. The Authority reviews content against the UAE's media content standards and its age classification system, quotes five working days, publishes no fee, and requires the applicant to hold a media licence covering book publishing or distribution. Non-commercial applicants are told to go through a licensed commercial company, so an individual publishing a memoir cannot file for it personally. Plan for that at the start. A Dubai family that prints three hundred copies of a grandfather's biography and then discovers it needs a licensed partner to hand them out has a very expensive problem in a warehouse. The Authors Guild's operative rule for anyone published in more than one country is the right one to end on: follow the strictest law that applies to you. For an Indian family with relatives in London and children in New Jersey, that is India. ### What to actually do - Keep the tape. Every interview recorded, dated and stored. In any dispute your contemporaneous recording of the subject saying the thing is the strongest document you will ever have. - Get releases from living people who are quoted or characterised. One page, plain language, signed. Awkward to ask for and far less awkward than the alternative. - Separate fact from opinion on the page. "He was drinking heavily by 1979" is a factual claim you must be able to support. "I believe he never recovered from it" is opinion, and opinion is far better protected nearly everywhere. - Read the contentious chapters to the people in them. Not for approval, for accuracy. It also converts a great many potential complaints into corrections. - Decide what stays out, deliberately. Every real biography has material that is true, interesting and not worth publishing. Name that category early and put things in it on purpose. - Pay for one legal read. If living people are named and anything in the book is contested, a few hundred to a few thousand dollars against a book you may otherwise have to pulp is not a close call. ## What actually sells a memoir Almost nothing, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a package. First, the honest state of the evidence. There is no dataset of self-published book sales anywhere. Amazon holds it and does not release it. BookScan counts US print retail only, so for a market that is mostly ebook and Kindle Unlimited it is close to blind. Every "average self-published book sells 250 copies" figure you have read traces back to a single site with no methodology and no sources, and the famous "fewer than 300 copies in its lifetime" line is not a BookScan statistic at all. It comes from a publisher's blog post that divides one year of print units by every title in print, which is not a lifetime average of anything. I am not going to add another number of that kind. What does exist is author income surveys, which are self-selected and therefore weak, and they still tell you something. The Authors Guild's 2023 study of US published authors found a median book-related income across all authors of $2,000. For biography authors specifically, the median was $1,000 across 352 respondents. Among full-time biography authors, 118 of them, the median book income was $3,500, which was the lowest-earning full-time category in the study. Full-time romance authors reported $31,725. The same study carries the finding that should shape your expectations more than any other. Full-time self-published authors who started after 2019 reported a median book income of $1,500. Their traditionally published equivalents reported $15,000. Ten times the difference. Among authors established before 2019 the gap closes and reverses slightly, $19,000 against $18,000. Self-publishing pays, on that evidence, after about five years and sixteen titles. You are writing one book about one person. Price accordingly. And the category itself is shrinking. Circana's numbers, reported through Publishers Weekly, show biography posting the steepest losses in adult nonfiction in 2024 at one point down 13.2%, the first half of 2025 down 10.7%, and the full year 2025 down 7%. Memoir deals reported to Publishers Marketplace fell from 322 in 2021 to 279 in 2023. The category's good years are made by two or three celebrity titles, and you are not one. None of which is a reason to stop. It is a reason to stop building the budget as though a stranger is coming. What I watch happen is this. A private biography sells to the people who already know the name. It sells at the funeral, at the anniversary lunch, at the school the subject endowed, at the company he built, in the WhatsApp group of the town he left in 1968. It sells because a person who loved him tells another person it exists. It does not sell to strangers on Amazon, and Amazon ads on a private biography are close to setting money on fire. So the marketing plan for nearly every book in this guide is four lines. A list of everyone who knew the subject. A short note from the family, sent to that list. Copies in hand at the one gathering where the whole network is in a room. And a listing that exists so a cousin can order at midnight without asking anybody. That plan costs nothing and outperforms everything sold as a marketing package. Where I have to report my own gap I announced a second book in October 2014. It is not out. Twelve years, no publication, and I have restarted it more than once. I am not going to give you a date here, because the last few were not worth the paper. I raise it because a guide about finishing a book should say plainly that its author has one unfinished, and because it is the reason I am hard about the calendar below. The books that get made are the ones with dates attached to somebody other than the author. Remember the 1,869 copies from the money section. That is what recovering a $10,000 budget looks like at $5.35 a copy. Set that against a median full-time biography author's $3,500 a year and you can see the shape of it. Almost no private biography sells 1,869 copies, and that is fine, because almost no private biography should have been built to a budget that needs it to. ## Twelve months, laid out From a finished manuscript. Add a year in front of this if the book is not yet written. If the book is about a parent, this guide covers that year. ### Month one. Decide which book this is Family book or book for strangers. Write the number of copies on a piece of paper and the list of who gets them. Set the budget against that number and not against an ambition. ### Months two and three. The developmental edit Structure first, always. This is where you find that the childhood runs eighty pages too long and the years that made him are four paragraphs. Fix it now, because everything downstream is priced per word. ### Month four. The legal read and the releases Do this before typesetting, never after. A chapter removed at proof stage costs you the layout too. Also the month to collect signed releases, while people are still enjoying being in the book. ### Month five. Copyedit, and gather the pictures Scan at 600 dpi or better, more than you think you need. Caption every image with who, where and when while there is still somebody alive who knows. ### Month six. ISBN, copyright, imprint Apply through your own national agency. Register copyright where a register exists. Decide the imprint name now, because it goes in the ISBN record and the record is permanent. ### Months seven and eight. Design and typesetting Cover and interior. Plate sections placed. Family tree drawn properly. Get the source files at the end of it. ### Month nine. Proofread the typeset pages On the laid-out proof, not on the manuscript. Then a second reader who has never seen the book, for the errors the first one has gone blind to. ### Month ten. A physical proof copy Order one. Hold it. Read fifty pages in a chair. Every book reveals something at this stage that no screen showed, and the cost of fixing it now is a reupload. ### Month eleven. Print, or go live The run goes to the printer, or the files go to KDP and IngramSpark. Check the first delivered copies against the proof before the whole run ships. ### Month twelve. Put it in hands One gathering, the whole list, copies on the table. That single afternoon does more than any campaign you could have bought. ## The mistakes I watch families make Six, in the order they usually happen. Buying infrastructure for readers who are not coming. The Croydon problem. Decide the audience before you buy anything. Taking the free platform ISBN without thinking about it. It makes the platform your publisher of record and you cannot take it with you. Fine for a family book, expensive for anything else. Skipping the developmental edit to save money. The cheapest way to make a bad book is to copyedit an unstructured one beautifully. Scattering colour photographs through the text. A design decision that multiplies the print cost by four or five. Use plate sections. Leaving the legal read until the end. Or skipping it in a book about a family that has a dispute in it, which is most families. Printing five hundred copies of a book whose audience is ninety people. The other four hundred and ten will be in a garage in five years and somebody will feel bad about them every time they see the box. ## Questions people ask about self-publishing a biography Q: How much does it cost to self-publish a biography? Two honest ranges. A family book of about three hundred hardbacks, edited and designed properly, runs roughly $4,000 to $9,000, and considerably less if you print in India, where 500 copies of a 250-page paperback cost about ₹81,600 through print on demand and less on offset. A book built to reach strangers, with a developmental edit, a copyedit, a proofread, design, ISBNs and a legal read, runs about $8,000 to $14,000 before a copy sells. A package from an Indian house starts around ₹40,000 and goes past ₹2,00,000. Q: Is it better to self-publish or find a publisher for a biography? For a private life story, self-publish. A trade publisher takes on a biography when the subject is already famous or the story carries a national hook, and pays an advance for that. For a founder, a family or a private person, no trade publisher is coming, and waiting for one costs you the years in which the people who remember the subject are still alive to be interviewed. Q: Do I need an ISBN to self-publish a biography? Not legally, anywhere. The ISBN system imposes no legal requirement. You need one if you want the book orderable by anyone who does not already know you, or listed in library catalogues. For a purely private family book, it is optional, though it costs nothing in India and the UAE and a library record outlives everybody. The full method is on the ISBN page. Q: What is the difference between print on demand and a print run? Print on demand manufactures a copy when somebody orders it, with no upfront cost, a higher unit price and limited binding options. A print run buys a set number at once, far cheaper per copy, and is the only way to get a case bind, a sewn spine or a cloth cover. Books for strangers go on demand. Family books, where you know the number, go to a printer. Q: How much does Amazon KDP pay per book? Amazon's formula is (royalty rate x list price) minus printing cost. The rate is 60% on Amazon marketplaces above the price threshold, which is $9.99 on Amazon.com, 50% at or below it, and 40% through Expanded Distribution. A 320-page paperback listed at $16.99 costs $4.84 to print in the US, so you keep about $5.35. Amazon's own example is a 333-page book at $15 returning $4.00. Q: Does Amazon KDP print books in India? No. KDP states it directly: "amazon.com.br, amazon.com.in, and amazon.com.mx do not support paperback and hardcover distribution." Amazon.in is a Kindle ebook marketplace only. Paperbacks that appear there are third-party resellers importing copies, and they pay you no print royalty. If your buyers are in India, KDP print is not the route, and an Indian printer with an Indian distributor will serve them better and cheaper. Q: What royalty does Amazon pay on a Kindle ebook in India? Amazon pays 70% only if the book is enrolled in KDP Select, meaning digital exclusivity, for sales to customers in India, and the same applies in Brazil, Japan and Mexico. Without exclusivity you get 35% on those sales. In most other markets the 70% option is available without exclusivity, within the list price band of $2.99 to $12.99 or its local equivalent. Q: Are Indian self-publishing packages worth it? They are convenience, priced. Notion Press publishes packages from ₹39,990 to ₹1,99,990 as of September 2026, BlueRose runs the same range, Evincepub starts at ₹9,999 plus GST and Clever Fox runs from ₹3,000. All state non-exclusive agreements with copyright retained by the author, so the exploitation in this market is priced and not contractual. Read the small print against the headline: Notion Press advertises 100% of profits and also states that no royalty is paid on copies sold during promotional days, and none of these houses defines the cost base subtracted before the 100% is worked out. At the lower tiers you are largely paying for design and project management, which is a reasonable thing to buy. At the higher tiers you are paying for marketing reach on a book whose readership is a list of names you already have. Ask who holds the ISBN, what the edit actually is, who owns the design files, and whether any reviews are paid for. Q: Can I write about people who are still alive? Yes, carefully. Record every interview, get signed releases from anyone quoted or characterised, keep factual claims supportable and mark opinion as opinion, and read contentious chapters to the people in them for accuracy. If the book names living people and anything is contested, pay for one legal read before typesetting. Q: Can I be sued for writing about someone who has died? In India, potentially. Explanation 1 to section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita says it may amount to defamation to impute something to a deceased person if it would have harmed their reputation while living and is intended to hurt the feelings of their family or near relatives. Note also that under Indian law truth alone is not a full defence; the first exception requires that publication also be for the public good, and whether it is is a question of fact decided at trial. The penalty runs to two years, and printing defamatory matter is a separate offence with the same maximum, which reaches your printer. In the United States, by contrast, a libel claim requires a living subject, so a book about someone who has died carries no defamation exposure at all. This is not legal advice, and an Indian family book with a contested chapter deserves an Indian lawyer's eye. Q: How long does it take to self-publish a biography? About twelve months from a finished manuscript, if you do it properly: two to three months of developmental editing, a month for legal and releases, copyediting, ISBN and copyright, two months of design and typesetting, proofreading on the laid-out pages, a physical proof, then print. Add a year in front of that if the book still has to be written and the interviews still have to be done. Q: How many copies will my book sell? Nobody can tell you honestly, because the platforms hold the sales data and do not publish it. The widely quoted figures, 250 copies or 300 copies, trace to sources with no methodology behind them. The nearest real evidence is the Authors Guild's 2023 survey, where biography authors reported a median book income of $1,000, and full-time biography authors $3,500, the lowest-earning full-time category in the study. What I watch happen is that a private biography sells to the people who already know the subject's name, and barely at all beyond them. Build the budget so it does not need strangers, and then anything a stranger buys is a bonus instead of a shortfall. Q: Should I hire a ghostwriter or write it myself? Write it yourself if you have the time, the distance and the stomach to structure somebody's life. Hire a writer if the subject is elderly and the clock is the real constraint, if the family disagrees about the story, or if you have four hours of tape and no idea what the book is about. There is a fuller answer on writing it yourself against hiring somebody, and the whole market's prices are on what a ghostwriter costs. Q: How do I get my self-published biography into bookshops? Through a wholesaler, always. No chain in the UK, the US or India buys direct from a self-publisher. In Britain, Waterstones sources through wholesalers such as Gardners, requires a NielsenIQ BookData record with a THEMA code and a UK territorial rights statement, needs a UK address and UK stock, and buys firm sale with no returns. In America, Barnes & Noble requires the book to be returnable in its system, a Bookland EAN barcode with the price embedded and printed, and the title and author on the spine. In India nobody publishes terms and a distributor such as Prakash Books is the practical route. None of it guarantees a shelf, and every one of those companies says so in its own words. Q: Is KDP Expanded Distribution enough to reach bookstores? No. It pays a flat 40% of list with no discount lever, it is paperback only, and it has no returnability option. Since a US chain will not shelve a non-returnable book, Expanded Distribution cannot be configured into something a bookstore will order. IngramSpark lets you set a 53% to 55% discount and mark the title returnable, which is the combination shops actually need. Note also that a title cannot use the same ISBN for both. Q: Is IngramSpark free to use? Title setup is free, and so is uploading a print book or an ebook, on Ingram's own pricing page. The revision fee is contested: Ingram's user guide of 24 August 2026 states a $25 fee for revisions after you approve the eproof, while the Alliance of Independent Authors reports it was removed in February 2026. The authoritative rate card only opens once you log in. Budget the $25 and check inside your account. Ingram publishes no per-page print rate publicly at all, which is the one place Amazon is more transparent. ### Related reading - how to write your parents' life story yourself - how to get an ISBN in India, the UK and the USA - what I charge, and what the fee covers - what a ghostwriter costs across the whole market - how to hire a biographer - write it yourself, or hire somebody - how to write a family legacy book - 20 questions to ask before you hire anyone - every question people ask me, answered ## The book gets made when somebody sets a date. Tell me whose life it is, who reads it, and what you already have. I will tell you which of the five roads is yours, what it should cost, and whether you need me at all. Some of the best books on this page were ones I told the family to make themselves. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/how-to-get-an-isbn/ Title: How to Get an ISBN in India, the UK and the USA Last updated: 2026-10-12 # How to get an ISBN in India, the UK and the USA Free in India. £93 in Britain. $125 in America. The same thirteen digits, three different bills, and one rule that decides which queue you are allowed to stand in. Ask me to handle it Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Every price and rule on this page comes from the issuing agency's own site. Checked 3 September 2026. Rupee conversions at 95.6 to the dollar and 129.7 to the pound. ## The short answer An ISBN identifies the publisher of a book, not the author, and you must get it from the agency of the country you live in. In India the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency gives it to you free. In the United Kingdom, Nielsen charges £93 for one. In the United States, Bowker charges $125 for one. You need a separate ISBN for every format and every revised edition. A paperback, a hardback and an EPUB of your father's biography are three ISBNs, not one. A reprint with no change of text needs none. An ISBN gives you no copyright and no legal protection. It is a stock number. A very useful one. ### On this page - What an ISBN actually is - The rule that decides everything - India, and why it is free - The United Kingdom - The United States - The three side by side - The free ISBN trap - How many your book needs - Where the number goes - What an ISBN does not buy - Dubai, Singapore and everywhere else - Legal deposit obligations - Having someone else do it - Questions people ask ## What an ISBN actually is Thirteen digits on the copyright page. That is the whole thing. The International ISBN Agency, which runs the standard worldwide, defines it plainly. An ISBN is a product identifier. Booksellers, libraries, wholesalers and retailers use it for ordering, listing, sales records and stock control. It tells the supply chain three things at once: who published this, which title it is, and which format you are holding. Since 1 January 2007 it has been thirteen digits, in five parts. 978Prefix. Always 978 or 979. Three digits, no exceptions. 93Registration group. The country or language area. India uses 93 and 81. Britain and America share 0 and 1. 