Ah, ghostwriting. This is one of my favorite “hot topics” since it is much more nuanced than people typically consider.
Ghostwriting is the act of writing a novel that someone else gets to take most of the credit for. Typically, a ghostwriter is hired to collaborate with a person who has some standing of celebrity. These collaborators can be actors, musicians, chefs, bloggers, influencers, etc. Ghostwriting isn’t cheap labor (when done right), so they’re usually used by people who can afford it and who have marketable names.
For example, many celebrity auto-biographies are ghostwritten. The celebrity will sit down with the writer and give an outline of their life, and then the writer will translate this into book format. This type of ghostwriting is more of a technical aid. Not everyone is a great writer, and using a ghostwriter can help people tell their stories in a way that’s more enjoyable to read than if they tried to write it themselves.
Memoirs are another genre that uses ghostwriters regularly, as well as certain longstanding fiction series. James Patterson, a popular thriller writer, has said that when he co-authors a novel he’ll write a significant outline (sometimes up to 80 pages), and then the co-author will use that to write the actual novel. This is a type of ghostwriting where the ghostwriter receives more recognition than they would when writing an autobiography or memoir.
Even certain blogs use ghostwriting. Often times an established blog or website will hire several writers to write in the tone or style of the website. This allows them to publish an adequate amount of media without putting too much pressure on a single writer. In this respect, the ghostwriters are often unnamed on the piece itself and may be credited elsewhere on the site as a “contributor”.
Ghostwriting seems to be one of those topics that ebbs and flows in mainstream conversation as well as literary circles. The topic will come up, there will be discussion about it, and then we’ll collectively forget about it until something else disturbs the status quo.
This year, the disturbance was Millie Bobby Brown’s debut novel, Nineteen Steps. Upon the release of her book and the acknowledgement of her using a ghostwriter, the topic of ghostwriting was drawn back into mainstream discussion.
Many people who are familiar with ghostwriting support it as a field. It’s a way for newer authors to build credibility, and it generates a lot of income for the publishing industry. People like to buy books written by people they know. If I wrote a book, hardly anyone would know about it or want to buy it. If Taylor Swift wrote a book, it would be sold out faster than her concert tickets.
Of course, regarding the discussion around Millie Bobby Brown’s novel, there were a lot of negative statements made about ghostwriting and, more specifically, celebrities using ghost writers for fictional material.
I think the main dissonance in the conversation is caused by people who are wholly unfamiliar with the process of ghostwriting. On the surface, it appears as people (namely celebrities) taking credit for someone else’s writing, and often there’s no mention in the promotion of the book that it was written in collaboration with another writer. This can seem incredibly predatory.
However, ghostwriting is a vast industry that has been around since the inception of writing. In the olden days, scribes held the position of “ghostwriters”, writing down anything from speeches to decrees to historical documents. Scribes often didn’t use word for word translations, and it’s likely they embellished where necessary.
The actual term for ghostwriting was coined by Walter “Christy” Walsh in 1921. Walsh was a sports agent who came up with the idea of hiring writers to help tell the stories of professional athletes. While this ghostwriting was around long before 1921, this is around the time it became seen as a true profession.
This is the type of ghostwriting people are the most familiar with and may be the reason why we’re especially uncomfortable with using ghostwriters for fiction work. When a writer sit’s down with an actor, athlete, musician etc. with the goal of writing their story, the celebrity has a lot of input in the narrative. The ghost writer is there to help the celebrity articulate their thoughts and write them in a compelling and interesting way. This is a very service-based transaction that’s easily understood and condoned by most people.
When we get into the logistics of it, Ghostwriters are hired for their positions with the knowledge that it won’t be their name on the front cover. Or, like in Millie Bobby Brown’s case, their name will be on the front cover but in teeny tiny print. The benefit of ghostwriting isn’t necessarily to have one’s name plastered across the front of the book, but rather to gain experience and break into the industry.
It can be difficult to publish a debut novel as someone who has no experience, social media following, or notoriety to their name. However, being the ghostwriter for a celebrity book, popular magazine, or well-known website allows a writer to build up a resume and show that they’re finding work in the industry. While their name might not be on the front cover, it will be listed somewhere in the book or project, so they can say, “Yes, I’ve worked industry and have been published.” In the case of celebrity books, they can even add, “And the book sold very well.”
This helps writers start their own careers. One can argue that it shouldn’t be this way, meaning that a writer should be judged on the worth of the material they present and not the experience they have, but that’s not great for business. Considering publishing is a vast industry, business (money) comes first, and it is much better for business to publish someone who has experience in the industry and familiarity to their name rather than a completely unknown person. It’s easier to market their books if you can say they collaborated on another popular work.
