Some authors have a great project; need a writer, but don't have money. Assuming you have confidence in the long term benefits, will you write a proposal and chapter without any upfront payment?
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I am sorry this happened to you Sharon. A really big thanks for sharing this with 'we newbies'. We all learn from our mistakes. It is appreciated when we learn from others. I think I'll politely walk away from working on spec.
What if your promised a large % of revenues and you have confidence in the book's success?
That happened to me once. The book did indeed have a strong market and I was promised a percentage of the revenues. However, when it came time for me to collect my percentage, the author reneged and put all his advance and royalty earnings into a foreign bank account. He was greedy and had no intention of sharing any of his monies. I had to sue him. I won the case, but because the money was offshore, it would involve complicated legal proceedings to recover any of the money, and I did not have enough money to keep paying expensive contract lawyers, especially for an overseas action, so I had to let it drop. So the courts gave me a moral victory in decreeing that the author was in default with his payments to me, but it did not result in me getting paid anything.
The moral of the story is: NEVER EVER WORK ON SPEC NO MATTER HOW CERTAIN YOU ARE THAT THE BOOK WILL BE SUCCESSFUL, AND NEVER PRESUME THAT A LARGE ADVANCE WILL NOT TURN AN AUTHOR'S HEAD EVEN IF HE/SHE HAS PROMISED YOU A LEGITIMATE PERCENTAGE FOR EDITING.
That's a horrible and atypical experience. You need a good collaboration contract that includes inserting your assignment in the publisher-writer contract. In fact, it's best to get paid by the publisher, not your client.
I know, Jeff, I learned the hard way, and would never repeat the mistake!
But overall, I still do feel that working on spec is not generally a good thing.
Editors get burned working on spec. Don't do it.
Thanks ... I won't.
I have never, until now, as an editor, to rewrite and alter the orginal manuscript. I mostly copy edit with suggestions for the author, adding my writers and readers perspective on improvement outside of the technical grammar and punctuation. This author stated he/she was too busy to do their own editing. I said, "NO', as I think this would be ghost writing. A whole different approach and financial agreement.
Since I am new to this career field, am I incorrect with this thought process?
Now, I have been known to start a project before the money has arrived, but that is rare. I also offer free examples of my work. Hope I have covered your question.