Ghostwriter

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Ghostwriter is a term that describes a person paid to write words that someone else will claim as their own. The arrangement is so common it has shaped bestseller lists, papal encyclicals, political autobiographies, chart-topping albums, and even the liner notes of hip-hop records. Yet the ghostwriter typically vanishes from the final product, sometimes legally bound to silence by a nondisclosure contract.

  Who uses ghostwriters, and why? The range of clients is wider than most listeners would expect: celebrities who lack the time or discipline for a several-hundred-page book, politicians seeking visibility before an election, pharmaceutical companies recruiting credentialed scientists to front their research papers, and animation studios listing executives as composers to collect music royalties. The practice stretches from Mozart writing music for wealthy patrons to Frank Ocean writing songs for Justin Bieber and John Legend before launching his own career.

  What makes a ghostwriter skilled is not just prose style but the ability to disappear. Memoir ghostwriters, in particular, describe their craft as vanishing into the persona of the credited author. And yet the work carries real legal and ethical weight. When a ghostwritten song becomes a hit, lawsuits follow. When a ghostwritten medical paper shapes prescribing habits, legislators take notice. The full scope of what ghostwriters do and who they do it for is far stranger than the publishing world's polished surfaces suggest.

• 2. Who Hires and Why

  ›

  Celebrities and public figures are among the most frequent clients, though their reasons vary. Some simply do not have the writing skills to structure a several-hundred-page book so that it is captivating and well-paced. Others have the skill for a short article but not the time or discipline a full autobiography demands. Publishers add a third motive: they use ghostwriters to increase the number of books that can be released each year under a highly marketable name, or to quickly publish a book tied to a newsworthy event.

  The political world has long relied on the practice. In several countries, candidates commission ghostwriters to produce autobiographies before elections specifically to gain visibility and exposure. One of John F. Kennedy's books, Profiles in Courage, is almost entirely credited to ghostwriters. Donald Trump's autobiography Trump: The Art of the Deal was produced by a ghostwriter. Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom was also ghostwritten. Several of Hillary Clinton's books were produced by ghostwriters as well.

  Beyond the famous, a consultant or career-switcher may pay to have a book ghostwritten on a topic in their professional area, to establish credibility as an expert. A successful salesperson hoping to become a motivational speaker on selling might pay a ghostwriter to produce a book on sales techniques. That type of book is typically given away to prospective clients as a promotional tool rather than sold in bookstores.

  Governments and religious institutions also rely on the arrangement. Public officials employ correspondence officers to handle the large volume of official mail sent in their name. A number of papal encyclicals have been written by ghostwriters, including Pascendi, which was written by Joseph Lemius, the procurator in Rome of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

• 3. Money and Credit

  ›

  In 2013, literary agent Madeleine Morel stated that the average ghostwriter's advance for work with major book publishers was between $40,000 and $70,000. Those figures are broadly matched in the film industry: the Writers Guild Minimum Basic Agreement sets a starting price for a screenplay writer at $37,073 for a non-original screenplay with no treatment.

  At the high end, the fees can be far larger. In 2001, The New York Times reported that the ghostwriter for Hillary Clinton's memoirs would likely receive about $500,000 of her book's $8 million advance, which was described as near the top of flat fees paid to collaborators.

  The digital shift has opened a lower-cost tier. By 2015, digital books had reached roughly 15-20 percent of world market share. That growth made shorter texts commercially viable. Amazon's Kindle Singles imprint, for instance, focuses on texts of 30,000 words and under, a length that would have been difficult to sell before digital reading became widespread. The ghostwriting company Manhattan Literary has stated that book projects in the 30,000-42,000 word range start at around $15,000, roughly half the floor of the traditional book market.

  Credit arrangements are as varied as payment structures. A common method puts the client's name on the cover as the main byline and the ghostwriter's name underneath. Sometimes the ghostwriter is cited as co-author or listed in film credits. In nonfiction, the ghostwriter may be labeled a contributor or research assistant. In other cases, a nondisclosure contract legally forbids any mention of their role. Kevin Anderson, a ghostwriter interviewed in a Washington Post article, drew a distinction between author and writer: he described a ghostwriter as an interpreter and translator rather than an author, which is why, in his view, clients deserve full credit.

• 4. Fiction and Series Publishing

  ›

  In fiction, ghostwriters have kept entire series alive for decades. Publishers use them to sustain the output of well-known authors and to maintain pseudonyms long after the original creator has died or stopped writing. The genres most associated with this practice include detective fiction, mysteries, and teen fiction.

  The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries are a clear example. The credited authors, Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon respectively, are pseudonyms for a succession of ghostwriters. Each writer works from a template of basic information about the characters and their fictional world, covering names, dates, and speech patterns, as well as the expected tone and style. Ghostwriters on these series are also given copies of previous books to help them match the established voice.

  The estate of gothic novelist V. C. Andrews took a similar approach after her death, hiring Andrew Neiderman to continue writing novels under her name and in a style consistent with her original work. Tom Clancy's books from the 2000s took a more visible approach: many covers bear two names, with Clancy's name in larger print and the other author's name in smaller print. The first two books in the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell franchise were written by Raymond Benson under the pseudonym David Michaels.