5300Registrant. This is you, the publisher. Shorter block, bigger publisher. 895Publication. This specific edition, in this specific format. 6Check digit. Modulus 10. It catches a typo before a warehouse does. Read the third box again, because it is the one people get wrong. The registrant element identifies the publisher. Not the author, not the printer, not the designer. Whoever holds that block is the publisher of record in every database on earth, and databases have long memories. The Indian agency states the consequence in one sentence on its own FAQ page: the ISBN "conveys no legal or copyright protection." It will not stop anyone copying your book. It will not register your rights. Bowker says the same thing on its purchase page. An ISBN is a stock number, and treating it as a shield is the most common mistake I see in a first-time author's plan. ## The rule that decides everything Here is the part almost every blog gets wrong, and it matters most to exactly the people I write for. The residence rule You apply to the ISBN agency of the country where you are based. Not where the book is set. Not where it will be printed. Not where your passport was issued. Not where you want it sold. The International ISBN Agency puts it flatly: "all publishers should apply to the appropriate national ISBN agency that is responsible for the country in which they are based." It goes further and closes the loophole in the next line. If you have a genuine reason you cannot use your own agency, contact the International Agency for advice, "but you should not contact another ISBN agency instead." India's agency repeats it twice in its own FAQ, once for publishers and once for foreign-language books, with the same answer both times. No. Then it adds the line that catches the diaspora. To get an Indian ISBN, "a person or entity who publishes from an office of business that is based in India. Authors who self-publishes must reside in India to obtain ISBNs from the Indian ISBN Agency. The publisher's nationality, citizenship or intended market are irrelevant." So work through what that means for a real family. A man in Edison, New Jersey is publishing his father's life story. The father was born in Ludhiana. The book is in English and Punjabi. Two hundred of the three hundred copies will be posted to relatives in India. Every instinct says Indian book, Indian ISBN, and it is free, so why not. Because he lives in New Jersey. He is the publisher. He buys from Bowker, and he pays $125. The book's subject, its language, its market and its printer change nothing. Reverse it. A Gujarati family in Mumbai publishing a memoir aimed squarely at readers in London does not buy a Nielsen ISBN to look British. They register with the Indian agency, free, and sell into Britain on an Indian ISBN. Nobody in the supply chain minds. Nielsen would simply refuse them. The International Agency has one carve-out worth knowing. If your organisation operates from more than one country, you go by where the headquarters sits. For a family publishing one book about one grandfather, that is your kitchen table, and you know which country it is in. ## India, and why it is free The Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency for ISBN issues every Indian ISBN. It sits inside the Department of Higher Education at the Ministry of Education, with an office on Parliament Street in New Delhi, and the portal is built and run by the INFLIBNET Centre in Gandhinagar. ₹0 What the Government of India charges an Indian author for an ISBN. Its FAQ answers the fee question in three words: "Currently it is free." India is unusual here, and Indian authors underrate it constantly. An American pays $125 for the same thirteen digits. A Briton pays £93. You pay nothing, and you get it from a ministry. ### Register as an applicant, in the right category The portal at isbn.gov.in asks what kind of publisher you are. The categories are commercial publisher, institutional publisher, institutional author, individual publisher, and self published by author. Read the next section before you choose. This is the one screen on the whole portal where the obvious answer is usually the wrong one. ### Verify by email, then complete the applicant form You give your details and upload a PAN card and an address proof, as PDF or JPG, each under 500Kb. The portal was rebuilt, and the agency is firm that everyone registers fresh on the new version. If you held ISBNs on the old portal you must use all of them before you switch, and the old numbers stay searchable only on the old site. Registration approval runs two to three working days, category allotment one to two, and the ISBN itself two to three after you submit the title. The agency puts the whole cycle at seven to nine working days. ### Apply per title, with the metadata An ISBN is granted against a specific book. You supply the descriptive data: title, author, format, language, publication details. The agency uses the ONIX standard, which is the same metadata format the international supply chain runs on. ### Report what you use If you are given a block, you owe the agency metadata on each number you assign, including ones you never made public. Skip it and the register shows your block unused, so the agency has grounds to refuse you more. The trap on the Indian portal, and it is a bad one Choose "Self published By Author" and the registration screen tells you, in red: "Single ISBN will be allotted in this category." One number. Not a block. Now hold that against the rule two sections down. Every format needs its own ISBN. So an Indian author who registers as a self-publishing author and wants a paperback, a hardback and an EPUB is issued one number at a time, against one title at a time. You can apply again once you have used it, and the agency's own guidance says the whole cycle runs seven to nine working days. Three formats becomes three applications and the better part of a month. The fix is the category. Register as an individual publisher instead, which is what you actually are under the ISBN system's own definition: the person who initiates production and carries the financial risk. Publishers are allotted blocks, and the smallest block is ten. Decide this before you register, because the category shapes what you can be given. One thing India does not give you A barcode. The agency says so directly: it does not provide barcodes, and tells you to ask your printer or designer. That is fine. A barcode is a rendering of the number you already hold, and any competent cover designer generates one in a minute. Do not pay a vendor a separate fee for it as though it were a second registration. ## The United Kingdom Nielsen runs the UK ISBN Agency, and it sells through the Nielsen ISBN Store. The prices are published, which is more than most of this industry manages. Block | Price | Per ISBN | In rupees | 1 ISBN | £93.00 | £93.00 | About ₹12,060 | 10 ISBNs | £174.00 | £17.40 | About ₹22,570 | 100 ISBNs | £387.00 | £3.87 | About ₹50,190 | 1,000 ISBNs | £994.00 | £0.99 | About ₹1,28,920 | All of those are inclusive of UK VAT at the standard rate. Nielsen says so on the page, so the number you see is the number you pay. Look at the first two rows for a second. One ISBN costs £93. Ten cost £174. The second to the tenth cost you £81 between them, which is less than the first one alone. If your biography will exist as a paperback, a hardback and an ebook, you need three, and the block of ten is already the cheaper purchase. Buy ten. They never expire. ## The United States Bowker is the official ISBN agency for the United States, and it says so on isbn.org, which it also runs. Its territory covers the US, Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and, in a detail that surprises people, US military bases and embassies. You buy at MyIdentifiers. Block | Price | Per ISBN | In rupees | 1 ISBN | $125 | $125.00 | About ₹11,950 | 10 ISBNs | $295 | $29.50 | About ₹28,200 | 100 ISBNs | $575 | $5.75 | About ₹54,970 | 1,000 ISBNs | $1,500 | $1.50 | About ₹1,43,400 | The same shape as Britain, and the same advice. One is $125 and ten is $295. Bowker labels the ten-block its best seller and gives the reason on the page: most books average two to three ISBNs to cover all their formats. That is honest, and it is true. Bowker also sells barcodes bundled, which is the one case where paying for a barcode is defensible. One ISBN with one barcode is $150. Ten ISBNs with one barcode is $320. Ten ISBNs, five barcodes and a QR code is $395. Against $125 for a bare single number, the ten-plus-barcode bundle at $320 is the sane purchase for anyone publishing more than one format. Bowker also warns, in its own words, that an ISBN "obtained from a source other than the official ISBN Agency, it might not identify the publisher of the title accurately." Which brings us to the trap. ## The three side by side ### India Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency, Ministry of Education Free "Currently it is free." Who qualifiesYou must reside in India, or publish from an Indian office Group code93 and 81 BarcodeNot provided. Your designer makes it CatchPer-title metadata is compulsory, and the portal has a learning curve ### United Kingdom Nielsen, the UK ISBN Agency £93 for one. £174 for ten. VAT included Who qualifiesPublishers based in the UK and Ireland Group code0 and 1, shared with the US BarcodeSold separately CatchBuying one is close to the worst value in this table ### United States Bowker, the US ISBN Agency $125 for one. $295 for ten Who qualifiesPublishers physically in the US and its territories, plus bases and embassies Group code0 and 1, shared with the UK BarcodeSold separately, and bundled with some blocks CatchInstant issue, so a wrong publisher name is instantly permanent ## The free ISBN trap Amazon will give you an ISBN for nothing. So will several Indian packagers. There is a cost, and it is not money. KDP is straightforward about what happens. Use its free ISBN and, in Amazon's own words, "we'll automatically assign your imprint as 'Independently published.'" That phrase goes on your book, into Books in Print, into every library catalogue, and onto the Amazon listing of your father's biography. The Indian ISBN agency, which has no commercial interest in the answer, is blunter. Its FAQ addresses this exact case, an author using a self-publishing platform's own ISBN, and rules on it: In that case the platform will be considered the publisher. This is not recommended practice. If you later break the relationship with the platform and decide to distribute your book elsewhere, you will need a new ISBN of your own. It is therefore better to obtain an ISBN of your own from the start. Read that as a lock, because that is what it is. The platform's ISBN works only on the platform. Move the book to IngramSpark for bookshop distribution in eighteen months, and you start again with a new number, a new listing, and none of the review history or sales record that had accumulated against the old one. IngramSpark offers a free ISBN too, to US customers only, and its own documents spell out the cage. The imprint is forced: your book carries Ingram's own imprint, Indy Pub, which "may appear as the publisher name on websites". The number "cannot be transferred to another account". It "cannot be used on any other publishing platforms (e.g. KDP, Blurb, Bookbaby)". Any title carrying one "must be placed in our wholesale distribution program". And to own your ISBN later you have to set the book up again as a new or revised title and buy a different one. None of that is hidden. It is written down, in the guide nobody reads, and it is the price of the word free. The agency also handles the printer version of the same offer. If your printer proposes to arrange the ISBN, that is allowed, so long as the registrant element and the ISBN are registered to the genuine publisher. A printer who wants the number in their name is not doing you a favour. Ask whose name goes in the register, and get the answer in writing before you pay anything. The one time a free platform ISBN is the right call You are printing sixty copies for the family, there will be no bookshop, no second edition, no move to another distributor, and nobody will ever search for the book. Then the imprint line says "Independently published" and it costs you nothing that matters. For a family record, that is often the correct answer. Say it out loud first, so it is a decision and not a default. ## How many your book needs One ISBN per format, per edition. The agencies are consistent about this, and the rules are older than any of us. What changed | New ISBN? | Why | Paperback, hardback and ebook of the same book | Yes, three | A buyer who orders hardback must get hardback. Format is part of what the number identifies | EPUB and a separate PDF edition | Yes | Different digital formats need separate numbers wherever the supply chain lists them separately | A substantially revised second edition | Yes | A substantial change of text requires a new ISBN, and the title verso should say it is revised | A reprint with no change to text or binding | No | Keep the original number, provided the publisher has not changed | A price change | No | The agencies answer this one twice, because people keep asking | A new title on the same text | Yes | A new title is a new product to everyone downstream | The author switching from a pseudonym to a real name | Yes | Explicitly listed. It comes up in family books more than you would think | A new cover, same everything else | No | Not on its own. Marketing is not a reason, and the agencies say so | The book going out of print | Never reused | An ISBN identifies that title and binding for all time. Copies survive in libraries | So price the real thing. A biography published as paperback, hardback and EPUB, with a corrected second edition two years later, is four ISBNs. In Britain that is the ten-block at £174 and you still have six left. In America it is the ten-block at $295. In India it is free, and it is the reason you must not register as a self-publishing author, because that category allots one. ## Where the number goes On a printed book, the ISBN belongs on the copyright page, which is the reverse of the title page. If there is no room there, put it at the foot of the title page. If the cover carries no barcode, the ISBN goes on the back cover or jacket as well, and the agencies prefer the lower right. On an ebook it goes on the title display, meaning the first screen the reader sees or the screen carrying the copyright notice. None of this is decoration. A librarian in Leicester who wants a second copy of your grandfather's book looks at the copyright page. Put it where they will look. ## What an ISBN does not buy Four things, and the gap between them and what people expect is where the money gets wasted. - Copyright. None. India's agency says the ISBN conveys no legal or copyright protection, and Bowker says the same. Copyright exists from the moment you write the thing. Registration is a separate act, and it is cheap. India charges ₹500 for a literary work under the Second Schedule to the Copyright Rules 2013, one work per application, with a thirty-day objection window before the entry is made. The United States charges $45 for a single author filing one work electronically and $65 on the standard application. Britain has no register at all, and never has. If anyone quotes you ₹2,000 to register a book in India, they are reading the row for artistic works used on goods, which the 2021 amendment rules took literary works out of. - A place to sell. An ISBN gets your book into Books in Print. It does not get it into a shop. A bookseller stocks on discount, returnability and demand, and an unknown biography scores badly on all three whatever number is printed on it. - A barcode. India's agency does not issue them at all. Elsewhere they are sold separately. A barcode is generated from the ISBN and the price, and your cover designer does it as part of the job. - Any obligation. The international system imposes no legal requirement to have an ISBN. A privately printed family book with no ISBN is a perfectly legitimate book. It just cannot be ordered by anybody who does not already know you. ## Dubai, Singapore and everywhere else Roughly half the families who write to me live outside all three countries above. The residence rule still decides. The United Arab Emirates is the interesting new case. The National Library and Archives joined the ISBN network on 9 January 2026 as the official body assigning ISBNs in the UAE, and it charges nothing. Its own words: "The assignment of the ISBN is free in the UAE and there is no charge associated with its use." You qualify if you are an individual, company or organisation located in the UAE and you intend to make the book publicly available. It confirms that each format needs its own number, it allocates within a handful of working days, and once you publish you deposit three copies with the National Library. So the Indian businessman in Jumeirah publishing his own story has been sitting on a free ISBN since January and does not know it. Neither did most of the Dubai publishing services still quoting for one. The UAE gate is not the ISBN The free ISBN is the easy half. Before a book of any kind, printed or electronic, may be circulated or distributed in the UAE, it needs a permit from the National Media Authority, which reviews the content against the country's media content standards and age classification. The stated turnaround is five working days and no fee is published. The harder condition is who may apply: the Authority requires a valid media licence covering book publishing or distribution, and says non-commercial applicants must go through a licensed commercial company. So a resident writing a family memoir cannot file for it personally. Budget for a local publishing partner, and start that conversation early rather than after the book is printed. Singapore runs ISBNs through the National Library Board, which is the country's International Standard Numbers agency. Open a publisher account on the NLB Deposit Portal first, then apply. NLB publishes no fee and no turnaround time anywhere I could reach on 3 September 2026, so the "it is free" you will read elsewhere has no official page behind it. Ask them. The eligibility rules are strict and specific: individuals must be citizens, permanent residents or long-term physical residents, companies must be ACRA-registered and publishing as a core business, a virtual office is not accepted, and NLB reserves the right to visit the premises. Canada gives them away. Library and Archives Canada issues free ISBNs to eligible Canadian publishers for print, ebooks, audiobooks and instructional DVDs, and a self-publishing author must be physically in Canada. The one thing to plan around is the queue: LAC's own application page says it may take up to two months to process. Australia charges, through Thorpe-Bowker, and its pricing is the strangest in this guide. A single ISBN is A$44 and ten are A$88. Ten cost exactly twice one. A hundred are A$480. There is also a A$55 new publisher setup fee the first time you buy, so a single ISBN really costs A$99 and ten really cost A$143. Nobody in Australia should ever buy one ISBN. Wherever you are, the route is the same: find your national agency through the International ISBN Agency's own directory, and ignore anyone selling you somebody else's numbers. ## Legal deposit, the obligation nobody mentions Most countries require you to send free copies of your published book to a national library. It is a legal obligation, it is separate from the ISBN, and it is the step self-publishers skip because no one invoices them for it. Where | Copies | By when | Worth knowing | United Kingdom | 1 to the British Library | Unprompted, without waiting | "Please do not wait for us to send a claims letter." Five other libraries, including the Bodleian, Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin, may claim a copy separately through the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries. The British Library's legal deposit service is still disrupted by the October 2023 cyber-attack | United States | 2 of the best edition, but 1 for a memoir | Within 3 months of publication | The Copyright Office allows a single copy for a literary monograph, and names memoirs explicitly. Online-only works are exempt. Penalties start at $250 a work, rising to $2,500 for wilful failure, and only bite after you ignore a written demand | UAE | 3 to the National Library and Archives | Once published | For the National Bibliography and preservation | Singapore | 2 physical and 1 electronic | Within 4 weeks of first publication | Section 10(1) of the National Library Board Act, at the publisher's own expense, and the electronic copy must carry no access restriction | Canada | 2 if you produce 100 or more, 1 if you produce 4 to 99 | Not published by LAC | The 4 to 99 band covers print on demand. The cost of the deposited copies is a deductible business expense | Australia | 1 to the