You Can't Save The Best For Yourself AND Be A Ghostwriter

So I added someone to my team recently who was poking around a forum looking for work. I usually don't approach people to offer them jobs as I know I can put out an ad and get plenty of qualified people but there was a reason I approached this woman specifically. The reason isn't important here but let's just say I shouldn't have gotten so excited about something because the result wasn't very good.

The first project didn't go smoothly but it wasn't entirely her fault. My client hated the work and gave it to someone else but paid me anyway and I paid the writer. I thought I'd give her another shot since it was a bit of a strained scenario. I should say that my client who owns a large writing agency didn't like the work and didn't want me to use this writer again on her stuff. I should've listened...anytime this client doesn't like someone's work (except for one time) I've had bad experiences in future. I now know to listen to her and will start dropping team members like hot potatoes if she tells me she has a gut feeling. She's been in this business many years and has developed some kind of mental telepathy for bad writers vs good writers (except for once which I'll save for another day).

This writer did a horrid job on the second projects. It was wrong, it was late and it was really badly written. I almost missed a deadline because of it and had to do a vast amount of rewriting. I almost didn't accept her invoice but decided it was a small enough amount I didn't want to build enemies for less than $20.

I'm ranting about this because...today I found a blog post and forum post that both suggested she won't put out great work when ghostwriting as she wants to save it for her own work.

Well..I thought I might explode. How can you even accept a gig as a ghostwriter when you don't intend to give it any effort because your name won't be on it? If I worked this way, I wouldn't have any clients! I won't use this person again. Lesson learned.