CONTRACT OR COLLABORATION?

Consider seriously the advice you’ve been given. The best advice is almost always painful to hear.

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And sometimes we just do not want to hear "No" as an answer, so we keep asking the same questions in the hope the replies will change. Been there, have the T-shirt.

Everyone here with more experience on this sort of thing has assured you that it is a bad deal for you with an unrealistic deadline.

Again, I would ask why this client is seeking out an inexperienced writer for this job?

Yes, you spent many years in advertising and worked with words. But one may spend many years as a brain surgeon and not know squat about how to pull a tooth. They're different specialties.

Yes, you want to write for money--we ALL do!--but until you've sold something, until you've interviewed a number of people, until you've put in your due diligence of serious sit-in-the-library research, until you've done Butt In Chair-sell-what-you-wrote kind of work to at least get your feet wet, this job is just a bad idea.

There's nothing we can say that will change your mind. You wanted to know the pitfalls, we've told you, and you want to go ahead regardless.

Come back in a month and tell us how you triumphed and your client's book is selling well on Kindle with no lawsuits pending from famous people / events mentioned.

We'll be glad to be proved wrong.

Tigerman, I doubt a paid lawyer would have given you a fraction of the sound advice you have been willingly given here for free. Use it wisely.

AW is a writers’ forum, and membership ranges from not-yet-published writers to very-well-published writers to agents, editors, and publishers. What that means to you is that you’re receiving some of the best-qualified advice in the business for free.

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^^^^ That.

But you did ask me a couple items:

@Jeffo, I've used a consulting phase other than for information gathering. Is there any reference you share with me online as to how to structure the meeting and a checklist of pertinent questions to ask? Also what would you charge and approximately how much time would you allocate to the consulting phase?

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A checklist of questions to ask during a consulting interview? If I could make a such a checklist and have it contain all the items that should be there, I would be rich. The entire concept of consulting and interviewing is trying to determine the correct questions to ask! I spend a great deal of time after every interview and after every consulting job reviewing the job to determine which questions I could have asked that would have changed the entire job. This is the biggest area, in my opinion, that makes consulting an art form.

What would I charge and how much time? Well, I'll admit -- after all the feedback in this thread, I wouldn't take the job. At this point, I don't have enough information to even determine time blocks. I would likely need an initial meeting with an interview to determine some details, then I could create an overall project plan. I'd have the initial meeting for no charge, but would explain during that meeting that all work after that point would be at standard rates.

So how's it going, Tigerman?

Or has he vanished back into the ether?

I'm wondering how this turned out myself. This whole project just sounds like a train wreck especially the time frame.