National Library, plus your state or territory library | Within a month, per the usual guidance | Two things matter here. It catches you even if you published through Amazon, Smashwords or IngramSpark from outside Australia. And a family history book distributed only to family members is exempt | India | 4, at your own expense | Within 30 days of publication | Section 3 of the Delivery of Books and Newspapers (Public Libraries) Act 1954. One goes to the National Library in Kolkata and must be the best copy on the best paper, with maps and illustrations finished as in the best copies. The other three go to libraries the Central Government notifies, and the Act itself does not name them. A reprint with no additions or alterations is exempt. The penalty is ₹50 plus the value of the book, unchanged since 1954 | The Indian penalty is worth a second look for a different reason. Fifty rupees, set in 1954 and never revised, is now less than a cup of coffee. The obligation is real and the deterrent has quietly evaporated. Do it anyway: the point of legal deposit is that your grandfather's book still exists in a national collection long after your family's copies have gone. The Australian exemption is the one to notice, because it is the only place in this whole guide where a lawmaker has looked at the family book and written it into the statute. If a book goes only to relatives, Australia does not want a copy. Every other rule on this page treats your grandfather's biography exactly like a Booker winner. ## Having someone else do it I write books. I am not a publisher, and I have said on the fee page that publishing sits outside the ₹20 lakh I charge for a biography. That has not changed. What I will do, as a separate and separately priced line, is run the publishing mechanics for the families I write for, because I got tired of watching good books stall at this exact step. A man who has spent a year telling me about his father should not lose three months to a government portal. That line covers the ISBN application in the right country under the right category, the barcode, copyright registration where it is worth having, the copyright page and title verso set correctly, the metadata written properly, legal deposit where it is required, and the print and distribution setup. It is quoted before we start and it is never bundled into the writing fee, because bundling is how you stop being able to see what you paid for. If you would rather do it yourself, this page is the whole method and it is free. Most of it is an afternoon. Go and do it. ## Questions people ask about ISBNs Q: How much does an ISBN cost in India? Nothing. The Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency for ISBN, which sits under the Ministry of Education, issues ISBNs free to Indian publishers and authors. Its own FAQ answers the fee question with three words: "Currently it is free." You apply at isbn.gov.in, and the portal is run by the INFLIBNET Centre in Gandhinagar. Q: How much does an ISBN cost in the UK? £93 for a single ISBN from Nielsen, the UK ISBN Agency, checked 3 September 2026. A block of 10 costs £174, 100 costs £387 and 1,000 costs £994. All prices include UK VAT. Because ten cost less than double one, almost nobody should buy a single ISBN in Britain. Q: How much does an ISBN cost in the USA? $125 for a single ISBN from Bowker, the official US ISBN agency, checked 3 September 2026. A block of 10 costs $295, which works out at $29.50 each, 100 costs $575 and 1,000 costs $1,500. Q: Can an NRI get a free Indian ISBN? No. India's agency requires that a self-publishing author reside in India, and states that "the publisher's nationality, citizenship or intended market are irrelevant." An Indian citizen living in New Jersey, London or Dubai applies to Bowker, Nielsen or the UAE National Library and Archives instead. It does not matter that the book is about India, set in India, printed in India or sold in India. Q: Can I buy an ISBN from another country to save money? No. The International ISBN Agency's rule is that publishers apply to the agency of the country they are based in, and that if there is a genuine obstacle you should contact the International Agency, "but you should not contact another ISBN agency instead." India's agency repeats the same answer twice in its FAQ. An ISBN from the wrong agency misidentifies your publisher of record, which Bowker warns has consequences in the supply chain. Q: Should I use Amazon KDP's free ISBN? Only if the book will live on Amazon and nowhere else, forever. A free KDP ISBN makes Amazon your publisher of record and prints "Independently published" as the imprint. India's ISBN agency calls the practice, in general, "not recommended", and warns that if you later move the book to another distributor you will need a new ISBN of your own. For a sixty-copy family book, take the free one. For a book you want in shops, buy your own. Q: Why did India only give me one ISBN? Because of the category you picked. The Indian portal's "Self published By Author" registration states on screen that a single ISBN will be allotted in that category. One number, against one title, not a block. You can apply again once you have used it, and the agency puts a full cycle at seven to nine working days, so three formats means three applications and the better part of a month. Register as an individual publisher instead if the book will exist in more than one format, because publishers are allotted blocks and the smallest block is ten. Under the ISBN system's own definition you are the publisher: the person who initiates production and carries the financial risk. Q: What documents does the Indian ISBN portal ask for? For a self-publishing author, a PAN card and an address proof, uploaded as PDF or JPG with each file under 500Kb. Approval runs about two to three working days. Everyone has to register fresh on the rebuilt portal, and if you hold unused ISBNs on the old one you must use them all before switching. Q: How many ISBNs does one biography need? One per format and per revised edition. Paperback, hardback and EPUB is three. Add a substantially revised second edition and it is four. A reprint with no change of text needs no new number, and neither does a price change or a new cover on its own. A change of title does, and so does an author moving from a pseudonym to their real name. Q: Does an ebook need an ISBN? It depends where you sell it. Amazon does not require one for a Kindle ebook, which it identifies with its own ASIN. The International ISBN Agency notes that a Kindle-only edition does not strictly need an ISBN because Amazon is the sole source of supply. The moment you want the ebook on Apple Books, Kobo or in library systems, it needs its own ISBN, separate from the print ones. Q: Does an ISBN protect my copyright? No, and both the Indian agency and Bowker say so plainly. An ISBN conveys no legal or copyright protection. Copyright exists the moment the work is written. Registration is a separate and cheap act: ₹500 for a literary work in India under the Copyright Rules 2013, $45 in the United States for a single author filing one work electronically or $65 on the standard application, and no register at all in Britain. Note that the US Copyright Office proposed a new schedule in July 2026 lifting those to $55 and $85, which takes effect around mid-November 2026 unless Congress disapproves it, so check before you file. Q: Is a free IngramSpark ISBN any different from a free KDP one? Same shape, tighter bars, and it is available to US customers only. A free Ingram ISBN forces the imprint to Ingram's own "Indy Pub", cannot be transferred to another account, cannot be used on any other publishing platform including KDP, Blurb and Bookbaby, and obliges the title to sit in Ingram's wholesale distribution programme. Owning your own number later means setting the book up again as a new title. As with KDP, it is fine for a book that will never move, and a trap for one that might. Q: Do I need an ISBN for a private family book? No. There is no legal requirement to have one anywhere in the ISBN system. If you are printing eighty copies for a family and nobody outside it will ever order the book, you can skip the number entirely. Get one anyway if you want the book to exist in library catalogues, because a grandchild in 2070 will search a catalogue and not your shelf. Q: Where does the ISBN go on the book? On the copyright page, which is the reverse of the title page, or at the foot of the title page if there is no room. If the cover has no barcode, print it on the back cover or jacket as well, preferably at the lower right. In an ebook it goes on the first screen or the screen carrying the copyright notice. Q: Who is the publisher, me or my ghostwriter? You. The publisher is whoever initiates production and carries the financial risk, which in a commissioned biography is the family, not the writer. I hold no rights in the books I write; copyright is assigned to the client on final payment. The ISBN should be registered to the person or family who paid for the book, never to me and never to the printer. Q: Do I have to send free copies of my book to a library? In most countries, yes. It is called legal deposit and it is separate from the ISBN. Britain wants one copy sent to the British Library without waiting to be asked. The United States wants two copies of the best edition within three months, though a memoir counts as a literary monograph and needs only one, and online-only works are exempt. Singapore wants two physical and one electronic copy within four weeks. The UAE wants three. Canada wants two if you print 100 or more and one if you print between 4 and 99. Australia wants one, and explicitly exempts a family history book distributed only to family members. Q: How much is an ISBN in Australia or Canada? Canada gives them away. Library and Archives Canada issues free ISBNs to eligible Canadian publishers, though its own page warns applications may take up to two months. Australia charges through Thorpe-Bowker: A$44 for one, A$88 for ten, A$480 for a hundred, plus a A$55 new publisher setup fee the first time you buy. Since ten cost exactly twice what one costs, nobody in Australia should buy a single ISBN. Q: Do I need permission to publish a book in the UAE? To circulate or distribute it there, yes, and this catches people out. The free ISBN from the National Library and Archives is one thing. Separately, the National Media Authority operates a permit for circulating publications, which reviews the content of every book, printed or electronic, against the UAE's media content standards and age classification before it may be distributed. The stated turnaround is five working days, no fee is published, and the Authority requires a valid media licence covering book publishing or distribution, with non-commercial applicants routed through a licensed commercial company. Plan for a local partner. ### Related reading - how to self-publish a biography, start to finish - what a biography costs, and what the fee covers - how to hire a biographer - what a ghostwriter costs across the whole market - how to write a family legacy book - writing a life story from Dubai - every question people ask me, answered ## Get the number right once. It follows the book forever. Tell me where you live and what the book is. I will tell you which agency you belong to, how many numbers you need, and whether this is an afternoon of your time or a line on my invoice. I respond within 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/privacy-policy/ Title: Privacy Policy Last updated: 2026-10-10 # Privacy Policy This policy explains what information sgwashere.com collects, how it is used, and how it is protected. The site is operated by Saurabh Garg. Questions: sg@c4e.in. ## What I collect - Enquiry details. When you use the contact form, I collect your name, email, location, and message, so I can respond. - Analytics. The site uses Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console to understand traffic. These set cookies and record anonymised usage such as pages viewed and approximate location. - Server logs. Standard web-server records, including IP address and browser type. ## How I use it To reply to your enquiry, to improve the site, and for nothing else. I do not sell your data. I do not share it with anyone except the service providers below who process it on my behalf. ## Who processes data - Google (Analytics, Search Console, and email delivery for sg@c4e.in). - The site host and form plugin, which store form submissions so I can read them. ## Confidentiality Enquiries about writing work are held in strict confidence. I never share the content of an enquiry without your consent. For commissioned work, an NDA governs everything beyond the first conversation. ## Your rights You can ask me to show you, correct, or delete the personal data I hold about you. Email sg@c4e.in and I will act within a reasonable time. ## Cookies The site uses analytics cookies from Google. You can block cookies in your browser settings. The contact form and site function without them. ## Changes If this policy changes, the updated version will appear on this page. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/blog/ Title: Blog Last updated: 2026-10-05 --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/gift-your-parents-a-book/ Title: Gift your parents a book. About them. Last updated: 2026-10-12 # Gift your parents a book. About them. Ninety minutes every Sunday, asking your mother about her life. Fifteen hours of tape. One book, printed and bound, handed over on the day. Do it yourself, free guideHave me do it Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Ninety minutes. When did anybody last ask your father about his own life for ninety minutes? He has been asked about his blood pressure. About the property papers. About when he is visiting and whether he took the tablet. Nobody has asked him what the street sounded like at six in the morning in 1962, or what he did with his first salary, or what he was afraid of the year you were born. He knows the answers. He is the only one who does. And the question of what to get him for his 75th is sitting in the family WhatsApp group between a watch he will not wear and a holiday he will refuse. Get him a book. About him. ## What the gift is A printed book of your parent's stories, in their words. A hundred-odd pages. The house they grew up in, the people before them, the first job, the wedding from each side, the move, the bad year, you as a baby. Photographs with names under them. Ten copies, so every grandchild owns one. It gets made in two halves. First somebody asks, for about fifteen hours, in sessions of ninety minutes. Then somebody writes, for about two months. The somebody can be you. ## Why this year Every family has a shoebox of photographs, and in every shoebox there are faces only one living person can name. That person is your mother or your father. The names are not written anywhere else. There is no backup. If you want the arithmetic for your own family, the time left with parents calculator does it in ten seconds. The regret I hear most in this work is four words long. "I wish I had asked." About the village, about the war, about why he left. Nobody has told me they regret the book that got made. A writer can do a great deal with fifteen hours of tape. A writer can do nothing with none. The other reason is smaller. Parents enjoy it. Several families have told me the sessions were the gift. The book was for the grandchildren. The Sundays were for him. ## Four ways to do it Route | Who does the work | Time | Cost | Write it yourself | You, with my guide open | Six to seven months of Sundays and evenings | The print bill | The gift book | I do all of it. Twelve stories, about 25,000 words, ten hardbacks. | Four months | US$10,000 | The full book | I do all of it. The whole life, 60,000 to 90,000 words. | Six months and up | US$25,000 | Most people reading this should take the first route. I mean that. If you can give up your Sunday mornings and you can write a clear email, you can make this book, and a book made by a daughter has something in it that I cannot put there. So the guide is free and it holds nothing back. It is 8,000 words. It covers how to ask a reluctant father, what to record on, the ten sessions, what to do with fifteen hours of transcript, how to write in your mother's voice, the photographs, the printer, and the day you hand it over. Read the guide ## When to pay somebody Three cases. 1/ You tried. The recordings exist, they have sat on your phone for two years, and the birthday is now close. 2/ Your parent will not talk to you. It is ordinary. Plenty of fathers will tell a stranger about the year the business failed and will never tell their son. I am a stranger with a recorder and a contract that says nothing leaves the room. 3/ There are four siblings in three countries, and no one of you has the six months. Then split the fee four ways and let me do the work. For those cases there is the gift book. US$10,000, four months, ten hardback copies in the box. ## Everything in this section ### The full guide Twelve steps from the first awkward conversation to the printed book. Free, 8,000 words, nothing held back. ### 100 questions to ask your parents Ten sessions of ten, written for families from India, East Africa and the Gulf, in the order that works. ### Interviewing from another country You are in New Jersey and she is in Pune. Time zones, recording a call, and using the sibling who lives nearby. ### The 60th, the 70th and the 80th Shashti Poorthi, Bhima Ratha Shanti, a thousand full moons, and when to start for each. ### The gift book What is in the US$10,000, what is left out, the four months and the four payments. ## How this gift goes wrong I have watched it go wrong once. Announced the wrong way, a life story at eighty sounds like an obituary ordered early. "We would like to preserve you" is a sentence no father wants to hear from his children. So do not say preserve, legacy or memories. Say the grandchildren have been asking where the family comes from, and that you would like to hear it from him. Say anything he wants out of the book stays out. Then ask about the house, and let him talk. A memoir as a gift has the rest of that conversation. And record this Sunday, on your phone, whatever you decide about me. The tape is the part that cannot be bought later. ## Questions people ask Q: Is a book a good gift for parents who have everything? It is the one gift they cannot buy for themselves, because it needs somebody else to do the asking. It cannot be returned, it does not need a shelf in a full house, and ten copies mean every grandchild owns one. Q: Can I write my parents' life story myself? Yes, and most people should. You need about fifteen hours of recorded conversation, six to seven months of Sundays and evenings, and a process. The free guide is the process. Q: What does it cost to have a parent's life story written? With me, the gift book, about 25,000 words with ten printed hardbacks, is US$10,000. The full biography is US$25,000. Q: How long does it take? Six to seven months if you write it yourself. Four months for the gift book. Six months for a full biography. Count back from the birthday and add a month. Q: What if my parents say their life is not interesting enough for a book? Every parent says it. Tell them the book is for the grandchildren, who have asked where the family comes from. Then ask about the house they grew up in. By the second session they have stopped saying it. Q: Is this the same as a question-a-week book service? No. Those services email your parent a question a week and print what your parent types. They cost about a hundred US dollars a year and suit a parent who likes to write. This is for the parent who talks. Somebody asks, listens, asks the second question, and writes the book. ### Related reading - the three things I sell, each with its price - هذه الصفحة للعائلات العربية - time left with parents calculator - life story question generator - a memoir as a gift - write my parents' life story - write my father's life story - a grandparent's life story - hire a writer or write it yourself - what it costs ## Ninety minutes, this Sunday. Put your phone on the table, press record, and ask about the house they grew up in. If you would like me to take it from there, write to me. I reply within 48 hours. Write to me --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/gift-your-parents-a-book/how-to-write-your-parents-life-story/ Title: How to write your parents’ life story, in twelve steps Last updated: 2026-10-12 # How to write your parents' life story Twelve steps, seven months, about 170 hours of your time. From the first awkward conversation to ten printed hardbacks on the table at the 75th. Start at step oneOr have me do it Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Every price here was read on the seller's own page or calculator on 17 September 2026 and is quoted in the seller's currency. Every method claim names its source. Where I could not open a source, I say so on the line. The legal section is a map and is not legal advice. ## The short answer Fifteen hours of recorded conversation, in ten sessions of ninety minutes, is enough for a book of about 25,000 words. That is twelve stories and around 120 pages with photographs. The book is twelve days from the life, told in full. The job has two halves. The asking takes ten Sundays. The writing takes four months of evenings. Most families finish the first half and stall in the second, with the recordings on a phone. This guide spends half its length on the second half for that reason. The kit costs under ₹1,000. Ten hardback copies from Pothi cost under ₹2,500 before shipping. The expensive input is your time, about 170 hours. If you do not have the hours, I do the whole job for US$10,000. ### On this page - Why the telling matters more than the book - Step 1. Decide the book and set the date - Step 2. Ask your parent - Step 3. Write the one-page consent note - Step 4. Buy the kit and test it - Step 5. Plan ten sessions - Step 6. Run the session - Step 7. Transcribe, in whatever language they spoke - Step 8. Find the twelve stories - Step 9. Write it in their voice - Step 10. Check it, and hand over the red pen - Step 11. The photographs - Step 12. Print it and hand it over - The hard cases - The seven-month calendar - What it costs, in money and hours - Where this goes wrong - Questions people ask ## Why the telling matters more than the book In the summer of 2001, two psychologists at Emory University, Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush, gave children a list of twenty questions about their own families. Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know about an illness or something terrible that happened in your family? They called it the Do You Know scale. Bruce Feiler reported the result in the New York Times in March 2013. The children who knew more of their family's story had a stronger sense of control over their lives and higher self-esteem. Feiler puts the sample at four dozen families. I could not open the 2008 paper in the journal Psychotherapy to check that number, so treat it as a journalist's figure. Duke added a warning himself, in a piece he wrote afterwards. Teaching children the answers does nothing. The score is a marker of something else: a family that tells its stories, again and again, at dinners and on car trips. A 2022 review in Frontiers in Psychology adds that the whole literature is correlational and drawn from white, middle-class American samples. So I will not tell you a book makes your children resilient. The evidence says families that talk about where they come from do well, and nobody knows which way the arrow points. What I can tell you is smaller. The seven months you are about to spend are seven months of your family telling its stories. The book is what is left on the table afterwards. ## Step 1. Decide the book and set the date I announced my second novel in October 2014. It is unfinished. It has never had a date. A book without a date does not get written. Set the date first. Pick the occasion. The 70th, the 50th anniversary, the retirement, Diwali next year. Write it down. Then count back seven months. That is your start. If the date is closer than seven months, read the calendar and cut the book. Keep every step. Then decide four things on one sheet of paper. 1/ Who the book is about. One parent or both. Both is harder and better, and the hard cases cover how. 2/ Who it is for. The honest answer is the grandchildren at thirty. Write for a reader who never met the people in it and does not know what a ration card was. That reader keeps you from writing in family shorthand. 3/ How big it is. Twelve stories. About 25,000 words. Around 120 pages with photographs. Do not attempt the whole life. Twenty hours of tape cannot hold eighty years, and a thin whole life is a worse book than twelve full days. 4/ Who decides. One person. If four siblings are paying for the print run, four siblings get a say on the chapter list in step 8 and nowhere else. A book edited by a committee takes twice as long for reasons that have nothing to do with writing. The size, in numbers People speak at about 150 words a minute, by the National Center for Voice and Speech. An hour of tape is 9,000 words at the ceiling, and less with pauses and an older speaker. Fifteen hours is up to 135,000 words of transcript. Your book is 25,000. You will cut four words in five, and the book will be better for every one of them. ## Step 2. Ask your parent This conversation decides everything, and most people get it wrong by being solemn. "We want to preserve your memories" sounds like an obituary ordered early. I have watched that sentence go wrong once. Do not use it, or the words legacy, memoir or before it is too late. Say this, in your own words. "The kids have been asking where we come from and I do not know half of it. I want to ask you, and I want to record it so I get it right. One Sunday morning, ninety minutes. If you hate it we stop." Four things make that work. ### The grandchildren are the reason A parent who will do nothing for himself will do a great deal for a granddaughter. Let her ask him, if she is old enough. ### It is one session Nobody agrees to a seven-month project. Everybody agrees to one Sunday. Ask for the second at the end of the first, when he is enjoying himself. ### They hold the red pen Say it early and mean it. Anything they want out stays out. A parent with a veto tells you more, because telling you is no longer the same as telling everyone. ### Do not mention the book yet The book can be the surprise. The interviews cannot, because she has to sit for them. Tell her you are recording the family stories. Reveal the book when there is a draft to hold. "My life is not interesting." Every parent says it. Do not argue. Ask about the house they grew up in, from the front door, and let the first ten minutes answer the objection for you. If the answer is still no, wait a month and send a grandchild. If it is no to you and yes to a stranger, that is ordinary, and it is a reason people hire me. ## Step 3. Write the one-page consent note It feels absurd to ask your mother to sign a paper. Do it anyway, for two reasons. The Oral History Association's best practices ask for an agreement before the recorder goes on and a signed release when the interviews end, because people's memories of what they agreed to drift. And the law on who owns a recorded conversation is less obvious than you think. In the United States, the Copyright Office's working assumption is that the interviewer owns the questions and the interviewee owns the answers, unless somebody signs something. It says so in section 719 of its Compendium. In India, by the Copyright Office's own handbook, the author of a literary work is the person who creates it and the author of a sound recording is its producer. An assignment has to be in writing and signed. In both countries, a book built from your mother's words with no paper behind it has an unclear owner. That matters the day a cousin wants to reprint it, and you are not there to ask. One page. Plain words. It says: - What this is for: a book printed for the family, and who gets copies. - That they agree to be recorded, and that their words and photographs can be used in the book. - Who holds the copyright in the recordings and the book. Pick one person and name them. - That they will read the text before it is printed and can cut anything. - Anything held back, with an end date. Baylor University's oral history manual advises a fixed date over "during my lifetime", because a date can be acted on. - The date, and both signatures. If an aunt sits in on a session and speaks, she signs too. A sample you can copy Family book: recording and permission note. I, [parent's full name], agree that my [son or daughter], [name], may record our conversations about my life, starting on [date]. The recordings, and my words and photographs, may be used in a book for our family. The book will be printed for the family and will not be sold. Copies will go to [names, or "my children and grandchildren"]. [Name] will hold the copyright in the recordings and in the book, and may reprint the book for the family. I will read the full text before it is printed. Anything I ask to have removed will be removed. The following stays out of the book and is kept private until [date]: [leave blank if nothing]. Signed, [parent], [date]. Signed, [child], [date]. Others who spoke on the recordings: [name and signature]. Put it into the language your parent reads best, and read it aloud before anybody signs. Two copies, one for each of you. It is a sample, and a lawyer would write it longer. Sign it after the first session, when they know what they are agreeing to. This is a map of the ground and is not legal advice. If the book will name a living person in a way that person will dislike, read step 10 and speak to a lawyer. ## Step 4. Buy the kit and test it Your phone is the recorder. The microphone in it is built for a voice ten centimetres away, and your father will be a metre away and turning his head. So buy one thing. Item | Price on the seller's page | Note | Boya BY-M1 wired lavalier | ₹939 on sale at boya-mic.in, MRP ₹1,955. US$32.99 on Boya's US store. | Six metres of cable, clips to the collar. Needs a headphone-jack adapter on most new phones. | Boya BY-V10 wireless | ₹2,395 | No cable for a parent to trip over. | DJI Mic Mini, one transmitter and one receiver | US$59. DJI's India page would not load. | The comfortable choice if you will do all ten sessions in person. | Clip it a hand's width below the chin. If you are interviewing both parents together for the photograph session, put the phone on a folded towel between them and accept the room sound. Four rules from people who have lost recordings. 1/ Record a test every time. Baylor's manual says to test the microphone and play it back before you begin, and the Smithsonian's guide says to record one minute that doubles as a label. Say it out loud: "This is Anil Mehta, interviewed by his daughter Priya, on Sunday the fifth of October 2026, in Pune. Session three." Play it back. Then start. 2/ Listen to the room. Baylor's list is clocks, fridges and dishes. In an Indian flat, add the ceiling fan at full speed, the pressure cooker, the doorbell and the television in the next room. Turn the fan down one notch. Tell the household you need ninety minutes. 3/ Never pause the recorder. The Smithsonian guide is blunt about this. The best story of the afternoon arrives while you are pouring tea, and a recorder that is off does not catch it. Let it run through the tea. 4/ Copy the file the same day. Baylor asks for four copies. The Library of Congress asks for at least two, in separate places. I ask families for three: the phone, a laptop, and a cloud folder the siblings can see. Name each file with the date first, as in 2026-10-05-session-03. Record in the best quality your app allows. Baylor recommends uncompressed WAV, because compressed formats owned by one company have a habit of dying with the company. If your phone's recorder has a lossless setting, switch it on. The files will be large and that is fine. ## Step 5. Plan ten sessions Ninety minutes is the unit. Baylor's manual puts a good interview at sixty to ninety minutes because concentration drops after that, and it prefers several short sessions to one long one. StoryCorps, which has recorded a large archive for the Library of Congress, runs forty. With a parent over seventy I book ninety, in the morning, and expect seventy good minutes. Ten sessions, one topic each, in this order. Session | Topic | Why it sits here | 1 | The house they grew up in | Easy, physical, no wrong answers | 2 | The people before them | The names only they still know. Do this early. | 3 | School and friends | The best-remembered years of any life | 4 | First job, first money | Still in the well-remembered years | 5 | The marriage | Ask each parent alone | 6 | The move | Village to city, or country to country | 7 | Work and the bad year | Trust is built by now | 8 | You, from their side | The chapter your children read first | 9 | Loss and what held | Ask permission first | 10 | Looking back, and the photographs | Albums on the table, recorder on | The full list, ten questions a session, is on its own page: 100 questions to ask your parents. There is research behind the order. Psychologists call it the reminiscence bump. People over fifty recall more from their teens and twenties than from any other period. Judith Glück and Susan Bluck analysed 3,541 life events from 659 people aged fifty to ninety and found the bump in positive events the person felt in control of. A separate study of sixteen published autobiographies found that 45.5 per cent of all the events in them fell between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two. Two things follow. Sessions three to six will pour, so give them room. And the years from forty to sixty-five will be thin unless you dig, so session seven needs your best questions. Ask about those years by event. The year of the transfer. The year the factory shut. The year of your board exams. Tell your parent the topic a week ahead and never send the list. "Next Sunday, your first job" gives him a week of remembering. Ten written questions give him a week of preparing speeches. StoryCorps advises sharing questions in advance, and for a forty-minute conversation between equals that is right. For a father who treats a question paper as an exam, it is not. If you live in another country, the plan is the same and the logistics are different. Interviewing your parents from abroad covers the calls, the time zones and the sibling who lives nearby. ## Step 6. Run the session Your job is to ask and then get out of the way. That is harder with a parent than with a stranger, because you know half the stories and you have opinions about the other half. ### Open with the label and one easy question Names, date, place, session number. Then something with no wrong answer. The Smithsonian guide says to open with easy biographical questions, and it is right. "Where were you living in 1965?" warms the room. "What is your biggest regret?" empties it. ### Ask how, what and why. Never did. "Did you like school?" gets "Yes." "What was the walk to school like?" gets the canal, the dog, the friend with the bicycle. Baylor's manual: one question at a time, open-ended, no leading. If you hear yourself say "You must have been so proud", you have answered for him. ### Ask for the day Summaries are what you get when you ask about a decade. "Tell me about the day the results came." "Take me through the morning of the wedding." A book is made of days. When she gives you a summary, ask for one day inside it. ### Count to seven Baylor calls silence part of the process, and the Smithsonian guide says do not fear it. After an answer ends, count to seven in your head. She is walking back to 1968. The second half of the answer, the half with the feeling in it, arrives after the pause you wanted to fill. ### Never correct He will say 1971 and you will know it was 1973. Write it in your notebook and check it in step 10. Baylor's manual says not to challenge a narrator's memory. The moment you correct a date he starts performing for an examiner. ### Follow, then return The tangent is often the book. If the question was about college and she is telling you about her aunt's divorce, stay with the aunt. Your topic list is a net under the session. When the tangent ends, go back to it. ### Put things on the table The Smithsonian guide lists photographs, letters, heirlooms and tools as the things that trigger stories. A ration card, a wedding invitation, his first passport, her mother's rolling pin. Music works too. In one study by Petr Janata, about 30 per cent of popular-song excerpts brought up a personal memory. Play the film songs from the year she finished school and ask where she was when she heard them. ### One parent at a time Baylor says interview one person at a time. With a couple the reason is plain. Together, one narrates and the other corrects. Apart, you get two full accounts of the same marriage. Bring them together for session ten, when the arguing over who is in the photograph is part of the record. ### Stop while they want more If he tires at sixty minutes, stop at sixty. The Smithsonian guide says stop and reschedule. A parent who ends a session tired finds a reason to postpone the next one. A parent who is cut off in the middle of a good story calls you on Wednesday to finish it. After each session, take ten minutes alone and write three things in your notebook. The best story, in one line, with the time it started on the recording. Any name, place or date you need to check. And the question you wish you had asked, which opens the next session. ## Step 7. Transcribe, in whatever language they spoke This is the step where the project dies. Fifteen hours of audio is a wall. Typing it by hand takes four to six hours for every recorded hour by the Oregon Department of Transportation's oral history guide, and ten to twelve by Baylor's. That is 60 to 180 hours of typing, and nobody with a job finishes it. Two things bring the wall down. First, do not transcribe everything. The Smithsonian guide's advice is to log the whole recording and transcribe the parts you will use. A log is a list of times and topics: "14:20, the scooter. 31:05, his father's shop, the fire." Your ten-minute notes after each session are the start of it. When you have chosen the twelve stories in step 8, you will need about a third of the tape as text. Second, let a machine write the first draft, and pick the machine by language. This is where most guides written in English go silent, and where an Indian family gets stuck. Tool | Price on its own page | Indian languages | MacWhisper | Free tier. Pro is €65, paid once. | Runs OpenAI's Whisper on your own Mac, so nothing is uploaded. The language list includes Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu. OpenAI's own notes warn that accuracy varies widely by language. | Google Pixel Recorder | Free on a Pixel 6 or later | Live transcription in fifteen languages, Hindi among them, by Google's support page. | Descript | US$24 a month for ten hours of media | Hindi is the only Indian language on its list of twenty-five. | Otter | Free for 300 minutes a month with a 30-minute cap. Pro is US$16.99 a month. | None. English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Chinese. | Rev, human transcribers | US$1.99 a minute, so about US$1,790 for fifteen hours | I could not read its list of individual languages. | I could not find Apple's language list for Voice Memos transcription on any Apple page, so I am leaving it out. No tool I checked says it handles a parent who starts a sentence in Hindi, borrows a verb from Punjabi and ends in English. That is how my clients' parents talk, and it is how the book should sound. Plan on a correction pass by a person who speaks the mix. That person is you, with headphones, reading the machine's draft against the tape. Budget two to three hours for each hour of tape you decide to use. That is my working number, and it has no study behind it. Transcribe in the language spoken. Do not translate yet. You translate when you write, in step 9. Baylor's manual adds one step worth keeping. Let the narrator see the transcript. Do not hand your father 200 pages. Read him two pages aloud. He will correct a name, add a detail he forgot, and understand for the first time that this is turning into something. ## Step 8. Find the twelve stories You now have a log of fifteen hours and no book. The book is hiding in the log. Here is how to find it in one weekend. 1/ Go through your log and your session notes and write every story on its own index card or its own line in a spreadsheet. A story has a day, a place and something at stake. "Childhood in Kanpur" is a topic. "The day the monkeys took the wedding sweets off the terrace" is a story. You will find forty to sixty. 2/ Mark each one out of three on a single test. Would a grandchild who never met him read this page twice? Be hard. Most of the career goes. The day he was passed over and came home and said nothing stays. 