  Sometimes well-known authors ghostwrite for celebrities rather than the other way around. H. P. Lovecraft ghostwrote the story known as Imprisoned with the Pharaohs, also published as Under the Pyramids, for Harry Houdini in Weird Tales in the 1920s. The story appeared under Houdini's name even though it was Lovecraft's prose.

• 5. Music and Its Disputes

  ›

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was paid to write music for wealthy patrons, making him one of history's most famous musical ghostwriters. The practice carries forward into every part of the modern music industry, though the ethics and the contracts differ sharply by genre.

  In film and television scoring, the practice has been described as one of the dirty little secrets of the business. In the early years of film, David Raksin worked as a music ghostwriter and orchestrator for Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin received the composing credit despite being known in industry circles as a hummer, film industry slang for someone who provides only a general idea of the melodies and then hands them to a ghostwriter. A 1998 investigation by The Hollywood Reporter found the practice especially common among animation companies including Saban Entertainment, DiC, Ruby-Spears Productions, and Hanna-Barbera, which listed company executives as musicians on cue sheets to collect royalties. In the late 1990s, several composers threatened a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Saban Entertainment president Haim Saban over alleged credit and ownership theft.

  In popular music, legal disputes arise when ghostwritten songs become hits. In 1987, Darryl Neudorf was brought in to work on a project for Nettwerk Productions involving newly signed artist Sarah McLachlan. The resulting album, Touch, drew the interest of Arista Records, and two songs Neudorf worked on became commercial hits in Canada. In 1993, Neudorf filed a lawsuit alleging uncredited songwriting contributions to Touch and underpayment for work on McLachlan's second album, Solace. The judge ruled in McLachlan's favour on the songs, finding that although Neudorf may have contributed, neither party regarded the other as joint authors. The judge ruled in Neudorf's favour on the payment question.

  In hip-hop, Chuck D of Public Enemy has pushed back against critics of ghostwriting, arguing that not everyone is equipped to be a lyricist and that creating a rap song may require multiple talents. Frank Ocean, before establishing his own name, began his career as a ghostwriter for Justin Bieber, John Legend, and Brandy.

• 6. Medicine and Academia

  ›

  Medical ghostwriting sits at the far end of the ethical spectrum. Pharmaceutical companies pay professional writers to produce papers and then pay other scientists or physicians to attach their names before publication in medical or scientific journals. Critics and professional organizations have condemned the practice. It may also violate American laws prohibiting off-label drug promotion and anti-kickback provisions within Medicare statutes.

  The line between acceptable and unacceptable medical writing does exist, however. Professional medical writers can write papers without being considered ghostwriters, provided their role is acknowledged. The European Medical Writers Association has published guidelines aimed at ensuring that acknowledged professional writers carry out their work ethically. Organisations such as the World Association of Medical Editors and the British Medical Journal accept properly acknowledged medical writers as legitimate contributors, noting that their expertise can produce better quality papers.

  In universities, ghostwriting for coursework is treated as academic dishonesty, though it is not illegal in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Germany. Services that sell entrance essays, term papers, theses, and dissertations to students are commonly known as essay mills. Universities have developed countermeasures, including allowing professors to give students oral examinations on papers suspected of being ghostwritten. A student who cannot demonstrate familiarity with their own submission can be charged with academic fraud.

  Religious institutions present a more layered picture. In June 1938, Pope Pius XI summoned American Jesuit John La Farge and assigned him to draft Humani generis unitas. La Farge worked on the draft in Paris alongside two other Jesuits, Gustav Gundlach and Gustave Desbuquois. The draft ran to approximately 100 pages and was delivered to the Vatican in September 1938. Plagiarism researcher Michael V. Dougherty has documented how ecclesiastical ghostwriting compounds on itself: the priest Thomas Rosica, described by Dougherty as a proven plagiarist, ghostwrote speeches for Cardinal Ouellet using source texts that later appeared in an unoriginal homily by Cardinal William Levada, who was then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

• 7. Ghostwriters in Culture

  ›

  Ghostwriting has attracted novelists and filmmakers who find the ethical and psychological tensions of the role dramatically compelling. Philip Roth published The Ghost Writer in 1979. David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, published in 1999, plays on the idea of characters ghostwriting their own lives. Chico Buarque's 2003 novel Budapeste follows its protagonist Jose Costa between Rio de Janeiro and Budapest. Robert Harris published his novel The Ghost in 2007, and Roman Polanski adapted it as The Ghost Writer in 2010.

  Memoir also enters the picture. Jennie Erdal published Ghosting: a Memoir in 2004, drawing on her experience working as a ghostwriter for Naim Attallah for twenty years. Haruki Murakami's 2009 novel 1Q84 centers one of its main plot lines on a ghostwriter. Kyoto Animation's 2018 anime television series Violet Evergarden, along with the light novel of the same name by Kana Akatsuki, takes ghostwriting as its central premise.

  The first season of the animated series BoJack Horseman builds its plot around the title character dictating his memoirs to Diane Nguyen, a ghostwriter assigned by his publisher. The arrangement mirrors the nonfiction reality where a ghostwriter's primary raw material is interview sessions with the credited author. Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson wrote Bridge on the River Kwai under blacklist conditions, with the credit given to Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original novel. Dalton Trumbo wrote Roman Holiday while blacklisted, with the credit going to Ian McLellan Hunter.