Another aspect many people don’t know or think about is how much money ghostwriting brings into the publishing industry. Like any business, publishing houses must generate enough income to keep all of their projects afloat. Taking on a ghostwritten celebrity book that will sell incredibly well will also allow them to take on a smaller indie author whose book is exceptional but whose persona is relatively unknown.
In this way, we can say that ghostwriting is at least a necessary evil, but I would argue that it’s not really evil at all. I think the term “ghostwriting” carries a negative connotation, but would we view it the same way if we called ghostwriters something like “writer’s aids”? The term “ghostwriter” seems to imply that the other collaborator, the one whose name will be on the project, had no involvement in the work itself. It makes it seem as though a writer came up with an idea wholly on their own, wrote the material, and then sold it to someone else for them to put their name on it and claim it as their own idea.
While this may sometimes happen, it’s a lot more rare than the typical ghostwriting we see. Usually, the published writer will come up with the idea on their own. Then, a ghostwriter is hired to workshop the idea collaboratively and decide what story the published writer wants to tell. As mentioned before, autobiographies and memoirs are a field where ghostwriting is popular, and this is probably the most prevalent type of ghostwriting in the celebrity world.
In the case of fiction books, the ethics of ghostwriting can become murkier. For nonfiction books, it’s pretty clear to see where the divide between collaborator and ghostwriter ends. It’s a “you’ve given me this information and I’m going to organize it and write about it in a nice way” type of situation. For fiction, where does the ghostwriter’s creativity come in? How much input are they actually giving, and at a certain point, should they receive more credit based on how much of the idea is actually theirs?
Using Millie Bobby Brown’s novel, the idea for the novel was her own. It’s the story of her real family during this time period, and it’s likely that she had a lot of input in telling the story. Plus, the story is a fictionalized version of real events, meaning that the ghostwriter would have had real-world knowledge to draw from. The ghostwriter doesn’t have to use her own imagination to fill in the blanks as much as a purely fictional story because she can research the actual event.
The writer would have embellished, clarified, and maybe reorganized events, but they aren’t making up very much of the story themselves. And, even if they were, the idea would not have come to be without Millie Bobby Brown due to it being her family’s story. In a sense, you’re buying Millie’s idea with someone else’s writing in a deal where everyone is happy with the process. There isn’t much that’s unethical or to be mad about there.
When we look at something like the fictional novels Kylie and Kendall Jenner put out, the line becomes truly murky. Their novels are pure fantasy, meaning that even if they had the basic idea themselves, there is a lot of other material to be covered. How much of the plot and worldbuilding was their own? If it was just the bare minimum, well, there’s a lot for the ghostwriter to fill in. At that point, it seems strange to publish it as their book when they didn’t add much to the work creatively.
That’s the less generous interpretation of this process. The more generous interpretation is that they did sit down with the ghost writer, Maya Sloan, and create at least the basic elements of the plot and fantasy world. At that point, they have enough input to claim that the idea is their own and the ghostwriter is helping them flesh it out into a full story.
It may still seem like they’re taking advantage of someone else’s creativity; however, this goes back to the marketing and gaining experience aspects of ghostwriting. While the ghostwriter may not be known for those books (although Maya Sloan’s name is in the books’ Wiki page), they can say that they worked for the Jenner family. They can advertise to publishers that they wrote full-length novels that became best-sellers. It is a way to begin a writing career, and again, ghostwriters typically know what they’re signing up for.
I will acknowledge here that this type of ghostwriting does still feel “icky” to me. I like the idea of hiring a ghostwriter in a completely collaborative effort. Creating a single idea, handing it off, and saying “write this for me” only to publish it under your own name feels slimy. Why? Because writing is a very personal effort for many people.
In a way, it feels like you’re fooling your audience if you take credit for someone else’s creativity. While the ghostwriter signed up willingly and would be well-paid for a successful book in this manner, it feels disingenuous to the celebrity’s audience. Using a ghostwriter to make sure your book reads well and is written well on a technical level is much different than using a ghostwriter to fully flesh out your seedling of an idea.
People will go back on forth on the ethics of ghostwriting, but for me I’m in favor of it as an industry. In a world where using names give you power, riding the coattails of someone else’s name to start your own journey is an extremely valid path to success.
Many people make a good living as ghostwriters, and they may not want to be the star of the show anyway. There are plenty of people who enjoy writing and have no care in the world about being a famous author. For them, ghostwriting is an ideal field to make money in.
Then, there’s the fact that it’s very lucrative for publishing houses. For that reason alone, ghostwriting will never go away.
The Lit Wiz