3/ Pick twelve. Make sure they cover the life: two from childhood, one from the family before, two from the teens and twenties, the marriage, the move, two from work including the bad year, the children, one loss, and one from now. 4/ Put them in order. Birth to now works and is never wrong. There is one alternative worth the trouble. Open with the most gripping story, wherever it falls, as a prologue of two pages. Then go back to the house and run forward. The reader starts with the train leaving Lahore and then learns who was on it. 5/ Write the chapter list on one page. Twelve titles, one line under each. This is the chapter plan. Show it to your parent and to whichever siblings have a say. This is the last moment a committee is useful. Everything after this is one person at a desk. Here is a chapter plan for an invented father, born in 1951, to show the shape. Yours will look nothing like it, and it should still fit on one page. - Prologue. The letter in the kurta pocket. The day the bank job came, 1974. - The house with one tap. Kanpur, six children, two rooms. - What my grandfather carried. Lyallpur to Kanpur, 1947, as my father told it. - The monkeys and the wedding sweets. My sister's wedding, 1963. - Masterji. The teacher who made me repeat a year, and why he was right. - Three hundred and ten rupees. The first year at the bank. - I saw her for four minutes. The proposal, the wedding, the first kitchen. - Transfer orders. Eleven towns in nineteen years. - The year I was passed over. 1992. - Two daughters. The night each of you was born. - My mother's last winter. - What I would tell the boy in Kanpur. Every title is a thing or a day. None of them is "Early life" or "Career". What about the other forty stories? Some fold into the twelve as a paragraph. The rest stay in the audio, which you will hand over with the book. Nothing is lost. ## Step 9. Write it in their voice Twelve chapters of about 2,000 words. If you write one chapter a week, in three sittings of an hour and a half, you have a draft in three months. Here are the decisions, in the order you will meet them. ### First person, their "I" Write as them. "I was nine when we left." A book in the third person, "Papa was nine when they left", is a book about him. A book in the first person is him, and in forty years it is the nearest thing to his voice the family will own. The cover can say "as told to" with your name under it. ### Build from their sentences Print the transcript of the story. Highlight every sentence that sounds like nobody else. "We were not poor, we only had no money." Those lines are the skeleton. Your job is to cut the repetitions, put the events in order, and join the lines with plain sentences that sound like the same person on a good day. ### Keep the Hindi that carries weight If she said her mother ran the house with "bas, chal jayega", that stays, in italics, with no footnote. The meaning should be clear from the sentence around it. Translate the rest into the English she would use if she were telling it to your daughter. Do not upgrade her vocabulary. If she says "nice", the book says "nice". ### Start each chapter inside a moment "The letter came on a Tuesday." Do not start with "I joined the State Bank of India in 1974, where I would go on to work for thirty-one years." The year and the bank can arrive in paragraph three, when the reader cares who opened the letter. ### Use the prices What the first salary was. What the scooter cost and how long the waiting list was. What a trunk call to Delhi cost for three minutes. Numbers like these tell a grandchild more about 1978 than a page of description, and parents of that generation remember every one. ### Write what they said You will be tempted to give your father the reflection he never offered. "Looking back, I realise my own father was doing his best." If he did not say it, it is not his. Go back in session ten and ask. If he still does not say it, the chapter ends where his answer ended. Those endings are truer. ### Leave yourself out, until the end The book is theirs. You get two pages: a short note at the front about how the book was made, and, if you want it, a letter at the back. Write the letter last. It will be the easiest thing in the book to write by then. ### A worked example The passage below is invented, to show the moves. No client's words appear anywhere on this site. It is what a machine transcript looks like after the correction pass, for a story about a first job. The tape "So bank ka letter aaya, haan, letter came. Tuesday tha, I remember because Tuesday ko Hanuman mandir jaate the, mummy used to go. So letter came and, what was I saying, haan, State Bank. Clerk. 1974. No no, 73 end, joining was 74 January. Salary was three hundred and ten rupees. Three ten. Pitaji ne letter padha, he read it twice, and he did not say anything, he folded it and put it in his kurta pocket. Pocket mein rakh liya. Then he told mummy, pakki naukri hai. That was it. Pakki naukri. He never said well done or anything, that generation did not. But next day he went and bought mithai for the whole gali, the whole lane, from the halwai at the corner, which we never did, we never bought from outside. So I understood." First, the highlighter. Four lines here sound like nobody else. "He read it twice." "Pakki naukri hai." "We never bought from outside." "So I understood." Those four are the skeleton, and everything else gets arranged around them. The page The letter came on a Tuesday. I know it was a Tuesday because Tuesday was the day my mother went to the Hanuman mandir. State Bank of India. Clerk. Joining in January 1974, on three hundred and ten rupees a month. My father read it twice. He did not say anything. He folded it and put it in his kurta pocket. Then he told my mother, pakki naukri hai. That was all. He never said well done. That generation did not. The next day he bought mithai for the whole lane, from the halwai at the corner. We never bought sweets from outside. So I understood. Six moves, and you will make the same six in every chapter. 1/ Cut the scaffolding of speech. "What was I saying", the doubled "letter came", "three ten" after "three hundred and ten". Speech repeats to hold the floor. A page does not need to. 2/ Settle the facts off the page. He said 1974, then late 1973, then January 1974. The page says January 1974, and "check the joining letter" goes into the notebook for step 10. 3/ Move one thing. The mandir explains the Tuesday, so it moved up beside it. Nothing else changed places. If you find yourself moving five things, you are writing your own story. 4/ Keep the line that cannot be translated. Pakki naukri hai stays, in italics, with no footnote. A granddaughter in Toronto can work out from the mithai what a permanent job meant to that man in that year. "He told her it was a permanent job" is accurate and dead. 5/ Keep the number. Three hundred and ten rupees a month. Spell it out the way he said it. 6/ End where he ended. "So I understood." He did not say what he understood, and the page does not say it for him. A reader who gets there alone will remember it. The tape ran to about 150 words and the page runs to about 110, and every word on the page is his. When you are stuck, read the chapter aloud. Where you stumble, the sentence is yours. Go back to the tape for that passage and listen to how they said it. I have written more on this problem from the professional side in will it sound like me. ## Step 10. Check it, and hand over the red pen Three passes. They are different jobs, so do them on different days. 1/ The fact pass. Open your notebook of things to check. Dates, spellings of names, the order of the transfers, the name of the ship. Ask an older cousin. Look at the documents: passports, degree certificates, the wedding invitation, the property papers. Where the record and the memory disagree on something small, fix it without fuss. Where they disagree on something that matters, keep the memory and add a line: "The certificate says 1952. I have always been told 1951." That line is honest and families love it. 2/ The red pen pass. Print the full draft in 14-point type and give it to your parent with a red pen and two weeks. This is the promise you made in step 2, and here is where you keep it. They will cut less than you fear. When they cut something you love, it goes. Keep the audio. The book is for now, and the tape is for later. 3/ The other-people pass. Read the draft once as each living person named in it. Your uncle, who borrowed the money. Your father's partner, who left. A book printed for ten cousins is still a publication in law. In India, defamation under section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita covers words intended to be read. The defence of truth applies where publication is for the public good. The section reaches statements about the dead that hurt the family. In the United States truth is a complete defence, and a separate privacy tort covers publishing private facts. Ten copies handed to cousins will reach the uncle. The fix is a writing fix before it is a legal one. Tell the story from your parent's side, as their experience. "I lent him the money and it did not come back, and we did not speak for eleven years" is her life. "He was a cheat" is a verdict on his. The first is a better sentence anyway. If a passage still worries you, take that page to a lawyer. This is a map and is not legal advice. The longer version, by country, is in the self-publishing guide. When siblings dispute a story, and they will, the rule is simple. It is the parent's book and the parent's version. A brother who remembers it another way can write his version in the margin of his own copy. Last, a proofread by someone who has not read the draft. Not you. You can no longer see the page. ## Step 11. The photographs Session ten put the albums on the table and the names on the tape. Now choose about thirty photographs. One or two per chapter, plus a section of family groups. Choose for the story. A blurred picture of the first scooter beats a sharp studio portrait. The Library of Congress publishes scanning advice for families, and it is short. - Scan 4 by 6 and 5 by 7 prints at 300 dpi. Use 400 to 600 dpi if the picture will be printed larger than the original, which a full-page photograph will be. - Scan slides at about 1,900 dpi. - Scan black-and-white photographs in greyscale. - Name the files with the date first, and keep copies in two places. If the albums are in Jaipur and the scanner is in Seattle, Google's free PhotoScan app takes several shots of a print and stitches them to remove the glare. It is good enough for a half-page picture. For the six photographs that matter most, pay a photo studio near your parents to scan them flat at 600 dpi. Do not peel old prints off album pages. Scan or shoot the whole page. Then write the captions. Full names, left to right. The relationship to your parent. The place and the year, with "about" if it is a guess. "Standing, from left: Kamla Devi (my father's mother), Om Prakash (his elder brother), unknown. Seated: my father, aged about six. Lyallpur, about 1944." A photograph with no names is a picture of strangers within one generation. ## Step 12. Print it and hand it over First the arithmetic. The designer Fiona Raven's rule of thumb for a 5.5 by 8.5 inch page in 12-point type is about 350 words a page. Twelve-point is right for this book, because the first reader is over seventy. Part | Pages | 25,000 words at 350 a page | 71 | Twelve chapter openings, half a page each | 6 | Title page, contents, your note, the family tree, your letter | 8 | Thirty photographs, a page each | 30 | Total | About 115 | For the inside, a word processor will do. Set the page to 5.5 by 8.5 inches, margins of 0.75 inch, a book typeface such as Georgia or Garamond at 12 point, chapter titles on a new right-hand page, page numbers at the foot. Export a PDF. If you want it to look designed, the self-publishing guide has what cover and interior designers charge. Now the printer. I checked each of these on 17 September 2026 for a 200-page hardback at 6 by 9 inches with a black-and-white interior. Your book is shorter and will cost less. Printer | Price per copy on its own page | Note | Pothi, India | ₹287 for 200 pages. ₹245 for 150 pages. ₹867 for 200 pages in full colour. | Live calculator, before shipping. No quantity tiers shown for hardbacks. | Lulu | US$15.68 casewrap. US$19.99 linen wrap with a dust jacket. | Ships to most countries. | Blurb | From US$18.99 for a hardback | 10 per cent off for 10 to 19 copies, 20 per cent off for 20 to 49. | Amazon KDP | US$8.05 print cost. Hardbacks need 75 pages or more. | KDP's own page says amazon.in does not support print distribution, so this is for families outside India. | Ten hardbacks from Pothi come to under ₹2,500 before shipping. Ten from Lulu come to under US$160. I could not find a single Indian printer that publishes a price for a cloth-bound or linen-bound run of ten to fifty copies. If you want that finish, and for a 75th it is worth wanting, call three local binders and ask for a quote. I could not read prices for IngramSpark, Mixam or BookBaby, so they are not in the table. Order one proof copy first. Read it on paper, start to finish. You will find errors that were invisible on a screen. Fix them, then order the run. Leave four weeks between the proof order and the day. You do not need an ISBN for a private family book. If you think strangers will want to buy it, that is a different project, and the ISBN guide is where it starts. ### The day Wrap one copy. Give it after the meal, with the family in the room, and ask a grandchild to read one page aloud. Pick the page in advance. Put a phone on the table and record the next twenty minutes, because your father will start correcting the book and adding to it, and that is the first recording for the second edition. Give every household its copy. Put the audio, the transcripts, the scans and the book's PDF in one shared folder, and tell three people where it is. The Library of Congress advises moving digital files to current storage every five to seven years. Put a reminder in your calendar for 2032. ## The hard cases ### A parent whose memory is going Start this month. Keep sessions to forty minutes, in the morning, in their own chair. Old memories outlast recent ones, so stay in the early decades and lean on photographs and music. Record a sibling or an old friend alongside, to fill the gaps. Do not expect the sessions to treat anything. A Cochrane review of twenty-two trials of reminiscence therapy, covering 1,972 people with dementia, found effects that were inconsistent and often small, with slight benefits for mood and communication. Do it because the stories are going, and because a morning spent in 1962 is a good morning. ### The father who answers in one line Stop asking about feelings. Ask about things: routes, prices, tools, what was in the tiffin, how the scooter was bought. Men of that generation will talk for an hour about a transfer order and tell you about their father in the middle of it. Walk with him, or drive. Side by side is easier than face to face. ### One parent has died Then the book is about both, told by one. Ask the living parent for the other's stories, and interview the dead parent's siblings and oldest friend for one session each. Let the chapter about the death be as long or as short as the living parent wants. Ask permission before that session, and do not rescue them from the silence. ### Both parents, one book Ten sessions becomes fourteen. Sessions one to four and seven run twice, once with each parent alone. The marriage runs twice too. In the book, alternate the chapters, her voice and his, and print both weddings. They will not match. Do not make them match. ### The family secret It will come up, often in session seven or nine. When it does, keep recording and say nothing clever. Afterwards, ask one question: "Do you want this in the book?" The answer is most often no for the book and yes for the tape. Honour both. The consent note from step 3 is where a restriction with an end date goes. ## The seven-month calendar ### Month one. Decide, ask, buy, begin Steps 1 to 4 in the first week. Sessions one to three on the next three Sundays. Sign the consent note after the first. ### Months two and three. The sessions Sessions four to ten, one a week, with two spare Sundays for illness and weddings. Log each session the same evening. Start the machine transcripts as you go. ### Month three, last weekend. The twelve stories Step 8. Cards on the floor, chapter list on one page, parent and siblings say yes. ### Months four to six. Write One chapter a week for twelve weeks. Correct the transcript for a story in the week before you write it. Scan photographs on the side. ### Month seven. Check, lay out, print Two weeks with the red pen, one week of fixes and proofreading, a proof copy, the run. Four weeks between the proof order and the day. If you have four months, do six sessions and eight stories. If you have eight weeks, do four sessions, write one chapter, bind it, and give it with a card that says the rest is coming. Cut the book. Never cut the red pen pass or the proof copy. ## What it costs, in money and hours Item | In India | Outside India | Lavalier microphone | ₹939 | US$32.99 | Transcription software | €65 once, or free on a Pixel | €65 once, or free on a Pixel | Six studio scans, optional | Ask a local studio | Ask a local studio | Ten hardbacks | Under ₹2,500 before shipping | Under US$160 before shipping | Cover designer, optional | See the self-publishing guide | The money is small. The hours are the price. This is my own estimate, built from the steps above, and no study stands behind it. Work | Hours | Preparing and running ten sessions | 25 | Logging, and correcting transcripts for the twelve stories | 30 | Finding the twelve stories | 10 | Writing twelve chapters | 55 | Three checking passes and fixes | 20 | Photographs and captions | 15 | Layout, proof, print, post | 15 | Total | About 170 | About six hours a week for seven months. One Sunday morning and two weekday evenings. ## Where this goes wrong The cheapest way to try this is a question-a-week service at about a hundred US dollars a year. It emails your parent a question each week and prints what your parent types. For a parent who likes to write it is a good product. The weakness is that the parent does the work. In a review of StoryWorth for AOL in December 2025, Marah Eakin gave it to two relatives. One answered every question in full. The other answered about two-thirds, in brief. One reviewer on Trustpilot describes a book that took four years. The do-it-yourself route fails in its own three places. 1/ The second session never happens. The first was lovely, then Diwali came, then a work trip. Fix: book all ten Sundays in both calendars before the first one. 2/ The tape sits. Fifteen hours recorded, nothing typed, two years pass. Fix: log every session the same evening, and start writing chapter one in month four even if the transcripts are incomplete. 3/ The draft goes to the family WhatsApp group. Six people have notes, three are offended, and the book stops. Fix: one decider, named in step 1. The draft goes to your parent and to nobody else. If you are reading this with the recordings already on your phone and the date already close, that is case two, and it is fixable. Send me what you have. I can take it from the tape: the gift book is US$10,000 for the whole job, printed. ## Questions people ask Q: How do I start writing my parents' life story? Set a date for the finished book, then ask your parent for one ninety-minute conversation about the house they grew up in, and record it on your phone with a clip-on microphone. Do not start by writing. The first three months are for asking. Q: How many hours of interviews do I need for a book about a parent? About fifteen hours, in ten sessions of ninety minutes, for a book of about 25,000 words and twelve stories. A full biography of 60,000 to 90,000 words needs thirty to sixty hours. Q: How long does it take to write a parent's life story yourself? Seven months at about six hours a week, around 170 hours in all. Three months of weekly interviews, three months of writing a chapter a week, and one month for checking, layout and printing. Q: Which transcription app works for Hindi and other Indian languages? MacWhisper runs OpenAI's Whisper on a Mac and lists Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu, for €65 once. Google's Pixel Recorder transcribes Hindi live. Descript lists only Hindi. Otter lists no Indian languages. None of them claims to handle mixed Hindi and English, so plan a correction pass by ear. Q: Should the book be in first person or third person? First person, in your parent's own "I", built from the sentences they spoke. A third-person book is about them. A first-person book is the nearest thing to their voice the family will own in forty years. Q: What does it cost to print ten copies of a family book? On 17 September 2026, Pothi's calculator priced a 150-page black-and-white hardback at ₹245 a copy, so under ₹2,500 for ten before shipping. Lulu priced a 200-page casewrap hardback at US$15.68. Order one proof copy before the run. Q: Do I need my parent's permission in writing? Yes. A one-page note that says what the book is for, that they agree to be recorded, who holds the copyright, and that they can cut anything before it is printed. Oral history bodies ask for it, and copyright in a recorded interview is unclear without it. This is not legal advice. Q: What if I start and cannot finish? Keep recording. The tape is the part that cannot be made later. A writer can build a book from good recordings at any point, and I do that: the whole gift book, for US$10,000. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - 100 questions to ask your parents - interviewing your parents from another country - a gift for the 60th, the 70th and the 80th - the gift book - how to self-publish a biography - hire a writer or write it yourself - will it sound like me ## Set the date. Book the first Sunday. Ninety minutes, the house they grew up in, your phone on the table. If you get stuck anywhere between the tape and the book, write to me. I reply within 48 hours. Write to me --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/gift-your-parents-a-book/interview-your-parents-from-abroad/ Title: How to interview your parents from another country Last updated: 2026-10-12 # How to interview your parents from another country New Jersey is nine and a half hours behind Pune. The book can still get made. Pick the right hour, record at their end, and save three sessions for the trip home. Read the full guideAsk me to do it Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. What Zoom and Google Meet can record was read on their own support pages on 17 September 2026. Two things I could not verify are marked on the line. New Jersey is nine and a half hours behind Pune in summer and ten and a half in winter. Your mother is sharpest at ten in the morning. That is half past midnight for you. This page is about that problem and the four smaller ones behind it. It sits beside the full twelve-step guide. The plan there, ten sessions of ninety minutes, stays the same. Here is what changes when there is an ocean in the way. ## 1/ Find the hour The rule for an older parent is mornings. From abroad you will break that rule in two of six cases, and late afternoon, after the nap and the tea, is the next best slot. India does not change its clocks. You do, so the winter time is in brackets. You are in | Their Sunday 10:00 am is your | Book this | California, Vancouver | Saturday 9:30 pm (8:30 pm) | Their Sunday morning, your Saturday night | New York, New Jersey, Toronto | Sunday 12:30 am (Saturday 11:30 pm) | Their Sunday 6:30 pm, your Sunday 9:00 am (8:00 am) | London | Sunday 5:30 am (4:30 am) | Their Sunday 5:00 pm, your Sunday 12:30 pm (11:30 am) | Dubai | Sunday 8:30 am | Their Sunday morning | Singapore | Sunday 12:30 pm | Their Sunday morning | Sydney, Melbourne | Sunday 2:30 pm (3:30 pm) | Their Sunday morning | Fix the slot for all ten sessions and put it in both calendars before the first one. A parent who knows it is every Sunday at half past six starts remembering on Friday. ## 2/ Record at their end A call squeezes a voice. The recording you want is made by a microphone a hand's width from your father's chin, in his room. The call is only how you ask the questions. Here are the ways to get that, best first. ### A helper in the room A sibling, a cousin, a grandchild, the neighbour's college-going daughter. They clip on the ₹939 lavalier, press record on a phone, prop a tablet with you on video, and leave the room or sit silent. Afterwards they drop the file in a shared folder. This beats everything below. ### Your parent records themselves Teach it once, in person or on a video call with someone beside them. One app, one red button, the phone on a folded towel on the table. They talk to you on a second device. Ask them to say "recording" out loud when the counter starts moving, so you both know. ### Zoom, recorded on your computer Zoom's support pages say local recording is free and works on the desktop app only. The phone and tablet apps cannot do it. So you run Zoom on a laptop and press record, and your parent joins from whatever they have. The sound is their device's microphone, so ask them to sit close and switch the fan down. Free Zoom accounts have had a 40-minute limit on meetings. I did not re-check that limit for this page, so test it before session one. ### Google Meet Google's support page says recording needs a paid Workspace plan or a Google One plan of 2 TB and above. A free Gmail account cannot record. If you have the plan, everyone on the call is notified when recording starts, which is how it should be. ### WhatsApp This is the app your parents use, so everyone asks. I could not verify a built-in way to record a WhatsApp call. WhatsApp's help page on the subject would not load. Do not build ten sessions on it. If a WhatsApp call is the only call your mother will pick up, use it for the talking and have the recording made at her end, as above. Whichever you pick, say the label at the start of every session: names, date, city, session number. And tell your parent each time that the recorder is on. They agreed in the consent note. Tell them anyway. Do a five-minute rehearsal two days before session one. Record, stop, send the file, play it. Audio problems show up in the first session. A rehearsal moves them to a Friday that does not matter. ## 3/ Use the sibling who lives nearby, and split the job Most diaspora families have the same shape. One child abroad with the money and the guilt, one child in the same city with the access and the fatigue. The time left with parents calculator puts a number on the gap between them. This book needs both, and it goes wrong when both try to do the same half. Split it down the middle. The job has two halves, the asking and the writing. Often the sibling nearby is the better asker, because they can sit in the room, see the face, and put the photograph on the table. Often the sibling abroad is the better writer, because distance makes it easier to hear a parent as a character. If that is your family, the nearby sibling runs the ten sessions from the hundred questions, and you take the tapes and write. If you are doing the asking from abroad, the sibling nearby is the operator and nothing else. Microphone, recorder, tea, out. Two children in one session turns an interview into a family conversation, and the parent performs for the family. Name one decider for the book before you begin. It is in step one of the guide and it matters twice as much across time zones. ## 4/ Save three sessions for the trip home If you fly home once a year, plan the book around the visit. Three sessions are worth doing in person. Session one, the house. The first session sets the habit, and a parent who has done one across a table will do the next nine on a screen. Session nine, loss and what held. You do not ask your mother about the day her husband died over a call that might drop. Session ten, the photographs. The albums need hands. You will be pointing and turning pages, with the recorder on, while she names every face. Scan on the same trip. The photograph step has the settings. If the trip is at the end of the project, run sessions two to eight on calls first and do one, nine and ten in one week at home. The order bends. The red pen does not: bring the printed draft on the next trip, or courier it, and give them two weeks with it. ## 5/ Ask in their language, write in your children's You think in English now. Your father's childhood did not happen in English. If you ask in English you get the version he has prepared for foreigners, and you are now one of them. Ask in Tamil, in Gujarati, in whatever the kitchen ran on. If yours has rusted, ask anyway. A parent correcting your grammar is a parent who is relaxed. Transcribe in the language spoken. The transcription step lists which tools handle which Indian languages, and none of them handles the mix, so the correction pass is yours. Then write the book in English, because the readers are your children, and keep the words that carry weight in the original. What he called his mother. What she shouted from the balcony. The line from the film. Those stay, in italics, with no footnote. ## Questions people ask Q: Can I record a life-story interview over a video call? Yes. The best recording is made at your parent's end, by a helper or by the parent on their own phone with a clip-on microphone, while you ask on a video call. Zoom can record for free on the desktop app. Google Meet needs a paid plan to record. Q: What is the best time to call parents in India from the US or UK for a long conversation? From California, their Sunday 10 am is your Saturday evening. From the US East Coast, book their Sunday 6:30 pm, which is your Sunday 9 am in summer. From London, their Sunday 5 pm is your 12:30 pm in summer. Fix one slot for all ten sessions. Q: Can my sibling in India do the interviews while I write the book? Yes, and it is often the best split. The sibling nearby can sit in the room and handle photographs. The sibling abroad writes from the recordings. Agree one decider for the book before you start. Q: Which sessions should I do in person? The first, to set the habit. The one about loss, which should not depend on a connection. And the photographs, because albums need hands. Seven of the ten work on a call. Q: My parents are not comfortable with technology. What then? Then somebody in their city has to press the button. A relative, a neighbour's student, a paid helper for ninety minutes a week. If there is nobody, that is a reason to hire the asking out. I run the sessions on a call your parent can manage, and the recording becomes my problem. That is the gift book. ### Related reading - time left with parents calculator - gift your parents a book - how to write your parents' life story - 100 questions to ask your parents - the gift book - memoirs for the diaspora - a ghostwriter for Indian Americans - a biographer for families in the UK ## Nine and a half hours is not the obstacle. Pick the slot, book ten Sundays, rehearse the recording on Friday. If you would like me to run the sessions, tell me which city they are in and which one you are in. I reply within 48 hours. Ask me to do it --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/gift-your-parents-a-book/milestone-birthday-gift-for-indian-parents/ Title: Milestone birthday gift for Indian parents: 60th, 70th, 80th Last updated: 2026-10-12 # A gift for the 60th, the 70th and the 80th At eighty years and ten months, your father has seen a thousand full moons. Ask him about twelve of them, and print the answers. Tell me the dateWhy a book Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. Sources for the three ceremonies are linked on the line and were read in full on 17 September 2026. They are thin: two Wikipedia articles, two puja-service pages and a wedding-venue guide. Where families differ from the sources, the family is right. One thousand full moons take 29,530 days. That is eighty years and ten months, and Hindu families who keep the custom mark it with a ceremony called Sahasra Chandra Darshan. The parents sit in the middle. The whole family turns up to look at two people who have lasted. Then everybody goes home, and the gift is a silver plate. I write life stories for a living, so I am biased about what belongs on that table. Here is the case anyway. ## The three ceremonies, and who performs them Age | Ceremony | What it marks | 60 | Shashti Poorthi, also written Shashtiabdapurti and Sashtiapthapoorthi | The completion of sixty years, with the couple going through a wedding ceremony a second time. Wikipedia describes it that way. A Chennai venue's guide says it is held in the 61st year and that children see it as their parents' second wedding. | 70 | Bhima Ratha Shanti | Entering the 70th year, with the marriage vows renewed. The puja service SmartPuja says the children perform it for their parents as a gesture of gratitude. | 80 and ten months | Sahasra Chandra Darshan, also called Sathabhishekam | A thousand full moons seen. Wikipedia gives the count as 29,530 days and places the ceremony three full moons before the 81st birthday. | Read the 70th row again. The children perform it for their parents, as gratitude. The custom already says what this page is trying to say. At sixty, seventy and eighty, the children owe the parents an occasion. Your family may keep none of these. A 70th birthday in Leicester, a 50th anniversary in Dubai and a retirement lunch in Pune do the same job. The relatives fly in, somebody gives a speech, and the person at the centre of it is asked nothing. ## Why a book fits these days ### The guest list is the source list The 80th is the last time his brother, his college friend and his first business partner will be in one room. Put a phone on the table and record them for ten minutes each. That is a chapter nobody could write next year. ### It gives the day a centre A book handed over in front of the family gets read aloud. Somebody opens to the page about the scooter, and the uncle who sold him the scooter is sitting right there. ### Everybody can take one home Ten hardbacks from Pothi cost under ₹2,500 before shipping. Every sibling, every grandchild, the cousin in Toronto. A silver plate goes into one cupboard. ### The asking is the gift The sessions take fifteen hours across a few months. For those months, one child calls every Sunday to ask about his life. The sessions are the present. The book is the receipt. ## When to start, counting back from the day Route | Start this long before the date | What is on the table on the day | Do it yourself | Seven months | A printed book you wrote | The gift book, US$10,000 | Five months | Ten hardbacks, about 120 pages | The full book, US$25,000 | Twelve months | The whole life, 60,000 to 90,000 words | Under eight weeks | Today | A card that says the first session is next Sunday | The last row is a real gift. "I am going to spend this year asking you about your life" beats a watch, and it costs a Sunday. ## At 60, write the marriage Shashti Poorthi is a second wedding, so the book for it is the first one. How the proposal came. Who said what about whose family. The first kitchen. Interview them apart, because you will get two weddings, and print both. The ten marriage questions are the place to start, and the two-parent book is the long form. Sixty is also the easy age. They are sharp, they are busy, and they will tell you it is too early. Record them now. The 80th-birthday book is better when the 60-year-old version of the story is on tape. ## At 70, write the work By seventy the career is over and far enough away to talk about. The bad year. The partner who left. The risk not taken. A father who would not discuss the business at sixty will walk you through the ledger at seventy. ## At 80, write the people before them At eighty your parent is the last person who can name the faces in the oldest photographs. Put the albums on the table before anything else. Names first, stories second. I push families to start this one a full year ahead, in sessions of ninety minutes, in the morning. ## Questions people ask Q: What is a good gift for parents on Shashti Poorthi? A book about their marriage. The ceremony is a second wedding, so the gift that fits is the story of the first one, told by each of them apart and printed together. Start five to seven months before the date. Q: What is Sahasra Chandra Darshan? A ceremony for a person who has seen a thousand full moons, which takes 29,530 days, or about eighty years and ten months. The sources I could read are thin and families vary, so ask the oldest person in yours how it is done. Q: What do you give a parent who has everything on an 80th birthday? Your attention, on a schedule. Ninety minutes every Sunday asking about their life, recorded, and a book at the end. It cannot be returned and nobody else can give it. Q: How far ahead should we start a book for a milestone birthday? Seven months if you are writing it yourself. Five months for the gift book. Twelve for a full biography. Under three months, record the interviews, bind one chapter, and let the book follow. Q: Can the book be a surprise? The decision can be. The interviews cannot, because your parent has to sit for them. Announce it on an earlier occasion and deliver it on the big one. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - the gift book - how to write your parents' life story - 100 questions to ask your parents - a memoir as a gift - a grandparent's life story ## A thousand full moons. Ask about twelve. Send me the date and the age. I will count back and tell you which route still fits. I reply within 48 hours. Tell me the date --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/press/ Title: Press and Media Last updated: 2026-10-04 # Press and Media Everything a journalist needs on one page. Facts, boilerplate, the fee, and who to write to. Take what you need without asking. StoryHunt Season 1 release Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. If you are writing about ghostwriting, biography, family history or the Indian diaspora, this page is meant to save you an email. Quote any of it. No approval needed. ## The fact sheet Item | Fact | Name | Saurabh Garg | What he does | Ghostwriter and biographer. Authorised biographies, founder stories, memoirs, family legacy books | Who for | Indian founders, industrialists and families, in India and across the diaspora | Markets | India, United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Canada, Australia | Fee | ₹20 lakh in India, US$25,000 elsewhere, per book. Published at what it costs | Capacity | One book at a time. A book takes six months | Writing since | 2004 | Published novel | The Nidhi Kapoor Story, Grapevine Publishers, 2014 | Also | Founding partner at C4E since 2014. Built the Founder Thesis podcast with Akshay Datt | Current project | StoryHunt Season 1. Ten diaspora stories, closes 31 October 2026 | Media contact | press@sgwashere.com | ## Boilerplate, ready to paste Short. Saurabh Garg is a ghostwriter and biographer who writes authorised biographies, founder stories and family legacy books for Indians and the Indian diaspora. He publishes his fee at ₹20 lakh a book. More at sgwashere.com. Long. Saurabh Garg is a ghostwriter and biographer who writes authorised biographies, founder stories, memoirs and family legacy books for Indian and Indian-diaspora clients across seven countries. He has written in public since 2004 and published the novel The Nidhi Kapoor Story in 2014. He has been a founding partner at C4E, a marketing collective, since 2014, and built the Founder Thesis podcast with Akshay Datt. He takes one book at a time and publishes his fee, ₹20 lakh in India and US$25,000 elsewhere, which few writers in the market do and no Indian one did before him. More at sgwashere.com. ## Story angles that hold up Four things worth writing about, with the reason each is real rather than a pitch. ### Nobody in India publishes a price Of ten biography writers and services checked in August 2026, two published a fee and eight did not. None of the Indian ones did. The market runs on "book a consultation" and buyers have no way to calibrate. ### The diaspora's first year is unwritten Families document the success and skip the arrival. In one generation the arrival is gone, because the only people who were there stop being available to ask. ### Ghostwriting is not what people assume The buyer is rarely a celebrity. It is a family with a grandfather in his eighties and a date on the calendar. The constraint is not writing ability. It is proximity. ### What families ask to leave out Every commission has a sensitive zone: the estrangement, the first marriage, the case still open. How a biographer handles it is a craft question and it is the most interesting part of the job. ## Interviews and contributions Available for interview on ghostwriting, biography, family history, the Indian diaspora and the economics of the book trade in India. Also available to write original pieces for publications rather than be quoted in them, which is often more useful to a community desk. Write to press@sgwashere.com. Response inside 48 hours. No publicist, no approval process, no interview questions in advance. ## Questions journalists ask Q: Can I quote the fee? Yes. ₹20 lakh in India and US$25,000 elsewhere, per book, over six months. It is published at sgwashere.com/what-it-costs precisely so it can be quoted without a phone call. Q: Can you name your clients? Mostly no, and that is the job. Ghostwriting runs on NDAs signed before any material changes hands. What can be said is the shape of the work: authorised biographies and family histories for Indian founders, industrialists and diaspora families. Q: Are the StoryHunt entries available to read? No. No raw entry gets published, ever. Contributors keep copyright in their own material. Findings across the whole set can be written about, and that is the offer to editors. Q: Is there a photograph available? Yes. Write to press@sgwashere.com and one comes back the same day, print resolution, no credit requirement beyond a name. ### For reference - StoryHunt Season 1, the release - what it costs, the published fee - StoryHunt, the open call - what a ghostwriter costs across the whole market - the biography writers worth talking to ## Writing about this? Ask me anything. No publicist and no approval process. Write to press@sgwashere.com and you get a person inside 48 hours. Begin the conversation --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/gift-your-parents-a-book/questions-to-ask-your-parents/ Title: 100 questions to ask your parents, in the order that works Last