No one reads user manuals. They open the index, skip to a heading, read a few paragraphs, and close the manual. Guides should be built keeping in mind how typical this behavior is, and most guides, on the contrary, are built as if people will begin reading from page one.
The craft is in the joins. Recurrent names for each feature, cross-references that direct toward a particular point, and each section written to make sense to a reader who arrived without reading the preceding forty pages.
It is the length that makes a guide cumbersome. Drift in terminology can occur, a feature can progressively obtain three names, a cross-reference may direct the reader to a section that is no longer part of the guide, and the contents page may no longer be aligned with the headings. Maintaining all of this across a few thousand words is a memory and discipline challenge, which is why guides are usually produced by a single person rather than a collaboration of many.
Across a long document, generated text can lose its own context. The same feature picks up three names, a cross-reference points to an unwritten section, and the contents page lists headings for which the document contains nothing. Each of these failures is minor, but combined, they drain a reader’s trust.
A terminology sheet is created first: for each feature, screen, and object, with the designated term we will use. The outline is built around tasks and signed off before the first draft is written, to avoid the high cost of restructuring the guide after it is drafted. Drafting then runs in passes with a closing consistency check.
Guides become valuable when support is costly or when the product is complex enough that it leads customers to give up without voicing their frustration. This is common among hardware manufacturers and business software with long setups, regulated equipment, and anything sold to a team as opposed to an individual. If your product is truly simple and your help center covers everything, we recommend buying help articles.
One rate, whatever the format: $10 per 100 words. You are paying for the writer’s time and judgement, so the price scales with the words rather than with a package tier.
| Typical user guide | Words | Writing | Fee (1%) | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feature guide | 1,200 | $120 | $1.20 | $121.20 |
| Product user guide | 3,000 | $300 | $3 | $303 |
| Full product manual | 6,000 | $600 | $6 | $606 |
The writer receives 100% of the writing price. Our 1% fee is added on top of it, and 0.5% is donated to tree planting. Full pricing breakdown.
Anything from 100 words up. Because you pay by the word you are never buying padding to fill a package tier.
Yes. Tell us the volume and cadence and we keep the same writer on the account so the voice stays consistent. The rate does not change with volume.
In general, that is the less expensive option. Provide the current guide and a list of what changed, and the writer will provide a quote for a revision pass instead of a rewrite. You are still paying by the word, but only for the words that need to be written or materially reworked.
We prefer you to disclose info at the start. That means short sentences, no idioms, instructions with the same phrasing throughout, and zero text in images. Building localization budgets after retrofitting these choices has been known to disappear.
Completely. Copyright transfers to you on delivery, with no attribution requirement and no licence back to us. Nothing written for you is resold, repurposed or republished.
Reviews from completed, paid orders in this category.
Thirty articles with the same structure and with the same voice are difficult to develop for a knowledge base. Screenshot placeholders were described with prose instead of with tags. Unfortunately, our designer had to try to find them with some difficulty. This is a small thing, but I plan to put it in the brief next time.
Twenty-two articles on our top ticket drivers. The writer requested redacted transcripts, and then described the problems in the way customers used the language – thermostat will not hold temperature, instead of thermostat calibration. Help center search finally started working.
Eleven articles covering our top ticket drivers. They requested the original ticket text first, not the internal descriptions, and the difference is significant. The articles use the terms customers input into the search box. There’s been a downward shift of about a fifth in the volume of contacts on those topics.
We do not ask you to take the no-AI promise on trust. Each draft is run through these platforms and the reports are attached to your delivery email.
Originality.aiAI detection + plagiarism
GPTZeroAI detection
TurnitinAI detection + similarity
CopyleaksAI detection + plagiarism
Winston AIAI detection
ZeroGPTAI detection
SaplingAI detection
Content at ScaleAI detection
Send the brief, get a human draft back within 3 days. No account, no subscription, no AI.
$10 per 100 words · all of it to the writer · 0.5% to trees