Steer clear. - Writer HotGhostWriter Employee Review

I strongly suspect many of the positive reviews on this page are false. I couldn’t more strongly advise anyone to stay away from this company. Whilst I was placed on a project almost instantaneously, cracks started showing immediately. Firstly, writers are given next to no information about a project before they accept it: meaning writers can be asked to write triggering content, such as rape scenes, without warning, if they appear in the outline. This wasn’t an issue for me personally, but it struck me as pretty unprofessional, and might be extremely problematic for another prospective writer. I repeatedly asked for deadlines, and wasn’t given them. When I was given them, I asked for specific times, since this was a multi-national team, with individuals in different timezones, and was told “not to worry.” This has never been my experience working freelance with a multi-national team, and I was very surprised by this lax response. Often, I would have to ask chase project managers repeatedly for questions about the timeline and lack of communication to be answered. The outline I was working to with a co-writer was full of holes and reiteration. We’d be expected to write the same “reveal,” two chapters in a row, so fixing the outline became part of our job. The client stressed an action-focused plot, but various chapters only contained conversation and contemplation, which made this impossible. Our editor assured us he would open a dialogue with the client about making changes to the outline: after over a month, this never occurred. For weeks, the client did not respond and approve work, but we were encouraged that they largely liked what they were seeing and to keep writing while they worked on more specific feedback. After two weeks of silence, my co-writer was cut from the project with no warning, and I was expected to revise all of her content for free. (Despite their stringing her along for weeks, I was informed she would only be paid for what made it into the final project, which whilst legal, I think is pretty morally bankrupt.) Whilst I had gone into this job with the understanding that editing one’s own work for free was part of their (admittedly exploitative) model, I wasn’t willing to edit someone else’s work without adequate compensation. To be blunt, if I had written from scratch, that volume of workload wouldn’t have been created in the first place- it turns out it was my chapters that the client liked. But I was told only newly written words counted as “work.” This is pretty rich, coming from editors, who understand that rereading and vetting work takes skill and labour. I did not ask to be paid by hour, but only for the full count of words in the final chapter accepted by the client, as the contract sets out. Even though this would have made very little difference to the final count, as I would have to rewrite most of my co-writers work regardless, I was told no- they follow the letter of the law here, and not the spirit. I was obviously unwilling to work for free, and left the company. By this time, long lapses in communication meant that the original deadline for the project as a whole had long since passed. If you have a rent to pay, bills due, or food to put on the table, there is zero guarantee that your coworkers and the client will keep to the expected timeline, even if you are meeting all of your deadlines. It’s a double standard, where as a writer you will obviously be punished for falling behind, but other members of the project can vanish with no warning. There is some level of uncertainty with freelance, but this is another level. You are much better off working for yourself.