updated: 2026-10-12 # 100 questions to ask your parents Ten sessions. Ten questions each. Arranged in the order that gets a parent talking, with the six rules that matter more than the list. Read the full guideAsk me to do the asking Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. ## The short answer One hundred questions will not get you a book. Ten good ones, asked well, will fill ninety minutes. The lists on the internet fail for two reasons. They are written for an American childhood, so they ask about Pearl Harbor and Easter. And they ask for summaries, so you get summaries. These hundred are written for a parent who grew up in India, East Africa or the Gulf and may have raised you somewhere else. They run in ten sessions, in the order that works: the house first, the hard years late, the photographs last. Ask for a day, a room, a meal. Then stop talking. Want ten picked for you, one from each chapter? Use the life story question generator. ### On this page - Six rules for asking - Session one. The house - Session two. The people before them - Session three. School and friends - Session four. First job, first money - Session five. The marriage - Session six. The move - Session seven. Work and the bad year - Session eight. You, from their side - Session nine. Loss and what held - Session ten. Looking back, and the photographs - Eight follow-ups that work everywhere - Questions people ask ## Six rules for asking ### 1/ Ask for a day, never a decade "What was your childhood like?" gets you "It was fine, we were happy." Ask "What did you eat before school?" and you get the kitchen, the stove, the sister who burnt the rotis, and the fight about it. A book is made of days. ### 2/ One question. Then silence. Count to seven in your head before you speak again. Your mother is walking back to 1968, and it takes a moment to get there. The second half of every good answer arrives after the pause you wanted to fill. ### 3/ Never correct He will say 1971 and you will know it was 1973. Write it down and check it later. The moment you correct a date, he starts performing for an examiner, and you have lost the afternoon. ### 4/ Ask in the language the memory lives in If she grew up in Gujarati, the kitchen is in Gujarati. Ask there. Translate later. A parent answering in their third language gives you the press release. ### 5/ Easy before hard Houses, food and school come first. Money, marriage and death come after the fourth session, when the recorder has become furniture. Nobody tells a stranger with a list about the year the shop closed. By session seven you are no longer that stranger. ### 6/ Give them the red pen Say it in the first five minutes. "Anything you want out of the book stays out." Parents who hold the veto tell you more, because telling you is no longer the same as telling everyone. ## Session one. The house Start with walls and food. No parent is nervous about a kitchen. - Walk me through the house you grew up in, from the front door. What did you see first? - Who slept where? How many of you were in that house? - What did you eat before school, and who cooked it? - What did the street sound like at six in the morning? - Where did the water come from? Was there a tap, a well, a tanker, a queue? - What was the one object in that house nobody was allowed to touch? - Which festival was the big one in your house? Take me through that day from the morning. - What did your family do on a summer afternoon, when it was too hot to go out? - Who were the neighbours? Which one did your mother not speak to, and why? - When did you last see that house? Who lives there now? ## Session two. The people before them This is the session with a clock on it. Your parent is the last person alive who can name the faces in the oldest photographs. - What did you call your grandparents? What were their real names? - Where did your father's family come from, before the town you grew up in? Which village, which district? - Did the family move in 1947? Who decided, who came, who stayed? What did they carry? - If they did not move in 1947, when did the family first leave home? For Bombay, for Nairobi, for the Gulf? - What work did your grandfather do? What did the family think of that work? - What was your mother like before she was your mother? What did she want to be? - Tell me one story your father told again and again. - Which relative was never discussed? You can tell me and we can keep it out of the book. - What did your parents fight about? - What is one thing your mother cooked that nobody has made right since? ## Session three. School and friends People over fifty remember their teens and twenties in more detail than any other years. Psychologists call it the reminiscence bump, and the guide names the study. Spend time here. You will get more per minute than anywhere else. - How did you get to school? Walk me through the route. - Which teacher do you still remember? What did they say to you? - What language was school in, and what language was home in? When did English arrive? - Who was your closest friend at fifteen? Where is that friend now? - What did you do that your parents never found out about? - What was the first film you saw in a hall? Who took you? - Which songs were on the radio the year you finished school? - What did you want to become? Who talked you into it, or out of it? - How was the decision about college made? Who paid, and what did it cost the family? - Tell me about the day the results came. ## Session four. First job, first money - How did you get your first job? Who knew whom? - What was your first salary, to the rupee? What did you do with the first one? - Describe your first day at work. What did you wear? - Where did you live when you first left home? Who shared the room? - What did you eat in those years, and what did it cost? - How did you speak to your family then? Letters, a trunk call, the neighbour's phone? - What was the first big thing you bought with your own money? A scooter, a watch, a fridge? How long did you wait for it? - Who was the first boss you respected? Who was the first one you did not? - When did you first send money home? How much, and what was it for? - What did you believe about money at twenty-five that you do not believe now? ## Session five. The marriage If both parents are alive, ask each of them these alone. You will get two weddings. Both are true. Put both in the book. - How did the proposal come? Who brought it, and what did they say about the other family? - When did you first see each other? What did you think, in that minute? - Were you asked? What would have happened if you had said no? - If you chose each other, who did you have to convince, and how long did it take? - Take me through the wedding day from when you woke up. - What was discussed about money between the two families? You decide if this goes in the book. - Describe the first home you shared. What was in the kitchen? - What did you learn about each other in the first year that surprised you? - What was your first big fight about? - What did your mother-in-law teach you, on purpose or by accident? ## Session six. The move Every family has one. Village to city, Lahore to Delhi, Kampala to Leicester, Kerala to Dubai, Pune to New Jersey. Find the move and ask about the week of it. - When was leaving first discussed? Who raised it? - What did you pack? What did you leave with whom? - Tell me about the day you left. Who came to the station or the airport? - What was the first night in the new place like? Where did you sleep? - What was the first thing that confused you there? The food, the accent, the cold, the silence? - Who helped you in the first month? How did you find them? - What did a phone call home cost, and what did you say in three minutes? - When did the new place first feel like yours? What happened that day? - Did anybody make you feel you did not belong? What did you do? - Did you plan to go back? When did you stop planning? ## Session seven. Work and the bad year By now the recorder is furniture. This is the session where the real book arrives. - What is the work you are proudest of? Take me to the day it came together. - Tell me about the worst year. When did you know it was going wrong? - Who did you tell, and who did you hide it from? - Did you ever borrow money you were afraid you could not return? From whom? - Who cheated you? You can leave the name out. - Who backed you when there was no reason to? - What risk did you not take? Do you think about it? - How did the big events land on your work? The Emergency, 1991, a riot, a crash, a visa rule? - What did work cost the family? What did you miss? - What was the day you knew you had made it through? ## Session eight. You, from their side This is the session your own children will read first. - How did you find out I was coming? Who did you tell first? - Tell me about the day I was born, from your side of the room. - Who named me? What were the other names on the list? - What were you most afraid of in my first year? - What did you decide to do differently from your own parents? Did you manage it? - What language did you decide to raise us in, and was it a decision? - When did I worry you most? - What did you want to give us that you did not have? - What did you give up for us that you have never mentioned? - When did you first see me as an adult? ## Session nine. Loss and what held Ask permission before this one. "I want to ask about the hard years. We can stop any time and nothing goes in without your yes." Then ask, and do not rescue them from the silence. - Who is the first person you lost? How old were you? - Tell me about the day your father died. Where were you when you heard? - And your mother? - Was there an illness that changed the family? What did those months look like? - What did you pray for in those years? Did you pray? - What has your faith been, and how has it changed since you were twenty? - Who carried you through? Did they ever know it? - Is there someone you did not make peace with? - What is the hardest thing you have had to forgive? - What do you wish somebody had asked you back then? ## Session ten. Looking back, and the photographs Bring the albums and the shoebox. Put every photograph on the table and keep the recorder on. Names first, stories second. - Who is this? And this? Say the full names, and how each person is related to me. - Where was this taken, and what year? What happened just before the photograph? - Which photograph here would you save from a fire? - Which day of your life would you live again, start to finish? - What are you proudest of that has nothing to do with work or us? - What do you know now that you would tell yourself at thirty? - What do you still want to do? - What should the grandchildren know about where this family comes from? - What did I not ask that I should have? - How do you want the book to end? ## Eight follow-ups that work everywhere The list gets you into the room. These keep you there. I use them more than any prepared question. - What happened next? - Who else was there? - What did it look like? What did it smell like? - What did he say, in his words? - How old were you then? - What did that cost, in those days? - What did you feel, that evening, when it was over? - Say more about that. What to do with the answers Ten sessions of ninety minutes is fifteen hours of tape. That is a book's worth, and it is also where most families stop. The recordings sit on a phone for three years. The full guide covers the second half of the job: transcripts, structure, writing, photographs, print. If you would like the asking and the writing done for you, that is the gift book, at US$10,000. ### Print all hundred The same hundred questions as a printable, with a box to tick and room for a note under each one. I will email you the PDF. [fluentform id="4"] ## Questions people ask Q: What is the best first question to ask a parent? "Walk me through the house you grew up in, from the front door." It is easy, it has no wrong answer, and it puts them back inside a place. Places pull up people, and people pull up stories. Q: How many questions should I ask in one sitting? Ten, and expect to get through six. Ninety minutes is the limit for most parents over seventy. Stop while they still want to talk, because a parent who ends a session tired will postpone the next one. Q: My father answers everything in one line. What do I do? Stop asking about feelings and ask about things. Prices, routes, names, tools, what was in the tiffin. Men of that generation will talk for an hour about how the scooter was bought and tell you about their father in the middle of it. Then use the follow-ups: what happened next, who else was there. Q: Should I ask about painful subjects like Partition, a death, or a business failure? Yes, late, and with permission. Ask in session seven or after, say they can stop at any point, and say nothing goes into the book without their yes. Most parents have waited decades for somebody to ask. Q: Should I interview my parents together or apart? Apart first. Together, one parent narrates and the other corrects. Apart, you get two full accounts of the same marriage. Bring them together at the end for the photographs, where the arguing about who is in the picture is part of the record. Q: Should I send the questions in advance? Send the topic, never the list. "On Sunday I want to ask about your first job" gives them a week to remember. A list of ten questions gives them a week to prepare speeches. ### Related reading - life story question generator - gift your parents a book - how to write your parents' life story - interviewing your parents from another country - the gift book - write my father's life story - a grandparent's life story - twenty questions before you hire a writer ## Ask the first one this Sunday. The house, from the front door. Record it on your phone. If you would like me to do the asking, write to me and I will reply within 48 hours. Ask me to do the asking --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/storyhunt/ Title: StoryHunt: Send Me a Story From the Indian Diaspora Last updated: 2026-10-05 Season 1 · Open for entries # StoryHunt In 1972 Idi Amin gave 80,000 Indians ninety days to leave Uganda. Some of them were your grandparents. Almost none of those stories got written down. I am Saurabh Garg. I write other people's life stories for a living. For Season 1 I am looking for ten stories from the Indian diaspora, and I read every entry myself. 10Stories chosen 2 hrsInterview each NilEntry fee, ever YouKeep the copyright Send me your story Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. I have written an authorised biography of an industry stalwart, a published novel, and twenty-two years of other people's sentences. The ten stories chosen for Season 1 get a proper interview and go into a book. ## What I am looking for The story your family tells at the table and has never written down. The one that starts with a person doing something specific on a specific day. 01 ### The leaving Who decided, what got packed, what got left. The trunk. The ninety days. The one photograph that came. 02 ### The first year The job below your qualification. The landlord. The cold. The food you could not find, and what you cooked instead. 03 ### The thing nobody mentions A business that failed. A marriage that did not survive the move. A brother who stayed. 04 ### The object A ledger, a passport with the wrong name on it, a letter in a language your children cannot read. 05 ### The return Going back and finding the house, or finding a mall where the house was. What does not work is the CV. Arrived, studied, worked, prospered. I have read that one. So has everybody. ## What happens if I pick yours - I write to you and we book a call.Nothing happens without you knowing about it first. - I interview you properly.Two hours or more, recorded, the same way I interview a paying client. Then I go and check the things that can be checked. - You read it before anyone else does.You can ask for changes. You can pull it entirely, up to the moment it goes to print, and I will not ask why. - It runs under your name.On this site and in the Season 1 anthology. Under initials or a first name instead, if that is what you want. ## What this is not ### No prize, no leaderboard There is no entry fee now and there will not be one later. Nobody is ranked against anybody. ### You keep the copyright You give me a licence to publish it here and in the book. You can still sell it, post it, or put it in your own book. ### Nothing published raw No entry goes public as it arrives. Nothing about a living person runs until that person has agreed. ## The part most open calls skip There is no publisher. Season 1 is mine to fund and I am funding it. Ten stories, one book, and I will say on this page what it cost and what it earned when it is done. If you are not picked, I still write to you and tell you so. One person reads every entry, no panel and no intern, and that person is me. If you want to know how I write before you trust me with something from your family, read Answers or the biography work. ## Send me your story Takes about twenty minutes if you have the story straight. Longer if you have to ring your mother, and ringing your mother is usually the right move. Anything with a * is needed. Everything else is optional. First name * Last name * Email *This is how Saurabh reaches you. It goes nowhere else. Phone or WhatsAppQuicker than email if you are picked. Where do you live now *Pick a countryUnited StatesUnited KingdomUnited Arab EmiratesCanadaAustraliaSingaporeNew ZealandQatarSaudi ArabiaOmanKuwaitBahrainMalaysiaHong KongSouth AfricaKenyaTanzaniaUgandaMauritiusFijiTrinidad and TobagoGuyanaSurinameNetherlandsGermanyIrelandFranceItalyPortugalSwitzerlandSwedenNorwayDenmarkJapanSouth KoreaThailandIndonesiaPhilippinesVietnamNigeriaGhanaZambiaZimbabweBrazilMexicoChileArgentinaIsraelTurkeyPolandSpainBelgiumAustriaFinlandCzechiaIndia, moved backSomewhere else Which city Where in India is your family fromAnswer if you know.Pick a state or a regionGujaratPunjabTamil NaduKeralaMaharashtraWest BengalRajasthanUttar PradeshBiharKarnatakaAndhra PradeshTelanganaSindh, undivided IndiaGoaOdishaAssamMadhya PradeshHaryanaJharkhandChhattisgarhKashmirHimachal PradeshUttarakhandNorth East, otherI do not knowSomewhere else Who did the leaving *Pick oneI left India myselfMy parents leftMy grandparents leftFurther back than thatNobody in my family left, but this story is about someone who did ### The story Give it a title *A working title. It can change. The story in one sentence *If Saurabh reads one line, this is the line. Put a person, a place or a year in it. Now tell it properly *No word count. Three hundred words is fine. Three thousand is fine. Detail beats polish. Roughly when Or link a Google DocWrite it wherever you like and paste the link, set to anyone with the link. Still put a few lines in the box above. Who else is in this storyA book that names living people needs their permission, and it is easier to ask early. What do you still haveObjects make a story publishable. ### Last few How did you find thisPick oneA friend or a cousin told meFacebookInstagramWhatsAppA newsletterA news articleA community group or associationGoogleAn AI assistantSomewhere else Who sent youIf a person or a group pointed you here, name them. I have read the submission terms. I give Saurabh Garg a non-exclusive licence to publish my story on sgwashere.com and in a compiled book. I keep the copyright in my story. * This story is true as far as I know it. * If Saurabh picks my story, I will sit for a recorded interview. Email me when Season 1 comes out. Leave this empty Send my story Nothing is published without your say-so. If your story is picked you read it before anyone else does, and you can pull it. ## Questions Q: Do I have to be a writer? No. I would rather have it rough. I do the writing. What I need from you is what happened, who it happened to, and the details only your family would know. Q: Can I write in Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil or Punjabi? Send it in whichever language it lives in. Paste it in the box or link a document. I will get it translated and then check the translation with you line by line before anything is published. Q: It is my grandmother's story, not mine. Can I send it? Yes, and say so in the form. If she is living I will want to interview her, with you there if that helps. If she has died I will work from you and from whatever is left, the letters and the papers and the photographs. Q: Who owns the story after I send it? You do. You keep the copyright. You give me a licence to publish it on this site and in the Season 1 book. You can still sell it, post it or put it in your own book. The terms spell this out. Q: What if the story names people who are still alive? Tell me in the form. Nothing about a living person gets published until that person has agreed, or until the story has been changed enough that they are not identifiable. This is the reason I ask early instead of late. Q: Can I stay anonymous? Yes. Say