This service has potential, however, based on my extensive substantial experience I really can’t recommend it. If you want the summary, skip to the end. Firstly, for context, it’s important to realise that everyone with a keyboard thinks they’re a writer. If you don’t care about the quality of your book, its structure, ideas, content, originality, levels of plagiarism and ultimately how it makes you look, then maybe this is for you. In the past I’ve given client feedback directly to the company. My objective here is to give a detailed and honest review of my experience. Hopefully you’ll avoid the intense frustration and waste of time I experienced. I paid The Urban Writers for over five books in their top-level Platinum Service. My subject was something pretty much anyone can write about. Think something easy like Christmas, the value of the great outdoors, happiness, holidays or something as simple as being human. It you pay for their Book Outline Service, this involves a third party company arbitrarily deciding what your book will be about. Even if you provide them with some initial ideas, based on my experience, their work is a waste of time. I read the outlines they did for me and remember thinking “This is drivel”. Sure, it would probably result in a book – but not one I’d be willing to put my name to. Now if you don’t care about what your book is about and how it reflects on you then this might be the service for you. Then as part of the service you can either ask The Urban Writers ‘management’ to pick your writer or you can wade through some, often badly written bios, to try and find a writer who might do a decent job. Perhaps THE most important thing you need to know is that YOU’LL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO SPEAK TO YOUR WRITER. Yes, YOU’LL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO SPEAK TO YOUR WRITER. All your communications will be via document uploads and chat. Can you imagine that? Your whole book written via chat? How painful is that? Writing is like acting, a ghost-writer needs to get into character – yours. And doing that without a conversation is daft. That’s The Urban Writers model. Kind of like Painting by Numbers but worse. I guess they’re afraid that if you speak to a writer, and they can’t monitor your exchanges, you’ll get tempted to deal direct and cut them out of the picture. The company will use the excuse that their writers are introverted and don’t like speaking with clients. This is absolute nonsense. Can you seriously imagine the world’s top ghost-writers not wanting to meet the person they’re going to write for? As a client this is deeply dissatisfying and I can’t help but think that for the writer it’s kind of like writing blind. If you let ‘management’ choose the writer, you’ll collate all the documents necessary to brief them, then you’ll have a little of chat back and forth. The platform doesn’t give you any kind of template for briefing the writer. They don’t make any suggestions as to what kind of information would be vital, important or useful. It’s up to you, the writer, the upload and chat functionality of the platform to work it out. I’d have thought that by now The Urban Writers could give clients a little more guidance as to how to brief a writer to get the best from them. Then several weeks go by and nothing happens. The writer apparently gets sick, their dog eats their work, they drop off the radar, or in my case several of management’s writer choices just flaked out. They finally realised how much work is involved in researching and ghost-writing a book. So months pass and you have to start all over again. If you’re lucky things might go well. Your writer will be energetically populating the platform with your book and you’ll see progress. Either you can read over their shoulder on the platform as they write or wait until the thing is completed. I waited for them to finish to not interrupt their flow. Talking of platform, The Urban Writers are really impressed with theirs. It’s designed to ensure maximum automation and streamlining of their process. Other reviewers have described it as clunky. The UX is horrendous. [...word count is limited here so to see the full story look to that other search engine review site...] In short, these are things you need to know: 1. Whether you or ‘management’ pick a writer you’ll probably have to wait 30 -90 days for them to start on your project. 2. You will never be allowed to speak to your writer. 3. Your time may be wasted by writers who, after taking on your project, flake out. 4. From a client perspective their platform UX is poor and not time efficient. 5. Their customer service people not client-focused. 6. Never opt for an editor suggested by the writer. They’re probably suggesting someone who gives them an easy time.

Neil was a great writer for me. This is my first book creation. He saw my outline and asked to collaborate with me. He took some days to do his research, then started writing like he was on fire. I loved reading along and watching things develop. I like how seriously and professionally he treated my project. He really fleshed it out for me and the voice he used was as an expert and authority in my subject. The writing was excellent quality. He delivered in a timely manner, much sooner than I would have expected. I'm glad he found me. Thanks @Neil!!!

I was absolutely thrilled with my ghostwriter whom I chose after reviewing all the bios and samples of your writers. I was disappointed with the editor who was chosen for me. The formatter was ok. I was very happy with your cover designer. Overall a good experience, but I had to put in a lot of unexpected work after editing and ended up sending it to another company for a re-edit. I would recommend using TUW, if you take the time to select each writer/editor/artist yourself after careful review of each's work.

My experience was good, my writer took the time need inorder to get the information right.

I am satisfied with my project, the writer did a great job also the editor did an awesome job as well. Thanks I believe I will use this service again and share with others.

The team at Urban Writers was great to work with! I would recommend their writers and cover designers.

Very complicated platform to use. Admittedly I had three books on the platform but very confusing, not intuitive at all.

My book took too long to get assigned to a writer and I later had to choose one who ended up to be terrible yet she was among the ones listed in the premier package. Many times I reached out it took to long before I got help from the admin team.

This was a really helpful service. There people are friendly and easy to work with, however, there are many things that can be done to improve the overall expectations on project and order delivery coupled with an open transparency on their processes. This would help the customer better understand what to expect aiding in a smoother process. I also believe that there could've been more explanation and insight into the way they collect your outline information. It seemed the writer of the project had me write down much of what I had already taken the time to include rather than using their own POV or researched information that correlated to what I had already provided; meaning you basically write your books yourself but with outline guidance. I would use this service again but only because it actually helped me stay on track and complete an entire book in less than a month.

Good quality writing and editing. Poor customer service, unfortunately, based on my own personal experience. Questionable secure storing of manuscripts, as I received an order I did not place. It took a while to resolve. The team were trying to be helpful, however expected me to just accept this fact and move on. Not great. Not really impressed with the cover design either. Be prepared to pay extra for additional changes. Overall, price is affordable and writing is good (I purchased the premium package), but did not enjoy the service at all, sadly.