What It Costs

₹25 lakh. About US$26,000. One book, one subject, twelve months, my hands on every page.

Begin the conversation

Twenty five lakh rupees. That is the fee for an authorised biography, a founder story, a memoir or a family legacy book. 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.

Where ₹25 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.

Read the bottom two rows together, because they are the trap. The Indiamart shop and I arrive at the same ₹25 lakh 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 ₹30 lakh under the cheapest tier Kevin Anderson sells. It lands within a rounding error of 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.

What the fee covers

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 ₹25 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

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 ₹25 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 forty-page family record for the grandchildren is a real thing and it does not cost ₹25 lakh. A founder’s story shaped for a keynote and a long-form essay is a smaller job. If your book is smaller than the number, I will say so on the first call and quote the smaller job. I have turned away work that should have been a Storyworth subscription.

Why I publish the number

Three reasons, and none of them is generosity.

A published fee sorts the calls. I take one book a year. An hour spent explaining my process to somebody shopping at ₹80,000 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. ₹25 lakh says what twelve months of one writer’s whole attention costs. A shop that quotes ₹3 lakh 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

How much does Saurabh Garg charge to write a biography?

₹25 lakh, about US$26,000, for one book start to finish. That covers all interviews, all research, the chapter plan, the full manuscript of sixty to ninety thousand words, three revision rounds, and copyright assigned to you. It does not cover publishing, printing or translation.

Is ₹25 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. ₹25 lakh is 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.

Why do most ghostwriters not publish their price?

Because a withheld price can be shaped to the buyer’s budget. Several will ask what you can spend before they quote. Of the nine biography writers and services I checked in August 2026, two published a figure and seven did not, and none of the Indian ones did.

Can I pay in instalments?

Yes, and you should. The fee is four equal payments of ₹6.25 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.

Do you charge in dollars, pounds or dirhams?

Yes. The fee is ₹25 lakh and I invoice in US dollars, pounds sterling, dirhams or Singapore dollars at the rate on the day we sign, fixed for the life of the contract so a currency move does not become your problem.

Does the fee include getting the book published?

No. Design, ISBN, printing, distribution and publicity are separate and I do not mark them up. I will tell you what each costs in India, the UK and the US, and introduce you to the people I would use. Most family books are printed privately, which is cheaper and faster than most people expect. The full breakdown is in how to self-publish a biography. I will run the publishing mechanics for you as a separately priced line if you want that, and it is never bundled into the fee.

What if the book turns out to be smaller than ₹25 lakh of work?

Then I quote the smaller job. A forty-page family record, 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.

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.