so and I will publish it under initials or a first name only. I still need your real name and email so I can talk to you. Q: How long should it be? Three hundred words is enough to see whether it is there. Three thousand is fine too. I have never rejected a story for being short. Q: When do you close? Season 1 closes on 31 October 2026. If I have ten I believe in before then, I will say so on this page and stop reading. If I do not, the ten becomes however many are worth it. Q: Do you pay? No fee for a story. If yours runs in the book you get copies, your name on it, and the interview itself, which is the part people tell me they wanted. Q: Can I send more than one? Send the best one first. If I pick it we will talk about the others. ## One more thing If you are reading this and thinking of someone else, your uncle in Leicester, your neighbour in Scarborough, the man at the Dubai office who never talks about Karachi, send them this page. Ask them to put your name in the box that asks who sent them. The stories that get lost are the ones everybody assumed somebody else had written down. --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/press/storyhunt-season-1/ Title: StoryHunt Season 1: A Call for Ten Indian Diaspora Stories Last updated: 2026-10-04 # StoryHunt Season 1 Press release. No fee, no prize: a biographer wants ten Indian immigrant stories nobody wrote down. Closes 31 October 2026. The open call Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. For immediate release. This is the canonical version. Quote it, syndicate it, or take any part of it without asking. Press resources and boilerplate. ## No fee, no prize: a biographer wants ten Indian immigrant stories nobody wrote down StoryHunt Season 1 is open to Indian families worldwide. Contributors keep copyright, there is no entry fee, and the writer interviews all ten himself. Saurabh Garg, a biographer who writes authorised biographies and family histories for Indian families, has opened a call for ten untold stories from the Indian diaspora. Submissions are open now at sgwashere.com/storyhunt and close on 31 October 2026. StoryHunt Season 1 is not a writing competition. There is no entry fee, no prize, and no leaderboard. Garg selects ten stories, interviews each subject himself, and writes them. Contributors keep copyright in their own material. "Every Indian family abroad has one story nobody wrote down," Garg said. "A grandfather who landed in Newark with a suitcase and a phone number on a piece of paper. An aunt who ran a business out of a garage in Leicester for thirty years. The family knows it. Nobody has it on paper. In one generation it is gone." Garg has written in public since 2004 and published a novel, The Nidhi Kapoor Story, in 2014. He writes biographies and family legacy books for Indian founders, industrialists and families across the United States, the United Kingdom, the Gulf, Singapore, Canada and Australia. His commissioned fee is published on his site: ₹20 lakh in India, US$25,000 elsewhere. StoryHunt costs contributors nothing. The call asks for rough submissions rather than polished writing. Contributors send what happened, who it happened to, and the details only a family would know. Garg does the writing. "I am not buying anyone's story," Garg said. "There is no entry fee and there is no prize, because a prize makes it a competition and this is not one. I want ten stories I believe in and I will sit with each of them myself." He is candid about the risk. "I have no idea whether ten will turn up. Season 1 might find six." Submissions are open to anyone of Indian origin, anywhere, and to families writing on behalf of an older relative. There is no age limit and no requirement that the subject be living, though Garg says the interviews are the point and a living subject makes a better book. How to submit. The brief and the form are at sgwashere.com/storyhunt. Terms are at sgwashere.com/storyhunt/terms. Season 1 closes 31 October 2026. ## The facts, in one table Item | Detail | What | StoryHunt Season 1, a curated call for ten Indian diaspora stories | Who runs it | Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer | Open to | Anyone of Indian origin, anywhere. Families may submit on behalf of an older relative | Entry fee | None | Prize | None. It is not a competition | Copyright | Contributors keep copyright in their own material | Selected | Ten. Each interviewed and written by Garg himself | Opens | 15 August 2026 | Closes | 31 October 2026 | Where | sgwashere.com/storyhunt | Media contact | press@sgwashere.com | ## About Saurabh Garg Saurabh Garg is a ghostwriter and biographer who writes authorised biographies, founder stories, memoirs and family legacy books for Indian and Indian-diaspora clients. He has written in public since 2004 and published the novel The Nidhi Kapoor Story in 2014. He has been a founding partner at C4E, a marketing collective, since 2014, and built the Founder Thesis podcast with Akshay Datt. More at sgwashere.com. ## Media contact Saurabh Gargpress@sgwashere.comsgwashere.com No publicist and no approval process. Interviews, a print-resolution photograph, and original written pieces are all available on request. Response inside 48 hours. ## Questions editors ask Q: When does StoryHunt Season 1 close? 31 October 2026. If ten worth publishing arrive before then, the call closes early and the page says so. Q: Is there an entry fee for StoryHunt? No. There is no entry fee and no prize. Contributors keep copyright in their own material and no raw entry is ever published. Q: Who can submit to StoryHunt? Anyone of Indian origin, anywhere in the world, and families submitting on behalf of an older relative. No age limit. The subject does not have to be living, though the interviews are the point and a living subject makes a better book. Q: Can we republish this release? Yes. In full or in part, edited or unedited, with no approval needed. This page is the canonical version, so a link back to it is useful but not required. ### Related - StoryHunt, the open call and the form - StoryHunt terms - press resources, fact sheet and boilerplate - what a commissioned book costs ## Tell your readers it is open. The page is sgwashere.com/storyhunt and it closes 31 October 2026. If an original piece is more useful than a listing, write to press@sgwashere.com and I will write you one. See the open call --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/storyhunt/terms/ Title: StoryHunt Submission Terms Last updated: 2026-10-02 # StoryHunt submission terms The whole agreement, in plain words, on one page. Last updated 14 August 2026. These terms cover stories sent through the form at sgwashere.com/storyhunt. The agreement is between you and Saurabh Garg, a writer and biographer. Ticking the rights box on the form means you accept what is below. ## The short version You keep the copyright in your story. You let me publish it on this site and in the Season 1 book. You can still do whatever you like with it elsewhere. Nothing about a living person goes out without that person's agreement. If your story is selected you read it before anyone else does, and you can stop it. ## 1/ What you keep You own the copyright in your story and you keep it. Sending it to me transfers nothing. You can sell it, post it, put it in your own book, or give it to another publisher, at any time, without asking me. ## 2/ What you give me You give me a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to do the following with your story: 1/ Publish it on sgwashere.com. 2/ Publish it in the StoryHunt Season 1 anthology, in print, as an ebook and as an audiobook. 3/ Edit it for length, clarity and accuracy. 4/ Quote from it to promote StoryHunt and the book, including in press coverage, on social media and in a newsletter. 5/ Translate it into English if you send it in another language. Non-exclusive means I do not own it and you are not locked in. Royalty-free means neither of us pays the other for the licence itself. ## 3/ What you are promising me By sending a story you are telling me that: 1/ It is yours to send, or it is your family's and you have the standing to send it. 2/ It is true as far as you know it. 3/ You have not copied it from a book, a website or another writer. 4/ Publishing it will not break a court order, a settlement, or a confidentiality agreement you have signed. If you are not sure about the last one, write to me before you send it. ## 4/ People who are still alive Most of these stories have other people in them. This is the part that goes wrong in books, so here is how I handle it. The form asks you to name who else is in the story and whether they are living. Nothing that identifies a living person gets published until either that person has agreed in writing, or the story has been changed enough that they cannot be identified. I do that work, not you. If neither is possible, that part comes out. People who have died are treated with the same care but without the consent requirement. ## 5/ If your story is selected Ten stories go into Season 1. If yours is one of them: 1/ I interview you on a recorded call. The recording is used to write the story and is not published. 2/ I check what can be checked, and I may come back to you with questions. 3/ You read the finished piece before anyone else does. 4/ You can ask for changes, and you can withdraw it entirely, up to the point it goes to print. If you withdraw it, that is the end of it and I do not ask why. 5/ It runs under your name, or under initials or a first name if you asked for that. Once the book is printed I cannot recall copies already sold. I can and will take the story off the website on request. ## 6/ If your story is not selected I write and tell you. Your story is not published. The licence in section 2 sits unused, and you can ask me to delete the entry at any time. ## 7/ Money There is no entry fee and there never will be one. There is no payment for a story. Contributors to Season 1 get printed copies of the book, a credit under their own name, and the recording and transcript of their own interview. If Season 1 makes money after costs, I will publish what it made. Nothing in these terms entitles you to a share of it. ## 8/ Your details The form collects your name, email, phone if you give it, where you live and where your family is from. That data is held by me and used to talk to you about StoryHunt. Your email goes on a StoryHunt mailing list, separate from any other list I run. It is never sold and never rented. If you ticked the updates box you also get an email when Season 1 comes out. Every one of those emails has an unsubscribe link. Write to sg@c4e.in to see what I hold on you, to correct it, or to have it deleted. Deletion includes the story unless it has already been published with your approval. ## 9/ Withdrawing Write to sg@c4e.in and say you want your story pulled. Before publication that is immediate and unconditional. After publication I remove it from the website and it stays in copies of the book already printed. ## 10/ The boring paragraph These terms are governed by the law of India and the courts at Mumbai have jurisdiction. If I change them I will change the date at the top of this page, and a change never applies backwards to a story already sent. Questions go to sg@c4e.in. I answer them myself. Back to StoryHunt --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/storyhunt/thank-you/ Title: Your Story Landed Last updated: 2026-10-02 # Your story landed I have it. Thank you for trusting me with something from your family. Here is what happens now. I read every entry myself. Ten go into the Season 1 anthology. If yours is one of them I write to you and we book an interview. If it is not, I still write and tell you so. That takes a few weeks. Entries are still coming in and I read them in order. ## One thing you can do today Somebody in your family tells a better version of this story than you do. An uncle, a cousin, the aunt who remembers the dates. Send them this link: sgwashere.com/storyhunt Ask them to put your name in the box that asks who sent them. I keep count, and the people who send the most storytellers get their copies of Season 1 first, with a credit in the back of the book. ## If you would rather send a message than a link Copy this. It is written to be forwarded on WhatsApp. An Indian biographer is collecting ten hidden stories from the Indian diaspora for a book. Not the success story. The one about leaving, and the first year, and the things nobody writes down. I sent ours. You should send yours: https://sgwashere.com/storyhunt ## While you wait Two things worth reading if you are wondering how a life gets written down: Answers, which is forty questions people ask me about this work, and writing a grandparent's life story, which is what most people are really asking about. If you remembered something after you hit send, that happens constantly. Write to sg@c4e.in and I will add it to your entry. Back to StoryHunt --- URL: https://sgwashere.com/gift-your-parents-a-book/the-gift-book/ Title: The gift book: your parents’ stories in print, US$10,000 Last updated: 2026-10-04 # The gift book Ten or twelve stories from your parents' life. I ask, I write, I print. Ten hardback copies in four months, for US$10,000. Tell me the dateOr do it yourself Written by Saurabh Garg, ghostwriter and biographer. One book at a time, every word his own. Updated 23 September 2026. US$10,000. That buys a short book about your mother, your father, or both of them. Fifteen to twenty hours of interviews. About 25,000 words. Around 120 pages with photographs. Designed, printed and bound in ten hardback copies. Four months from the first session to the box at your door. The full book on this site is US$25,000 and takes six months. This is the smaller one. It exists because 80,000 words is too much book for most families who write to me about a parent. They need the stories caught before the 75th birthday, in a book the grandchildren will open. ## Short on purpose Twenty hours cannot hold eighty years. It can hold twelve stories. So we pick ten or twelve stories and I tell each one in full. The train he took at nineteen. Her first salary and what she bought with it. The flat with one tap. The year the business almost closed. The day you were born, from their side of the room. I say this in the first conversation because the other version fails. A short book that pretends to be a whole life reads thin on every page. A short book of twelve stories reads like the person. If your parent's life needs the long form, the archive work and the thirty to sixty hours, that is the full book and I will tell you so. ## What is in the fee ### The interviews Fifteen to twenty hours, in sessions of ninety minutes, recorded and transcribed. One parent or both. In whatever mix of English, Hindi and Punjabi they think in. On video and voice, scheduled around their mornings. ### A chapter plan you approve After the first few sessions I send the list of stories and the order they run in. No prose gets written until you and your parent say yes to the plan. ### The manuscript, written by me About 25,000 words. I write every page. No junior, no outline farmed out, no model drafting for me to clean up. ### Two revision rounds One on the full draft, one on the final. Each has a date. Your parent decides what stays out, and it stays out. ### The photographs You scan them, I place and caption them. The guide shows how to scan a print so it survives the press. ### Design, print and ten copies Cover, typesetting, a proof copy, then ten hardbacks delivered to one address. Extra copies and other addresses are billed at what the printer and the courier charge me. ### The audio Every recording, handed over. Families tell me this is the part they play years later. ### An NDA first, the copyright last The NDA is signed before anyone tells me anything. The copyright is assigned to you on the final payment. My name appears nowhere unless you want it there. ## What is not in the fee - A whole-life biography. That is the full book, at US$25,000. - Travel. The sessions run on video and voice. If the book asks for a visit, the trip is costed before we sign. - An ISBN, a listing, bookshops. This is a private book for the family. If you want strangers to buy it, read how to self-publish a biography first. - Translation. A Hindi or Gujarati edition is a separate commission with a separate translator. - Speed. Four months is the floor. ## The four months Month | What happens | What you see | One | I speak to your parent first, alone. Sessions begin, two a week. | The chapter plan | Two | Sessions finish. Writing starts. You send the photographs. | Two sample chapters | Three | The full draft goes to you and your parent. Revision round one. | The full draft | Four | Final text, design, a proof copy, the print run. | Ten hardbacks | Count back four months from the date. Then add one. Parents fall ill, weddings land in the middle, printers slip. If the birthday is eight weeks away, give the first session as the present and let the book follow. ## How you pay Payment | When | What you hold | US$2,500 | On signature | NDA, contract, the session calendar | US$2,500 | On the approved chapter plan | The plan, plus all audio and transcripts so far | US$2,500 | On the full draft | The manuscript | US$2,500 | On delivery | Ten books, the files, the copyright | You can stop after any payment and you keep what is done. Siblings split this more often than not. Four children, four payments, and the argument about what to get him is over. If you want proof before you sign, a page in your parent's voice costs US$1,000 and is credited against the fee. ## Four ways to do this, cheapest first Route | Who does the work | What it costs | Do it yourself | You. The guide is free and complete. | Your evenings for six months, and the print bill | The gift book | I do all of it. Twelve stories, ten copies. | US$10,000 | The full book | I do all of it. The whole life, 60,000 to 90,000 words. | US$25,000 | A question-a-week service costs about a hundred US dollars a year, and your parent does the typing. That is a good product for a parent who writes. Most parents I meet do not write. They talk. Somebody has to ask, listen, come back with the second question, and then sit alone for two months and make the pages sound like them. That somebody is what the US$10,000 pays for. ## What I cannot do I cannot do it fast. A book without a deadline does not get finished, so the gift book has four dated payments and a delivery month written into the contract for that reason. The dates protect your parent's birthday from me. ## Questions people ask Q: How is the gift book different from the full book? Length and ambition. The gift book is about 25,000 words from fifteen to twenty hours of interviews, and it tells ten or twelve stories. The full book is 60,000 to 90,000 words from thirty to sixty hours, with research and archives, and it tells the whole life. The gift book includes design and ten printed copies. The full book does not include printing. Q: Can one gift book cover both parents? Yes. The hours are shared, so each parent gets seven to ten hours, and I interview them apart before I interview them together. If each parent needs a full telling, that is the two-parent book, which runs eight to twelve months. Q: My parents live in India and I live abroad. Does that work? It is the usual case. The sessions run on video and voice, in their mornings. You do not need to be on the calls, and most parents talk more when their children are not listening. The books ship to one address in any country. Q: What if my parent refuses? Some do, the first time. I make the first approach myself, I lead with the grandchildren, and I promise them the red pen. Anything they want out stays out. If they still say no, you have paid nothing. Q: Can it be ready for a date? If the date is five months away or more, yes, and the delivery month goes into the contract. Under four months I will say no to the book on that date. Start the interviews, give the first session as the present, and let the book follow. Q: Can we order more than ten copies? Yes. Extra copies are billed at the printer's price, and the files are yours, so a reprint in ten years does not need me. Q: Is the first conversation free? Yes. It takes about an hour. I reply to every enquiry within 48 hours. ### Related reading - gift your parents a book - how to write your parents' life story yourself - questions to ask your parents - a memoir as a gift - write my parents' life story - what the full book costs - a page in your voice ## Tell me the date. The birthday, the anniversary, the retirement. I will count back from it and tell you which of the three routes still fits. I reply within 48 hours. Tell me the date ## About this file Written by Saurabh Garg. Last updated 2026-10-12. This content may be quoted and cited. Attribute to Saurabh Garg, sgwashere.com. The market figures above are sourced from the named companies' own published pages and are dated. Check them before repeating them as current.