by Giovanni Casali, editorial coordinator
Everything made of words: manuals, essays, novels, business books, children's books, poetry, speeches. The biography is only the most famous genre of the trade. The rest can be explained with a single sentence, which is also the way we work: the expertise is yours, the craft is ours.
Better to say it at once: nobody writes well about what they do not understand, and anyone promising any subject lightly should be regarded with suspicion. A serious book on a serious subject is born in one way only: your expertise, our questions, research done properly. Before writing, one studies: the sources are read, those who know are interviewed, the facts are checked one by one. Then the text passes from hand to hand, from drafting to revision to proofreading, until it holds. It is workshop labour, with more eyes and more passes: the name on the cover remains one, yours.
The genre we know best: our own imprints count some forty technical manuals, with one series published in 14 languages. Procedures, regulations, popular science, the manual that gathers thirty years of your trade: you bring the knowledge, we turn it into a clear, orderly text that can be consulted without effort. It is the book that works for you: it introduces you, accredits you, makes you findable.
Ancient and modern philosophy, spirituality and religions, historical research: these are the books where writing is half the work, and the other half is documenting well. Primary sources where they exist, an orderly bibliography, the courage to write "we do not know" where we do not know. If you have a thesis to defend or a tradition to tell, the essay is built together, with the rigour the subject demands.
You have the plot and the characters in your head, but not the time or the pen. The commissioned novel has always existed, and historical fiction is the house speciality: a ten-volume saga, written across three centuries of history, taught us how much period research it takes for a page set in the eighteenth century to ring true. It costs more than the other genres, and rightly so: the reasons are explained on the prices page.
The company's story, the book that positions you in your industry, the technical text for your clients. Some fields we know from the inside, by direct experience and not only by trade: agriculture and the farming business, professional cooking, real estate, personal finance. In the others, the usual method applies: your expertise, our questions, the research.
Children's books, collections of poems to put in order and publish, speeches for an important occasion, short texts that must carry weight. Not all of them become months-long projects: some are weeks of work. We assess it together, in the usual place: the first consultation, free of charge.
We do not pretend to know it: we learn it from you. That is what the interviews are for, and the text returns to your eyes at every chapter: a technical error does not survive two readings.
Yes, with the respect and documentation these subjects demand, and without putting our ideas into your book: the voice and the position are yours.
It depends on the genre: from €2,500 for a short text, from €7,000 for a manual or essay, from €9,000 for a novel. The complete picture: How much does a ghostwriter cost?
The working journey, step by step: How does a ghostwriter work?
Whatever the subject, the first step is the same for everyone:
tell us about it in a few lines. The consultation is free and without obligation.
info@dualpenbooks.com
Giovanni Casali, editorial coordinator, will reply.
Want to get a sense of how we write first? Read a few excerpts.